SUPPORT MANAGER

Hybrid, Brussels 350-370 euro/day

1. CONTEXT/INTRODUCTION

European Commission agency which: builds and operates solutions in the areas of audit, financial fraud and support of management of EU Structural funds.

Amongst the solutions provided, Arachne is the risk-scoring tool for data mining and data enrichment designed to help Member States prevent and detect errors and irregularities and to identify risk of fraud of submitted and ongoing projects funded by the EU Structural funds.

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE TASKS

§ Organisation, implementation and maintenance of (IS) support § Coordination of support teams
§ IS Service management
§ Coordination with the project teams

§ Coordination of wiki sites, collaborative sites or social networks § Follow-up of service quality
§ Management and follow-up of user requests
§ Guidance regarding the use of information systems

§ Management of incidents related to information systems; organisation of the reporting § Conception and organisation of user documentation for information systems
§ Conception and management of IS and ICT trainings
§ Participation in user, service and project meetings

§ Elaboration and implementation of relevant support processes Specific Tasks

1. Self-Learning : Self-learning of very complex business processes, covering a wide range of matters (finance management and control, EU funds management, EU politics, audit procedures, statistical calculations, risk assessment, etc.). This self-learning task requires self-organisation, autonomous search in documentation (often spread across multiple locations), self-assessment of progress and learning needs, etc.

2. Support : Support to Member States users and Commission users for helping them using Arachne. This support is always provided through email exchanges (not over the phone, and

never on site). These support activities comprise :
o Managing emails in the Arachne functional mailbox ;
o Understanding the users' requests (very often unclear, incomplete and/or not targeting the

real problem), communicating with users to clarify their requests every time it is needed ;
o Searching and/or drafting the best answer to user requests, making sure it is correct,

consistent with Arachne documentation and consistent with the previous answers given to similar requests. This implies :

§ Searching through the Arachne documentation (which is rather comprehensive but not complete, not up-to-date and not 100% consistent) ;
§ Searching through the Arachne functional mailbox (hundreds of subfolders, thousands of messages)

o Keeping track of the requests status (for monitoring) ;
o Searching and/or updating specific data directly in the database (using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and/or through custom-made PL-SQL queries), to check bugs raised by users, to create ad-hoc and custom reports, and to perform simple updates in the database (for user access rights management, for example).
o Collaborating with the Arachne team members to analyse and solve the most difficult requests ;
o Collaborating with the Arachne team members to review and assess the support procedures, and for proposing ways to improve them.

This support encompasses all the standard support levels : o Support level 1 - basic helpdesk resolution,
o Support level 2 - in-depth technical support,
o Support level 3 - expert Arachne support,

o Support level 4 - support for problems not solvable by the Commission ; this level requires liaising with the external IT firm providing and maintaining the Arachne IT system.

3. Documentation : As the support work (described above) may reveal missing, incomplete, inconsistent and/or not up-to-date information in the Arachne documentation, the person
shall review and update of the Arachne documentation, every time flaws are found.3
4. Training and Presentations : Preparation, practical organisation, delivery, assessment and improvement of training sessions and general presentations of Arachne.

For information : on average (in the years 2022 and 2023), the EMPL A4 Arachne team (5 people) provided around 40 trainings and 40 presentations each year. Around 85% of these events lasted half-a-day or less, 15% lasted 1 to 2 days, and 5% lasted more (4 days being the maximum very exceptional).

The person, as newcomer, will gradually be asked to deliver trainings, after the 12 weeks period described below ("Onboarding Programme"). During the first year, the person may deliver 5 to 10 trainings or presentations maximum, all at beginner level. Over the years, the person will be asked to deliver more trainings and presentations (at beginner and advanced level).

5. Testing : The person shall participate to the design, execution, and reporting of User Acceptance Tests and Non-Regression Tests. The Arachne team perform these tests on behalf of users (thus the need for a complete mastery of the business processes prior to carrying out testing tasks). The testing also comprises searching and deep diving in the DB

to find the root cause of bugs and to provide supporting evidence for documenting bugs, by designing, running and fine-tuning PL/SQL queries. The management of bugs is done with Jira.
6. Bug Reporting : The person shall report bugs in Jira, liaise with Developers for fixing these bugs, and monitor them until their resolution in production.

Onboarding Programme

All the general and specific tasks will be incorporated into the onboarding programme described below.
Onboarding Programme
1) Given the very complex and wide nature of the business, any newcomer in the support

team shall spend at least the first six weeks solely for learning and completely understanding the business. This is the learning phase.
2) Given the very complex, wide, and sensitive nature of the business, any newcomer in the support team will not be asked to perform any other tasks (like support, training or testing) before s/he has completed the learning phase.
3) After the learning phase, the newcomer may start providing user support only if s/he has demonstrated enough mastery of the business. This user support shall be provided through email only, for around four weeks, under the supervision of a mentor, and afterwards, through email and over the phone, autonomously the mentor remaining available for help.
4) After a minimum of six weeks of successful user support (step 3), the newcomer may be asked to deliver trainings or perform test activities if s/he can demonstrate enough
mastery of the business.
Tasks Overview
On average, over the year, the person would do :4
Around 70% of the time : User Support for the Arachne application
Around 30% of the time : Arachne releases Testing (User Acceptance Tests and Non- Regression Tests)
Around 1% of the time : Arachne user training

3. LEVEL OF EDUCATION

Masters/Bachelors Degree 4. KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

General Knowledge and Skills

• Good IT skills

• Excellent communication / writing skills.

• Ability to give presentations.

• Ability to apply high quality standards

• Ability to participate in multi-lingual meetings, good communication skills.

• Capability of working in an international/multi- cultural environment, rapid self-starting

• capability and experience in working in team; leadership capability.

   Specific Knowledge and Skills

Good knowledge of ITIL
Outstanding, proven capacity to autonomously learn very complex business processes, even

with incomplete and/or outdated documentation.
Excellent analytical and logical thinking. This skill is required to spot any inconsistencies in

any documents (user request, business documentation, requirements definition, support

procedure documentation, etc.).
Outstanding, proven communication skills, impeccable diplomacy for dealing with any types

of users' styles.
Outstanding, proven mastery of all soft skills required for excellent user support (care,

openness, empathy, patience, etc.).
Experience of PL/SQL (designing new queries, debugging and/or fine-tuning existing queries). Experience with Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio would be an asset.
Mastery of Excel filters, pivots, charts, and complex formulas. Knowledge and experience

with VBA macros would be an asset.
Knowledge and experience with Jira would be an asset.
Knowledge of statistical mathematics fundamentals.
Sharp assessment of the quality of her/his own work, and genuine motivation for continuous

improvement.

NON-Technical skills:

• Capability of integration in an international/multicultural environment.

• Ability to work in multi-cultural environment, on multiple projects with multiple

  stakeholders.

• Ability to understand, speak and write English (C1) is a must (French will be an

  advantage);

• High degree of discretion and integrity is required.