The AI Business Partner connects HOYA's business divisions with the AI capabilities, platforms and expertise of Group Digital. The role partners with divisions to shape and progress their longer-term AI initiatives, and coordinates between the central platform team and the AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) / Innovation Hub to turn ideas into governed, supported solutions. It is a hands-on, relationship-led role that drives and champions practical AI adoption across the organisation.
This is a business-partnering role rather than a deeply technical or senior leadership one. Success depends on solid business acumen, a broad working understanding of AI and the Microsoft platform, and the ability to build trust and keep initiatives moving across divisions, the platform team and the CoE.
Business Partnering with Divisions
- Build trusted relationships — engage divisional stakeholders to understand their priorities, workflows and pain points, and identify where AI can add practical value.
- Shape divisional AI initiatives — partner with divisions to develop, prioritise and progress their longer-term AI use cases, aligned to business goals and measurable outcomes.
- Translate both ways — turn business needs into clear requirements for the platform team and the AI CoE, and translate technical possibilities back into plain business language.
- Advocate for the business — surface blockers, manage expectations and keep divisional initiatives moving.
Coordination across Platform & CoE
- Orchestrate delivery — coordinate between the central platform team and the AI CoE / Innovation Hub to move use cases from idea to governed, supported solution.
- Route ideas correctly — help direct use cases down the right path (self-serve, gated citizen development, or CoE / pro-dev) within established guardrails.
- Keep everyone aligned — maintain a clear view of status, dependencies and handovers across divisions, platform and CoE.
Driving & Championing AI Adoption
- Champion practical AI — promote responsible, value-led AI use across the organisation, sharing success stories and reusable patterns.
- Grow the champions network — support and expand local AI champions within divisions.
- Build capability — help colleagues grow confidence, signposting training, the self-serve hub and CoE resources.
AI Enablement Programme Support (near-term)
- Support adoption — help divisions adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot and embed it into real, everyday workflows as part of the enablement programme.
- Feed back insight — contribute to adoption measurement and gather divisional feedback so the programme reflects real needs.
- Work within the guardrails — help divisions understand and apply the programme's governance and data-protection guardrails.
Essentials:
- Experience in a business-facing technology role — business partnering, business analysis, technology adoption / change or similar — ideally within a multinational or multi-division organisation.
- A broad working understanding of AI in the enterprise (generative AI, Microsoft Copilot) — what it is for, its value and its risks — enough to advise divisions and coordinate with technical teams. Deep technical or build expertise is not required.
- Solid business acumen — able to connect technology to business outcomes and prioritise by value.
- Strong relationship-building and communication skills across both business and technical audiences.
- Able to coordinate across teams and keep initiatives moving through influence, without direct authority.
