Application Services Coordinator

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure and people? Then this is the place for you.

As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive to succeed here because we expect pace and agility, we insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact.

The Challenge

At pladis, we bring Happiness with Every Bite.

To support our business operations across Europe, we rely on a portfolio of business-critical applications that enable our manufacturing, supply chain, commercial, finance, and support functions. We are looking for an Application Services Coordinator (ASC) who is passionate about business applications, service excellence, continuous improvement, and delivering value to end users. This role offers the opportunity to become a key member of the IT/IS team, acting as the bridge between our business users, application vendors, and technology teams.

The role

You are part of a regional as well as global IT/IS organisation and are responsible for the operational management, support, maintenance, enhancement, and continuous improvement of a portfolio of business applications and services within the pladis Europe application landscape.

As an ASC, you are acting as the subject matter expert for a defined set of key applications and their associated interfaces, integrations, and business processes. The role combines application support, vendor management, business relationship management, project coordination, and change delivery responsibilities.

Working closely with your regional colleagues, business stakeholders, key users, external service providers, and internal IT teams, you ensure that applications are available, fit for purpose, well documented, and continuously improved.

You are responsible for second-line support activities and coordination of third-line support through external vendors when available / required. The role also owns application lifecycle activities including upgrades, enhancements, release management, documentation, and service improvements.

The successful candidate will develop a deep understanding of the business processes supported by the applications and become a trusted advisor to end users and business stakeholders.

Your main responsibilities

Application Ownership & Service Management

• Own the day-to-day operation, availability, and performance of assigned business applications.
• Manage incidents, service requests, problem resolution, and root cause analysis.
• Monitor application health, interfaces, integrations, and operational KPIs.
• Maintain support procedures, operational documentation, and knowledge articles.

Business Partnership & Vendor Management

• Act as the primary liaison between business users, vendors, and IT teams.
• Build strong stakeholder relationships and translate business needs into application improvements.
• Coordinate external service providers, monitor service levels, and drive vendor performance.
• Support user adoption, training, and communication of system changes.

Application Lifecycle & Change Management

• Maintain application roadmaps, documentation, configurations, and support models.
• Coordinate upgrades, releases, patches, enhancements, and change requests.
• Support application-related projects, testing, deployments, and business readiness activities.
• Ensure solutions are delivered with minimal business disruption and aligned to governance standards.

Security, Compliance & Continuous Improvement

• Support compliance with security, audit, risk, data protection, continuity, and recovery requirements.
• Identify opportunities to improve application performance, user experience, and business processes.
• Promote knowledge sharing, best practices, and the maturity of application support services.

What You Bring

Experience

• 3-10 years of experience in Application Management or Business Applications Support.
• Experience supporting enterprise applications and working with third-party vendors.
• Experience coordinating system enhancements, releases, or application-related projects.

Technical Knowledge

• Strong understanding of application support, lifecycle management, and ITIL processes.
• Experience troubleshooting applications, integrations, and data-related issues.
• Working knowledge of SQL, data analysis, interfaces, integrations, and enterprise business applications.
• Familiarity with ERP environments and application service management practices.

Personal Attributes

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and organisational skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management capabilities.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Proactive, customer-focused, collaborative, and committed to continuous improvement.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, you will be measured by:

• Availability and stability of assigned applications.
• Quality and timeliness of incident resolution.
• Successful delivery of application enhancements and projects.
• User and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Quality and completeness of application documentation.
• Effective management of vendors and support partners.
• Continuous improvement of application services and business processes.

Location

This role is based on-site in Zaandam, The Netherlands, and requires regular interaction with local business teams, key users, and IT stakeholders.

What we offer

Working for pladis means challenging jobs, career opportunities and an inspiring environment that allow you to enhance your personal development. pladis recognizes that the on-going success of the company depends on the continued development and engagement of our employees and pursues a fair and competitive remuneration policy, recognizing individual and team competencies and performance.

A few of our benefits:

• Fixed term employment (12 months) with possibility of a permanent contract
• Development opportunities through our pladis Academy & other training programs
• A competitive salary
• Fulltime employment (37,5 hours per week)
• 34 holidays (based on fulltime)
• Pension in pension fund ‘Zoetwaren’
• Discounts on health insurance, gym memberships, bikes etc
• Biscuits, chocolate and other snacks from our personnel store;
• The best colleagues in an informal working environment.

Who are we?

Koninklijke Verkade, founded in 1886, with amazing brands like Verkade en Sultana, is part of pladis since 2016. pladis is one of the world's leading snacking companies.