Oracle Operations Manager
EF Education First · Zürich
Role summary
The Operations Manager owns the day-to-day support service for EF's Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials and is the single point of accountability for keeping the Record-to-Report, Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay processes running, improving and compliant. The role directs the external managed-services partner team, is the go-to person for Finance and the wider business, and sets the standard for how support is delivered across EF and its partners.
What you'll support:
- Record-to-Report: General Ledger, Subledger Accounting, Intercompany, Assets, Cash Management, Account Reconciliation (ARCS) and period close
- Order-to-Cash: Receivables, customer and receipt processing, and Payments
- Procure-to-Pay: Purchasing, Suppliers, Payables, Expenses, Payments and Tours Direct S2P
- Cross-process: Tax, approvals and workflow, user access and roles, enterprise structures, and data fixes and mass uploads
- Reporting and integration: Fusion Data Intelligence (FDIP), OTBI, Smart View, Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), bank and ADP integrations, quarterly releases, and Oracle AI and Redwood
Key responsibilities
Service delivery
- Own incident, problem, service request, access and change management for Fusion Financials, including the monthly and quarterly close support calendar.
- Provide hands-on functional expertise on tickets and guide the partner team on the harder cases.
- Manage SLAs end to end: monitor performance, challenge breaches, drive corrective actions and report to IT and Finance leadership.
- Reduce ticket volume by challenging the status quo: creative solutions, automation, root-cause analysis, knowledge articles and permanent fixes rather than repeat workarounds.
External partner and business
- Direct the external partner team day to day: work allocation, prioritization, quality review and adherence to EF standards; run the daily, weekly and monthly governance cadence and escalate where delivery falls short.
- Plan and forecast resources across partner and internal teams, including year-end close and quarterly Oracle releases.
- Act as the go-to person for Finance, Shared Services and Controlling; translate business requirements into well-formed change requests and technical constraints back into plain business language.
Change, projects and standards
- Manage change requests from intake to deployment using waterfall, SDLC or agile as the change warrants; lead impact assessment, regression testing and UAT for Oracle quarterly updates.
- Deliver system and process improvements, including new Oracle features (AI agents, Redwood) where they reduce effort or risk, and act as project manager when required.
- Be the advocate and role model for best practice and ITIL-aligned ways of working; enforce EF's support, documentation and security standards across internal and partner teams; support internal and external audits.
IT service management
A thorough, practiced understanding of IT Service Management is essential. The role must be able to run, explain and hold partners to each of these practices:
- Incident – prioritize by impact and urgency, drive major incidents end to end, own communications, run post-incident reviews.
- Problem – identify recurring issues, lead root-cause analysis, maintain known errors, drive permanent fixes.
- Service request – define the request catalogue, set fulfilment standards, automate where possible.
- Access – own joiner-mover-leaver for Fusion roles, run access reviews, enforce segregation of duties.
- Change – classify standard, normal and emergency changes, run CAB, ensure testing and rollback, align with Oracle release windows.
- Service level – define, measure and report SLAs and OLAs and drive improvement plans.
What you bring
Experience and qualifications
- 7+ years on Oracle Financials, at least 3 on Fusion Cloud Financials in a support or application management role.
- Deep knowledge of GL, Subledger Accounting, Payables, Receivables, Assets, Expenses, Intercompany and Tax; working knowledge of Purchasing, Cash Management and ARCS.
- Proven track record of reducing ticket volumes and delivering measurable system and process improvements.
- Experience directing an external managed-services partner against SLAs in an ITIL-based operating model.
- Hands-on experience managing change under both waterfall/SDLC and agile methods, including Oracle quarterly update testing, in a multi-entity, multi-currency environment.
- ITIL Foundation certified (intermediate preferred); fluent English.
- Desirable: Oracle Cloud Financials certification; PRINCE2, PMP or Scrum certification; experience with OIC, FDIP and Oracle AI; exposure to EPM and HCM touchpoints.
How you work
- Customer first – treats Finance and the business as customers, meets them where they are and pays close attention to detail, because 99% right can still leave someone stranded.
- Takes ownership – owns the service end to end, steps in when something seems off, says no when needed and is accountable for the outcome.
- Innovates – not satisfied with workarounds; challenges the status quo and tries new Oracle capabilities.
- Builds a positive team culture – brings energy and trust to the team, celebrates wins and makes support a team people want to work with.
- Collaborates – curious, shares knowledge, coaches partner colleagues and internal analysts, and works well across a global, multicultural organisation.
- Stakeholder management and communication – credible with finance leaders, auditors, the partner and Oracle; explains technical issues in plain business language.
- Calm, structured and pragmatic – steady during major incidents and close periods, keeps backlog and plans visible, balances control and speed, escalates early.
- Commercially aware – understands the managed-services contract, challenges scope creep and gets value from the partner relationship.
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