Interim Finance Application Support Team Lead

First Rail is part of FirstGroup, one of the leading rail operators and one of the largest bus operators in the UK. FirstGroup operates services throughout the UK and Ireland, with over 30,000 employees providing services that make travel smoother and life easier. FirstGroup works hard to reduce its impact on the environment, introducing cleaner and more environmentally responsible methods of transport.

Responsibilities

• Ticket & Operations Management: Review incoming tickets for completeness, clarity, and correct categorisation. Assign tickets to team members based on workload and priority. Monitor SLAs, chase blockers, and ensure timely resolution. Handle high-priority incidents and act as the escalation contact.
• Quality Assurance & Governance: Identify recurring issues, gaps and common errors; drive corrective actions. Enforce documentation standards and ensure all tickets meet quality standards. Perform periodic audits of resolved tickets to maintain consistency and accuracy. Conduct confirmation checks across various processes to ensure tickets are correctly actioned.
• Process Improvement: Analyse current support workflows to spot inefficiencies and opportunities for automation. Collaborate with stakeholders to refine resolution methods, escalation paths, and communication flows. Implement continuous improvements that reduce ticket volume and resolution time.
• Documentation Ownership: Maintain and update SOPs and support guides. Ensure documents stay aligned with system changes, new features, and updated business processes.
• Team Leadership & Development: Provide day-to-day support, guidance, coaching and line management to SAP Support team. Plan workload, manage weekly meetings, and coordinate 1-1s. Support performance reviews by providing input on productivity, strengths, and areas for growth.
• Stakeholder Communication: Work with business users, IT partners, and project teams to clarify requirements and resolve issues. Provide regular status updates, metrics, and insights on team performance. Represent the support team in cross-functional meetings and change discussions.

Requirements

• Strong understanding of SAP modules
• Experience in an application support or service management environment.
• Solid grasp of ITIL processes (especially Incident, Problem, Change).
• Proven ability to lead or coordinate a small team.
• Strong analytical mindset with a bias for process optimisation.
• Clear communicator with strong organisational discipline.
• Business Process knowledge across Finance pillars:

• AP – creating payment run proposals and payment run errors
• AR – creating sales orders and billing documents
• R2P – creating requisitions, purchase orders, invoice matching
• Workflow – Requisitions, journals, cheque requests
• GL – understanding of financial postings (journals)
• OneStream support
• Starters and Leavers
• ALAE for Bus, Group and Rail
• Creating new company codes
• Raising Support requests
• Bus EAM Support
• User Creation
• Authorisations
• Requisition Workflow
• Interface errors before month end

We all belong at First Rail. FirstGroup's vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, across its group of businesses, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment. We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent. We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive. We review all roles and job descriptions to ensure they are accessible and, where possible, we support and provide flexible working options; we recommend that you refer to each vacancy description for further details. If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the guidance above. We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.