Director, Business Applications

About this role

About Bridgespan
The Bridgespan Group is a leading nonprofit consulting organization serving ambitious nonprofit leaders, philanthropists, and impact investors in North America, Asia, and Africa. We work with social change organizations, philanthropies, impact investors, and collaborative initiatives to help them achieve greater social impact.
We value diversity, passion, respect, candor, and impact while working toward societies characterized by equity and justice. We are committed to building a diverse team and leadership at all levels, developing a truly inclusive culture, and integrating equity into our work.
We are seeking an experienced Director, Business Applications to lead the strategy, delivery, operation, and continued development of the applications that support Bridgespan's core business processes.
Who you are

• You are an experienced business applications leader who can connect organizational strategy, business processes, and technology decisions.

• You have led multidisciplinary teams that include product managers or business systems analysts, system administrators, and engineers. You set clear direction while giving specialists the context and accountability they need to deliver.

• You understand that business applications require both a strong roadmap and disciplined day-to-day operation. You are comfortable moving between executive decisions, business requirements, technical architecture, delivery risks, release planning, and support issues.

• You build trusted partnerships with functional leaders and can translate needs from HR, Finance, Marketing, and other teams into practical system priorities and investment choices.

• You have managed external implementation and support partners and can determine when work should remain with a managed service provider and when bringing capabilities in-house would improve service, control, or cost.

• You are motivated by Bridgespan's mission and want to strengthen the systems that enable our staff to serve social sector leaders effectively.

What you will do
Reporting to the Chief Information and Technology Officer, the Director, Business Applications will be accountable for the strategy, roadmap, delivery, administration, reliability, and ongoing improvement of Bridgespan's enterprise business applications. The initial portfolio includes the organization's Microsoft Dynamics (CRM) and Workday (ERP) systems. The portfolio may expand to include other systems that support organization-wide business processes.
The Director will lead a multidisciplinary team of product managers or business systems analysts , system administrators, and engineers. The role combines the product and engineering leadership responsibilities needed to translate business priorities into a coherent roadmap, execute that roadmap, and operate the resulting systems well. The Director will also oversee external partners, including the managed service provider that currently supports the ERP system, and will recommend the right long-term balance of internal and external capabilities.
Success in this role will be measured by the business value, reliability, adoption, security, and cost-effectiveness of Bridgespan’s enterprise business applications; the clarity and execution of the roadmap; the quality of partnerships with business owners; and the strength and scalability of the enterprise systems team.
Key responsibilities

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Business systems strategy and roadmapSet the vision and multi-year roadmap and investment plan for CRM, ERP, and future business applications. Align priorities with Bridgespan's strategy, business value, system health, risk, capacity, and total cost of ownership. Own budget planning, forecasting, licensing strategy, contract economics, and benefits realization, and communicate the financial implications of system choices to senior leaders.

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Portfolio prioritization and governanceEstablish a clear process for evaluating requests, resolving tradeoffs, sequencing work, and communicating decisions. Ensure that roadmap commitments reflect available business, technical, and change-management capacity.

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Business partnership and requirementsPartner with HR, Finance, Marketing, and other business owners to understand processes, identify problems and opportunities, define requirements, and establish shared ownership for decisions, data, adoption, and outcomes.

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System delivery and lifecycle managementLead work from discovery and solution design through configuration, development, testing, release, adoption, and post-launch support. Coordinate dependencies across systems and keep complex initiatives on scope, schedule, and budget. Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, and Infrastructure teams on solution & data architecture, system integrations, cybersecurity and infrastructure & operations governance, standards, processes, policies and guidelines.

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Engineering, configurations, and extensionsDirect the development and configuration of business applications and related extensions. Set expectations for architecture, development practices, testing, documentation, release management, data flow, maintainability, and technical quality.

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System administration and operational excellenceEnsure effective administration, access management, monitoring, issue resolution, vendor coordination, and user support. Define service expectations and operating practices that keep systems secure, reliable, usable, and well documented.

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Vendor and managed services oversightOwn relationships with implementation partners, software vendors, and managed service providers. Set performance expectations, manage contracts and costs, and hold partners accountable for service quality and delivery. Regularly assess whether capabilities should remain outsourced or move in-house based on service, risk, capacity, and cost.

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Data governance and quality Partner with the data governance function, data leaders, cybersecurity, and technology teams to help establish…