IT Service Support Specialist (Port Elizabeth) at Aspen Pharma Group

Description

Job purpose

• Tactical and Operational role in the digital technology organization and is accountable for the provisioning, control and improvement of Application and Business Services to meet customer business requirements.
• This includes providing end user support, end user training, contributing to Knowledge Base, identifying and implementing Continuous Service Improvement opportunities, while adhering to agreed service level agreements.

Responsibilities

Application Support

• Provide Application Support to end users of IT systems used in Manufacturing and related departments.
• Investigating and resolving issues
• Providing guidance or training to users — including enhanced levels of support following new/updated software releases
• Devising permanent or temporary corrections and workarounds for faults
• Adhering to established safety, security and quality standards.
• Capturing user feedback for subsequent analysis to inform future application development.
• Updating documentation
• Maintaining application data
• Perform systems administration on the relevant IT systems.
• Ensures compliance to relevant company policies including but not limited to software licensing, access management, information management, information security, etc.
• Maintain the validated state of the IT systems in alignment with Computer System Validation (CSV) policies and procedures.
• Participates in the successful delivery of IT Projects to implement, change, test and/or upgrade the relevant IT systems.

Technical and Support Documentation

• Assist to update technical and support documentation through drafting content relevant to IT services in Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Knowledge Base (KB) articles.
• Contributes to compilation of User Requirement Specifications (URS), Risk Assessments (RA), Change Requests (CR) within the context of the overall Application Lifecycle Management
• Assist with business SOP updates relevant IT systems implementation.
• Clarifies detailed content requirements with customers and representatives of the intended audience.
• Designs, creates, controls and evaluates moderately complex subject matter.
• Makes informed decisions about the best way to present information to an audience.
• Produce knowledge base articles that are accurate, current, relevant and easily understood by the intended audience.
• Contributes to knowledge management systems to meet business needs.
• Supports others to enable them to complete knowledge management activities and form knowledge management habits.

 Incident Management

• To respond to reported incidents, minimizing the negative impacts and restoring service as quickly as possible. Investigating and resolving problems that have occurred or could occur in delivering a service. Assessing risks associated with proposed changes and ensuring changes to products, services or systems are controlled and coordinated.
• Handle incidents according to agreed procedures, investigate causes of incidents and seek resolution. Escalate unresolved incidents.
• Facilitates recovery of processes, following resolution of incidents. Documents and closes resolved incidents, contributes to testing and improving incident management procedures.
• Initiate and monitor actions to investigate and resolve problems in systems, processes and services, determine problem fixes and remedies.
• Collaborate with others to implement agreed remedies and preventative measures and support analysis of patterns and trends to improve problem management processes.
• Assess, analyze, develop and implement changes based on requests for change including adequate version management and methods to report on the lifecycle of change requests.
• Identify problems and issues and recommend corrective actions.

IT Service

• Contribute to provisioning of IT services to agreed service levels and documenting and logging all activities performed.
• Monitors and logs the actual service provided, compared to that required by service level agreements.
• Liaises with stakeholders to help them plan for a deterioration in service and/or breaches of service level agreements.
• Engages with stakeholders to confirm that products developed meet the service acceptance criteria and are to the required standard.
• Provides input into change control processes.
• Identifies opportunities to improve service delivery / Continuous Service Improvement (CSI)

Training

• To provide guidance or training to users — including enhanced levels of support following new/updated software releases – through structured curricula, transferring of knowledge, developing skills and changing behaviours using a range of techniques, resources and media
• Contributes to delivery of aspects of user curricula e.g. end user training role-based content creation.
• Applies good practice in learning content design, development, and delivery.
• Assists with maintaining user competence through delivery of training by observing learners perform practical activities and work and providing assistance within routine enquiries and escalation where needed.
• Assist with hyper care and user adoption support.
• Supports changes to work practices to support capture and use of knowledge.

GxP Requirements

• Perform all duties in compliance with the relevant GxP and cyber security guidelines, standards, policies, and procedures.
• Ensuring compliance with relevant guidelines and legislation through adherence to defined Standard Operating Procedures and other ways of working.
• Identify gaps in procedural documentation and suggest improvements where required.
• Monitoring violations of security policies, analyzing relevant logs, alerts and events
• Responding to incidents according to procedures and maintaining the related security records and documentation

Requirements

Skills Required

Background/experience

• Tertiary Qualification (Diploma or Degree) in IT or related Business qualification
• Current industry certification (ITIL) / training will be an advantage.
• 3 – 5 years’ experience in the relevant business area e.g. Pharmaceutical Manufacturing (Production / QA / Technical Support) or 1 – 2 years’ experience in providing application support and/or systems administration Working in a Pharmaceutical / GxP regulated environment.
• Experience in system administration / IT support experience / Key User responsibility.
• Experience and sound knowledge of service incent and request management methodologies.
• Experience in content authoring and user training and on-boarding will be an advantage.

Specific job skills

• Comprehensive understanding of pharmaceutical testing methods, laboratory processes and Level 4 skills to enable Application Support, Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Acceptance
• Level 3 skills to apply in Quality Assurance, Acceptance testing, Organizational change management, Testing, Content management, Knowledge management, Security operation, and Change Control,
• Level 2 skills to assist in Service level management, Learning delivery and Teaching.
• Working knowledge of PAS-X Manufacturing Execution System (MES), StarLims Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Aveva / Wonderware System Platform, and/or SAP S4/HANA applications used in manufacturing of Product.

Competencies

• Business Understanding
• Accountability/ Ownership
• Effective Communication Skills
• Take action with integrity.
• Self-directed
• Accuracy