Director, IT Enterprise Systems

Discover Applebee's: Applebee's® International, Inc., headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, develops, franchises and operates casual dining restaurants in 49 states and 14 international countries under the Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar? brand.

Each Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar is designed as an attractive, friendly, neighborhood establishment featuring moderately priced, high-quality food and beverage items, table service and a comfortable atmosphere that appeals to all ages. As "America's Favorite Neighbor?," each Applebee's restaurant reflects its local neighborhood. The decor conveys this theme with photographs and memorabilia highlighting hometown heroes, local schools and area history.

Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar is the largest casual dining concept in America, both in terms of number of restaurants and market share. As of Dec. 25, 2005, there were 1,804 Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar restaurants, of which 1,318 were operated by franchisees and 486 were operated by the company.


Key Accountabilities:

1. Provide vision, direction and oversight to a team that will develop, implement, and support for enterprise systems that run the core back office including finance and accounting, human resources, payroll, supply chain management, customer relationship management, legal, construction, facilities and communications.
Partner with Support Center departments to provide quality, reliable core systems to run the business. Build the IT procedures, technology platform, and team to deliver and maintain these core systems. Define the key business needs of the core systems customers and deliver solutions that meet those needs.
2. Provide vision, direction and oversight to a team that will develop, implement, and support a service-oriented architecture that provides a framework for developing and deploying composite applications. This portal will provide a single point of entry to Applebee's communications, web applications, data dashboards, online training, policies, alerts, and process flow.
Provide vision, direction and oversight for the definition and implementation of a service-oriented architecture. Establish a framework to ensure a partnership is formed between the enterprise systems department and business owners that will develop the processes, roles, communities, security, support strategy, and implementation plan to deliver a one-stop-shop for all communications, data, and applications.
3. Department will provide packaged application product support for enterprise systems, including PeopleSoft ERP, Plumtree, JDE, HEAT, PowerCenter and others. Department will also provide development support for custom applications where necessary.
Lead a team to devise and maintain packaged application support strategies including application fixes, enhancements, product updates and upgrades. Lead a team that provides system administration including database support, application server administration, and web server administration.
4. Provide vision, direction and oversight to a team responsible for the delivery and maintenance of a business intelligence infrastructure capable of supporting the variety of BI needs in the company.
Ensure company BI needs are defined and incorporated into the business intelligence infrastructure. Provide vision for the continued evolution at the database, ETL and reporting layers. Ensure the team builds and maintains a logical data model that incorporates all requirements and a plan is in place to build the physical data model. Develop strategies for extending data capture to franchisees.
5. Develop, implement and uphold project management standards for the IT department.
Work with the director team to define and enforce project management standards. Develop a project management tool set that equips project managers with the tools to do their jobs effectively.
6. Provide strategic vision and leadership as a member of the IT Sr. Management Team. Work with team to define short and long term application and platform strategy.
Define the 1-5 year vision and plan for the development of corporate infrastructure capable of running a $3B corporation. Plan will consist of functional applications including ERP, CRM, SCM, and restaurant-specific tools as well as the platform on which they run.
7. Develop and maintain relationships with key customer groups to ensure IT input is incorporated into the relevant strategies.
Provide an environment through strong leadership that promotes communication and builds confidence in the business units that IT can help meet both strategic and tactical needs. Develop strong working relationships with other teams in IT to coordinate and integrate work where necessary.
8. Create efficiencies to operate within the established budget and provide long-term technology investment strategy.
Assist in the development and oversight of the IT budget, tracking both G&A expenses and capital expenditures.


Ideal candidate will have:

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, MIS, or Business
7 years in IT Sr. Management leading core systems implementation
8-10 years in providing technology solutions that run the core business of a company


Equal Employment Opportunity:

Applebee's is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to inclusion in the workplace.