The Head of Product Support will establish and lead a global, standardised Product Support function within Enterprise IT, consolidating currently fragmented application support teams into a single accountable capability. This function will act as the first point of engagement for all product-related incidents and requests, ensuring effective triage, resolution, and routing across Product Support, Service Operations, and Product Engineering.

The role is critical to closing a structural gap in application-layer accountability, improving service clarity, and enabling a scalable, efficient global support model aligned to Enterprise IT strategy.

Operating Model Positioning

• Product Support = First-line for application issues (incidents & requests) 
• Service Desk (Service Operations) = first-line for end-user IT issues 
• Service Operations = owns major incident management and infrastructure/platform recovery 
• Product Teams = own restoration of applications into functioning business services 
• Product Support = triage, coordination, and resolution at application layer (not engineering ownership) 

1. Establish and Lead the Product Support Function
• Consolidate all LoB application support teams into Enterprise IT
• Build a globally consistent operating model across regions and divisions
• Define roles, capability expectations, and team structures • Lead a follow-the-sun support model (location strategy to be defined separately)

2. Own Application-Layer Triage and Routing
• Ensure all product incidents and requests are routed through Product Support as the single entry point for applications
• Drive consistent triage outcomes: o Resolved within Product Support o Escalated to Service Operations (infrastructure/platform) o Escalated to Product Engineering (defects / change backlog) • Ensure high-quality classification of issues to reduce misrouting and delays

3. Standardise Processes, Tooling, and Ways of Working
• Define and enforce standard triage, escalation, and problem management processes
• Align all workflows to ServiceNow as the enterprise ITSM platform
• Eliminate fragmented tooling and inconsistent practices across divisions
• Establish standard: o SLAs and OLAs o Ticket taxonomy and categorisation o Knowledge capture and reuse

4. Drive End-to-End Visibility of Product Stability
• Implement reporting across the full product support lifecycle: o Incident volumes and trends o Recurring defects and technical debt o Product-level stability and reliability o Recurring incident patterns and operational risks
• Provide Enterprise IT leadership with clear insight into application health service stability, recurring incidents trends, and systemic issues

5. Enable Continuous Improvement via Product Feedback Loops
• Ensure all recurring and material issues are translated into: o Product backlog items o Problem records and root cause analysis
• Work with Product Teams to: o Reduce incident demand o Eliminate recurring defects o Improve product stability and service reliability
• Drive shift from incident resolution → issue prevention

6. Lead Transformation and Optimisation
• Assess existing teams across capability, scale, and duplication
• Support identification of shadow IT operations and bring into scope of transformation and optimisation
• Define and execute a future-state Product Support strategy, including: o Standardisation of roles and processes o Tooling convergence o Organisational optimisation o Automation and self-serve reduction
• Deliver measurable improvements in: o Cost efficiency o Service quality o Scalability
• Develop high-levels of automation to accelerate resolution times and reduce dependency on manual effort.
• Develop and promote self-service capabilities for known incidents and requests.
• Assess and plan the integration impact of M&A activity on Product Support capabilities, ensuring rapid alignment to the target operating model without service disruption.

7. Stakeholder and Executive Leadership
• Act as a senior interface to: o Divisional CIOs o Business leadership o Product and Engineering teams 
• Manage transition to centralised model while maintaining business confidence and service continuity 
• Enforce standards with authority, in collaboration with Enterprise IT leadership 

 Essential

• Proven leadership of application / product support at scale (multi-region preferred)
• Strong understanding of: o Incident, request, and problem management (ITIL-aligned) o Triage models and escalation frameworks
• Experience standardising fragmented support models across multiple teams
• Experience implementing or operating ServiceNow (or equivalent ITSM platform)
• Strong stakeholder management at senior and executive level • Demonstrated ability to lead organisational consolidation and transformation

Desirable
 
• Experience across both: o Infrastructure / Service Operations o Product / application support or engineering
• Experience in federated organisations moving to centralised models
• Exposure to global operating models and cost optimisation initiatives Leadership Profile
• Strong ownership of end-to-end application service outcomes
• Comfortable enforcing standards across diverse teams and regions • Pragmatic and execution-focused (not theoretical transformation)
• Data-driven, with focus on measurable improvement
• High credibility across both technical and business stakeholders

Success Measures (Indicative KPIs)
 
• % of product support teams consolidated under Enterprise IT 
• Reduction in duplicated tooling and processes 
• Improvement in: o First-time fix rate o SLA adherence o Time to triage and correct routing 
• Reduction in recurring incidents • Improved product stability and up-time. 
• Increased visibility of product-level performance 
• Contribution to overall cost-to-serve reduction 
• % of automated (including self-service) incidents and requests 
• End user and business satisfaction, including CSAT