New Opportunity: Chief Information Officer

Chief Information Officer
ABOUT THE COMPANY
With roots dating back to 1938, The Papé Group is the West’s leading supplier of capital equipment solutions. Today, Papé operate across nine states with over 4,000 team members, proudly representing premier brands including John Deere, Kenworth, Hyster, Ditch Witch, and more. What sets Papé apart is its commitment to long-term relationships, both with customers and employees. As a fourth-generation, family-led business, Papé believes in the value of a handshake, the importance of service, and the impact of leadership that stays close to the work.
ABOUT THE POSITION
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) provides leadership and management of the information technology function for the company. The CIO is responsible for providing leadership and development to the corporate technology team, including software development, infrastructure, support, web development, database administration, and applications development. The CIO will partner with company-wide business leaders to align their business needs as well as corporate initiatives with cost-effective technology strategies and solutions to achieve those goals as the company continues to grow and evolve. Examples include the company’s One Customer | One Papé initiative that is designed to strengthen the relationship between customers and the company through a variety of mediums, with a heavy emphasis on leveraging technology.
The CIO will be a proven technology and business leader and possess broad-based progressive IT leadership experience. The role requires sophisticated management skills in IT planning, organizational design and development, and process thinking. Papé has completed 25+ acquisitions over the past 8 years, with each acquisition being fully integrated into Papé’s technology infrastructure and systems on day one.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Team Management and Development
- Lead, train, develop, and coach a high-performance information technology team; identifying appropriate staffing needs, skill sets, or alternative outsourcing.
- Align IT's organizational structure and initiatives with company-wide requirements for technology solutions, information needs and security requirements.
- Responsible for optimizing the IT demands and the supply capacity of the teams to prioritize the assignment of resources.
- Set objectives and strategies for the IT team.
Strategic and Business Planning
- Develop and execute short-, mid-, and long-term strategic technology and system roadmaps that translate business requirements into projects, goals, objectives, and deliverables with the business partners and end-user experience in mind.
- Establish the objectives for operations, maintenance, and enhancement of the IT systems and a plan for continuous improvement of the service levels.
- Help define IT infrastructure strategy, architecture, and processes.
- Drive a coordinated ERP approach across all of Papé’s operating companies to ensure the success and integrity of the overall design and integrations with other technologies.
Technology and Infrastructure
- Full operational management responsibility for information and telecommunication technology functions and services; ensures appropriate implementation and support for business systems by managing and coordinating applications development/maintenance, data processing, data center infrastructure, local/wide area network administration, office automation, and technical support activities.
- Responsible for building and optimizing the evolving needs of system-level architectural capabilities to support the data and integration strategies.
- Evaluate effectiveness, efficiency, and costs of existing technology and systems, research new or alternative solutions, and make recommendations to senior management as appropriate. Maintain working knowledge of new and evolving technologies and systems for possible application to development or future organization needs.
- Identify emerging issues in technology and digital processes and develop strategies to implement value-added technology, collaborating with functional areas of the business impacted.
- Participate in the evaluation of new tools, platforms and technologies and articulate the business case for investments.
- Provide architecture leadership around technology interfaces with systems outside of the ERP, including those that reside with the OEMs, and the company’s CRM.
- Ensure that the organization continues to stay current with the latest technology security applications and tools to guard against cyber threats.
Project Management
- Develop and manage project plans in collaboration with functional business leaders to ensure proper resource utilization, expense management, and timely completion.
- Leads large IT projects, including the design and deployment of new IT systems and services.
- Develop and manage the annual information technology department budget; includes project planning, expense management, and external resource utilization.
- Prioritize, assign, and manage a portfolio of technology projects in support of business goals; ensure delivery of projects within time and cost limitations.
- Partner with other functional leaders on implementation and company-wide adoption of new technology and/or processes through effective change management.
External Relationships
- Provide expertise and leadership in the selection and management of vendors to provide low-cost, high-efficiency solutions.
- Represent Papé at industry conferences and be an active member with the OEMs to help influence technology outcomes.
Business Partnering
- Engage, build, and partner with executive leaders and key stakeholders to ensure alignment with current and long-term business objectives.
- Work closely with cross-functional leaders to identify technology business needs, develop collaborative solutions and execution plans in alignment with the business strategy.
- Be obsessed with delivering results, insist on high standards, possess a knack for thinking strategically and “finding a way”, and an external awareness and curiosity to innovate and disrupt within the capital equipment market.
- Participate, as a member of the business leadership team, in strategic planning activities by providing systemic and technological solutions where business opportunities or challenges are identified.
- Ensure a business intelligence structure and tools are in place to deliver appropriate information to decision makers.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in information systems, business, or equivalent analytical and strategic management capabilities acquired through on-the-job experience and training.
- 10+ years of progressive leadership experience with 5+ years in a senior leadership position managing a similar scope and size technology team.
- Proven success leading IT, preferably in a complex, multi-location, multi-business organization, preferably involving equipment dealerships, distribution, or similar operationally intensive businesses.
- Experience integrating and progressively modernizing custom legacy applications alongside cloud, SaaS, and emerging AI technologies.
- Ability to analyze business needs and recommend and implement appropriate solutions.
- Ability to develop and collect key performance indicators to measure performance.
- Experience managing a wide variety and scope of information technology projects that successfully achieve time, cost, and operational expectations.
- Comprehensive knowledge of IS technology architecture, software, ERP experience, cloud computing, mobile computing, IT security, and company-wide training.
- Experienced in leading teams of IT professionals and staff across multiple technical disciplines
- Ability to communicate vision, motivate workforce, create effective teams, and build strong peer relationships.
- Ability to prioritize and manage multiple ongoing projects and responsibilities to meet business technology needs.
- Experience in developing and supporting customer-facing business systems and/or implementing related digital transformation initiatives.
- Strong ability to collaborate functionally with other management and leadership team members.
- An effective communicator who clearly and concisely conveys information and ideas to all levels of the organization and uses your influencing skills to advance shared interests and business goals.
- Innovative problem solver with critical thinking skills and strong analytical abilities.
- Experience with system integration and change management.
Interested in Learning More?
180one is assisting The Papé Group in this search. If interested in learning more about the opportunity, please contact Tom Haley/ 503.334.1350/ tom@180one.com.






