VP, Business Process, Data and Applications

Job Description

Acadia (NYSE:AKR), headquartered in Rye, New York, Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE:AKR) is an equity real estate investment trust focused on delivering long-term, profitable growth. Acadia owns and operates a high-quality real estate portfolio of street and open-air retail properties in the nation's most dynamic retail corridors (“REIT Portfolio”), along with an investment management platform that targets opportunistic and value-add investments through its institutional co-investment vehicles (“Investment Management”).

Acadia Realty Trust is seeking a Vice President, Business Process, Data and Applications to lead a newly created function responsible for how Acadia designs and organizes its business processes, governs its data, and applies technology to automate work.

The role owns business process design across all department functions including strategic adoption and automation of AI-enabled tools. Working closely with Vice President of Information Technology, department leaders, vendors, and implementation partners, this hands-on role identifies process, system, data, and workflow gaps and implements effective solutions. The position will oversee process redesign, application enhancements, and implementations from requirements gathering through testing, training, deployment, and post-launch support.

This role requires an ambitious, passionate self-starter with a demonstrated ability to build and scale this critical data function from the ground up. The ideal candidate will be comfortable operating with limited direction, establishing effective processes, and influencing stakeholders across teams to lead meaningful change across Acadia.

This role will be the primary liaison between business and technology teams and to the CFO. They will participate on the IT Steering Committee, helping to establish and create the process, application, data governance standards and intake standards that do not currently exist.

Responsibility Overview: First-Year Mandate

The first priority of this role is business process. Before recommending new systems or spend, the Vice President will complete the following:

Assess business processes across all departments in the organization, not only finance and accounting, documenting current state, hand-offs, cycle times, controls, and pain points.

Determine what can be automated and where manual, repetitive, or error-prone work is concentrated.

Assess how data is gathered, captured, stored, secured, and governed, and establish who owns each data set.

Identify the technologies, including automation and AI-enabled tools, that convert manual and inefficient processes into best in class automated ones.

Produce a prioritized roadmap and supporting business cases from that assessment, with measurable time, cost, quality, and control benefits.

The ongoing responsibilities that follow, including vendor management, implementations, training, adoption, and governance, proceed from and are informed by that assessment.

Business Process and Application Assessment, Roadmap, and Stakeholder Partnership

Assess business processes, business applications, integrations, reporting capabilities, and user workflows across all departments; document current-state processes, pain points, risks, and improvement opportunities.

Meet with department leaders, subject-matter experts, and users to understand business needs and translate them into clear functional and technical requirements.

Determine whether needs are best addressed through process redesign, existing system capabilities, configuration, training, vendor enhancements, automation, integration, or new applications.

Maintain a prioritized process and application improvement roadmap based on business value, urgency, cost, complexity, risk, and resource availability; identify redundant or underused applications and recommend consolidation or improved adoption. Ensure the roadmap addresses process redesign, data organization, data quality, and data governance alongside application improvements.

Proactively research, pilot, and recommend emerging and innovative technologies, including automation and AI-enabled tools that could create efficiency or competitive advantage; serve as the organization’s scout for new technology worth adopting.

Provide clear expectations and regular updates to department leaders, including the Vice President of Information Technology, the Chief Accounting Officer, and the IT Steering Committee.

Vendor and Implementation Management

Serve as the primary relationship contact for assigned software vendors and implementation partners, coordinating demonstrations, support escalations, enhancement requests, training, and project activities.

Evaluate vendor proposals, statements of work, pricing, implementation plans, and resource requirements; hold vendors accountable for deliverables, timelines, service levels, and outcomes.

Lead or coordinate new application implementations, major upgrades, integrations, and enhancements, including scope, requirements, project plans, governance, milestones, dependencies, risks, budgets, testing, training, deployment, and post-launch support.

Coordinate business stakeholders, Information Technology resources, vendors, and consultants; track schedules, decisions, issues, risks, and deliverables; provide concise project status reporting.

Oversee user acceptance testing, go-live readiness, stabilization, closeout, and post-implementation reviews to confirm adoption, business results, unresolved issues, and lessons learned.

Process Improvement, Automation, Training, and Adoption

Identify manual, repetitive, error-prone, or inefficient processes and recommend practical, supportable improvements that align with technology standards, security requirements, budget, and the organization’s operating model.

Help departments distinguish among process, training, configuration, and technology gaps; avoid unnecessary purchases by evaluating existing capabilities and integrations first.

Develop business cases and measurable success criteria for proposed applications, enhancements, and automation, including time savings, data quality, controls, reporting, reduced manual work, and user experience.

Develop or coordinate role-based training, user guides, process documentation, communications, demonstrations, office hours, and post-launch support.

Monitor application adoption and usage; address gaps through additional training or process reinforcement and establish departmental application champions or super users when appropriate.

Governance, Data, and Planning

Participate on the IT Steering Committee and present application assessments, business cases, project updates, risks, costs, dependencies, and recommendations.

Help ensure proposed solutions align with organizational priorities, security standards, data governance, integration strategy, and budget constraints.

Own process, application, and data governance, project intake, prioritization, change management, and implementation standards, and partner with the Vice President of Information Technology on annual priorities, budgets, shared staff resources, and resource plans.

Own and maintain the organization’s data governance program, including data standards, data quality controls, data ownership, and taxonomy across business applications and systems.

Hold decision-making authority over business process design, business applications, data governance, and software and AI adoption, while collaborating with the Vice President of Information Technology on shared priorities and on initiatives that span both departments.

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree required; preferably in information technology, business administration, management information systems, or a related field.

12 or more years of progressive experience in business process improvement, business applications, or data management, including experience leading teams, ideally within the Real Estate industry.

Proven ability to operate as a self-starter and to build a new department or capability from the ground up, working independently with minimal direction in an organization without an established business process, data, or business applications program, and establishing credibility with peer leaders and senior management.

Demonstrated hands-on orientation, personally executing process mapping, system configuration, documentation, and testing, rather than functioning as a consulting-style leader who scopes work and outsources delivery.

Demonstrated experience in business process analysis, application assessment, requirements gathering, gap analysis, and translating business needs into system requirements.

Experience with data governance, data organization, and data management practices, including establishing data standards, ownership, and quality controls.

Demonstrated ability to combine deep business process expertise, technology fluency, and disciplined project management, and to work highly collaboratively with peer functions, including sharing staff resources without formal authority.

Experience operating at a senior leadership level, including presenting to executive leadership and steering committees, owning a budget, and hiring, leading, and developing staff.

Experience managing vendors, consultants, support providers, application implementations, upgrades, integrations, testing, training, deployment, and post-implementation support.

Strong project management capabilities across scope, schedule, budget, risk, issue management, governance, and stakeholder communications.

Excellent written, verbal, analytical, facilitation, organizational, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage multiple applications, projects, vendors, and priorities.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with financial, accounting, property management, asset management, construction, leasing, human resources, legal, document management, CRM, data analytics platforms, Asset Portfolio management tools, and collaboration applications

Familiarity with MRI, Argus, Nexus, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and other related business applications.

Experience with business cases, cost-benefit analysis, application roadmaps, licensing, contracts, renewals, vendor negotiations, and application budgeting.

Experience introducing new technologies and leading digital transformation, user adoption, and change-management initiatives across multiple departments.

Prior experience in business and technology process consulting is a plus.

Experience with real estate organizations, preferably a publicly traded REIT, is a plus.

Experience operating in a publicly traded company environment, with working knowledge of internal controls and SOX compliance requirements.

The base salary compensation range for this role reflects the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to, skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. Compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each individual. A reasonable estimate of the current base salary range for this position is $175,000 – 220,000.

Employees may also be eligible to participate in an annual discretionary bonus program, subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.

Acadia Realty is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Acadia Realty is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Veteran/Disability

Full-time