Application Support Specialist

Role Purpose, Key Responsibilities & Duties

The Applications Support Senior Specialist provides applications production support for enterprise systems and actively participates in and assists with various application-driven projects, including releases, upgrades, new implementations, user documentation, and training.

The role provides coverage for change management of both internally developed and partner/vendor-provided applications and systems, ensuring that quality assurance, testing, and impact analysis are completed prior to moving changes into the business IT production environment .

Key Responsibilities

• Provides advanced application support by identifying appropriate resolutions to business application operational, administrative, and support requests.
• Performs technical 2nd-level application support, evaluation, installation, maintenance, and support for enterprise applications.
• Coordinates with various business functions and teams on the implementation and maintenance of enterprise applications and systems.
• Collaborates with IT teams on issue resolution and application/system implementation into the production environment.
• Researches, recommends, and implements best practices for application and system requests and issue resolution.
• Participates in the development and validation of application support requirements, standard operating procedures, service level settings, escalation matrices, and incident and problem management processes.
• Provides guidance on application features and capabilities and assists employees in utilizing applications to meet business needs.
• Delivers high-quality consultation, application support, and troubleshooting for enterprise applications and systems.
• Utilizes established IT methodologies to conduct support requirement assessments and develop application support documentation.
• Develops implementation communications and production change plans to ensure smooth application delivery and ongoing support.
• Maintains close working relationships with application partners and vendors to identify, escalate, and resolve application issues.
• Implements corrective changes to existing configurations in collaboration with vendors and partners and participates in performance and release review meetings.
• Reviews application performance, develops configuration reports, conducts root cause analysis, and recommends corrective actions.
• Gathers required information, codes, and implementation packages for secure installation of application software, updates, and enhancements.
• Estimates application deployment efforts and maintenance activities, coordinating deployments, upgrades, and enhancements in compliance with release, change management, and security standards.
• Participates in customer and supplier meetings as required and identifies solutions to business application challenges and support needs.
• Acts as a technical subject matter expert (SME) for application support and contributes to relevant application implementation projects.
• Documents support activities, progress, and issue resolution in service management systems.
• Analyzes incident trends to prevent recurrence and implements preventive controls.
• Monitors supported applications to ensure production systems align with business needs, policies, procedures, and security requirements.
• Owns and maintains FAQs, knowledge bases, instructional videos, and self-service support resources on the internal portal.
• Ensures business applications and related services, processes, and outputs are secure, error-free, and compliant with applicable standards.
• Provides input on the future direction of enterprise applications and how they can be best utilized to support business objectives.
• Recommends application support best practices and contributes to the development of related services to meet current and future business needs.
• Contributes input related to the financials of supported applications to help prioritize implementation and support workloads.
• Remains current with application developments, support trends, procedures, and technology changes.
• Performs other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

III. Key Competencies & Skills

• 3 to 5+ years of experience supporting enterprise applications, relational databases, scripting, software administration, and application support.
• Experience supporting applications in a multisite, complex, and matrixed enterprise environment.
• Strong knowledge of the application development lifecycle and enterprise system maintenance.
• Very good knowledge of Oracle and Microsoft platforms, enterprise mobile applications (iOS and Android), Java/XML, and HTML.
• Excellent interpersonal skills to establish and maintain effective working relationships with internal stakeholders, customers, and vendors.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for collaboration with internal users and external partners.
• Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, time management, planning, and organizational skills.
• Ability to maintain application security and confidentiality while adhering to organizational policies and procedures.
• Ability to diagnose and resolve complex enterprise application issues using appropriate diagnostic tools.
• Ability to research and apply technical information to efficiently resolve application problems.
• Growth mindset with continuous improvement of technical expertise and mastery of enterprise application landscapes and technologies.
• Ability to communicate and promote the business value of IT security technologies, policies, standards, and procedures.