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Hachette UK
Who we are and what we do
About Hachette UK
Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK’s second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity.
We’re made up of 12 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We’re also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.
Our award-winning adult publishing divisions are Orion, which won Publisher of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards; Little, Brown; John Murray Press; Hodder & Stoughton; Headline; Quercus; Octopus, Bookouture and Dialogue Books. They publish fiction and non-fiction in digital, audio and print format, from the world’s best and most diverse authors, including Brit Bennett, Candice Carty-Williams, Martina Cole, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Stephen King, Stieg Larsson, Nelson Mandela, Stephenie Meyer, Maggie O’Farrell, Delia Owens, Ian Rankin, J.K. Rowling, Colson Whitehead, and Malala Yousafzai. Hachette Children’s Group publishes a wide and vibrant range of books for children across all age ranges, while Hodder Education is a market leader in resources for both primary and secondary schools.
Hachette UK is part of Hachette Livre, the world’s third largest trade and educational publisher. As well as our headquarters in Carmelite House, London, and our state-of-the-art book distribution centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire, we have recently opened five new offices in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. The UK region also includes offices in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Caribbean, and Ireland.
It’s an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK’s creative industries.
What you’ll be doing
The Alliant Support Manager is responsible for the support team for the Royalties system, Alliant, provided by Rightsline. The role is responsible for day-to-day oversight of query resolution and incident management.
The Job Holder will be responsible for understanding the needs of our user base and ensuring timely resolution to tickets raised on our IT Service Management (ITSM) System, as well as involvement in changes to the applications and testing where required to suit business needs, as well as input into projects for which Alliant is in scope e.g. Acquisitions and Mergers.
The Alliant Support Manager is accountable for the design and ongoing service delivery of the technology platforms used to support Hachette UK’s Royalties platform.
The Alliant Support Manager is accountable for the line management and development of up to 2 FTE, with potential to grow the team.
The Alliant Support Manager will be a member of the IT Management Team and responsible for the execution of the Group IT strategy and development of the division. As a member of the IT Management they will play an important role in fostering an inclusive, positive and productive culture and working climate.
The Alliant Support Manager is accountable for the delivery of all Royalties technology work packages within the approved IT Portfolio, including the financial management of the work package
The Alliant Support Manager is responsible for maintaining effective stakeholder and partner relationships to enable the ongoing service delivery and the creation of a rolling three-year technology roadmap
You will need to have a high degree of energy, enthusiasm and commitment to succeed. The Alliant Support Team is a new Team for Hachette IT and will consist of a Support Manager and 2 Support Analysts. The role will require flexibility and analytical skills to contribute towards making a truly great service. You must be able to build and maintain good relationships with those around you and at all levels of the business.
Hachette is currently in a ‘Parallel Run’ phase of the project where we are running Alliant alongside our legacy Royalty calculation system, Vista. The Parallel Run is designed to prove that Royalty Calculations for a Royalty period (typically six months for most of our Contracts) match across the two systems, with any differences being explicable. Our desktop estate covers Mac and Windows so the job holder will ideally be proficient in both Operating Systems. Our server estate is primarily Windows OS and SQL Servers.
The Alliant Support Manager should act as an ambassador for Hachette IT in all dealings and communications with users and the rest of the IT community at Hachette UK.
Who we are looking for
We are looking for someone to provide outstanding customer service to all users and colleagues, demonstrating ownership and tenacity in resolving issues.
- Managing the team responding to and resolving incidents and requests in a timely manner, according to business priority and against agreed targets.
- Maintain a proactive approach to operational and service issues with a focus on prevention rather than fix
- Support root cause investigations, identification of recurring incidents and implementation of recommended actions to prevent further such incidents
- Ensure upgrades and new releases are planned and tested, building a roadmap for the application in conjunction with the Royalties Team.
- Develop a good understanding of the application and its interfaces to other key Hachette systems to provide direction to team members and the Royalties team on strategy.
- Review current processes and suggest improvements to efficiency and delivery.
- Excellent communication skills with business users, key stakeholders and IT management to ensure high profile issues are escalated appropriately.
- Work particularly closely with other technology support teams, especially Networks & Infrastructure Team and our Data Platform Team (DBAs, developers).
- Ongoing Development of your team, including performance reviews, career progression and day to day line management.
Skills/Knowledge/Personal Attributes:
- Positive, flexible and with a can-do attitude at all times.
- Focused on Customer Service Excellence – meeting and exceeding the customers’ expectations.
Experience
- Experience of Managing an enterprise application support team, particularly in the area of Royalties and Alliant as a technology.
- Experience of troubleshooting issues and providing updates and resolutions in a timely manner, with focus on Root Cause Analysis rather than iterative fixes.
- Experience of creating technical and user guide documentation
- Good analytical ability
- Balancing priorities and workloads
- Ability to successfully promote the best practice approach
- Proven track record of issue ownership and escalation
- Proven track record managing customers with high expectations
- Experience using Windows Server platforms
- Experience of both Windows and Mac OS platforms
- Strong communicator, both orally and with the written word
- Able to prioritise conflicting demands
- Proactive ‘owner’ of areas of responsibility
- Experience of delivering training to system users
- Reactive to customer concerns and able to articulate the impact of issues
What we offer
Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:
- 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years’ service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years’ (+ bank holidays)
- Generous pension schemes
- Rent deposit loans
- 2 community days per year
- Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
- Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Eye care vouchers
- Wide-ranging training library
- Development programmes (including mentoring)
- Up to 70% off book purchases
- A charity bookshelf
- 12 Staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing and religious networks
- Season ticket loans
- And much more!
The role will be based at our London office, Carmelite House, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.
Our commitment
Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.
If you are shortlisted and need us to make any adjustments to help you attend for interview, please let us know.
The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit
