2. Key Accountabilities

A. SAP Functional Leadership

- Provide deep functional leadership in at least one SAP module, preferably:
- FI/CO, including General Ledger, AP, AR, Asset Accounting, Cost Centre Accounting, Profit Centre Accounting, Product Costing, Material Ledger and Margin Analysis; or
- An equivalent depth in MM, SD, PP, QM, PM or another core module.

B. SAP Strategy and Roadmap

- Develop and maintain the SAP application roadmap aligned with business strategy, operational priorities and the organisations digital transformation agenda.
- Assess the current SAP landscape and identify opportunities for process simplification, standardisation, integration and automation.
- Provide leadership inputs on SAP upgrades, infrastructure refresh, S/4HANA roadmap, SAP RISE or other future deployment options.
- Evaluate relevant SAP capabilities including Fiori, Business Technology Platform, analytics, process mining, workflow and AI-enabled functionality.
- Promote the use of standard SAP functionality and minimise unnecessary customisation.
- Ensure that SAP investments deliver measurable improvements in process efficiency, controls, user experience and business visibility.

SAP Technical and Architecture Oversight The candidate need not be a full-time developer or Basis administrator but must possess sufficient technical depth to lead and review technical decisions.

Responsibilities include

- Understand SAP S/4HANA architecture, system landscape, clients, transports, interfaces, enhancements and integration patterns.
- Provide oversight of ABAP developments, enhancements, forms, workflows, APIs, IDocs, BAPIs, RFCs, CDS views and Fiori applications.
- Review technical designs for scalability, performance, security, maintainability and upgrade compatibility.
- Ensure proper separation between configuration, custom development and external applications.
- Govern integration between SAP and systems such as manufacturing applications, procurement platforms, analytics platforms, banking systems, HR applications, maintenance systems and plant applications.
- Work with Basis, infrastructure and security teams on system availability, performance, patching, upgrades, disaster recovery and technical risk.
- Ensure that new developments follow naming, documentation, transport and testing standards.
- Promote clean-core principles and prevent avoidable accumulation of custom code.

E. Implementation, Upgrade and Project Leadership

- Lead SAP implementations, rollouts, upgrades, migrations and major enhancement programmes.
- Own or oversee the full implementation lifecycle:
- Business case and scope definition
- Current-state assessment
- Fit-gap analysis

- Solution design

- Configuration and development

- Data migration

- Integration testing

- User acceptance testing

- Cutover
- Go-live

- Hypercare and support transition
- Develop integrated plans covering business, functional, technical, data, infrastructure, training and change-management activities.
- Ensure clear ownership of project deliverables, dependencies, risks and decisions.
- Establish robust stage gates and readiness criteria before production deployment.
- Coordinate internal teams, implementation partners and SAP support.
- Ensure lessons from implementations and upgrades are documented and reused across subsequent programmes.
- Manage business disruption during upgrades and ensure adequate rollback, contingency and support plans.

Comparable SAP leadership roles in manufacturing commonly combine ownership of the SAP roadmap, S/4HANA deployments, solution architecture, implementation partners, testing, go-live, support and process standardisation SAP Team Leadership and Capability Development

- Lead a team of SAP functional consultants, ABAP developers, Basis resources and other technical specialists.
- Define clear module ownership, role expectations, escalation responsibilities and delivery accountability.
- Allocate resources across support, projects, enhancements and transformation initiatives.




- Coach team members to improve both functional knowledge and understanding of the business.
- Build cross-module capability and reduce dependency on individual resources.
- Conduct regular solution reviews, project reviews and support-performance reviews.
- Identify skill gaps and develop structured training, certification and succession plans.
- Encourage consultants to visit business locations, observe actual processes and develop practical operational understanding.
- Build a culture of ownership, responsiveness, collaboration, documentation and continuous improvement.
- Manage external consultants and partners while ensuring knowledge is transferred to the internal team.

Governance, Controls and Compliance

- Establish and enforce SAP governance covering solution design, change approval, testing, transports and production access.
- Ensure appropriate segregation of duties and role-based access controls.
- Work with Internal Audit, Finance and Information Security to address ITGC, access and compliance requirements.
- Ensure critical changes have appropriate documentation, testing evidence, approvals and rollback plans.
- Govern emergency changes and periodically review their appropriateness.
- Ensure SAP master data, configurations and custom developments remain properly documented.
- Support internal and statutory audits and ensure timely closure of audit observations.
- Maintain business continuity and disaster-recovery readiness for the SAP environment.
- Ensure adherence to cybersecurity, data-protection and organisational IT policies.

Data, Master Data and Analytics Enablement

- Strengthen governance of material, vendor, customer, finance, equipment and other critical SAP master data.
- Ensure that master-data creation and changes have appropriate validation, ownership and approval.
- Work with analytics and data teams to make SAP data available for enterprise reporting and decision support.
- Guide the design of SAP data extraction through approved tables, CDS views, APIs or other suitable mechanisms.
- Ensure that analytics solutions use consistent business definitions and reconcile with SAP.
- Prevent dashboard or external-application requirements from compromising SAP data integrity.
- Enable reliable integration between SAP and the organisations enterprise data and analytics platforms.

Vendor and Commercial Management

- Manage SAP implementation partners, support vendors, contractors and specialist consultants.
- Define clear scope, deliverables, timelines, acceptance criteria, service levels and knowledge-transfer obligations.
- Review partner solution proposals and challenge unnecessary complexity or high-cost customisation.
- Monitor vendor performance, resource quality, effort utilisation and delivery outcomes.
- Manage budgets for SAP licences, support, projects, infrastructure and professional services.
- Ensure the organisation retains adequate documentation, configuration knowledge and solution ownership.
- Reduce dependence on individual external consultants and avoid vendor lock-in.

3. Candidate Profile

Essential Experience

- Approximately 14 to 18 years of total professional experience, with substantial experience in SAP functional and application leadership roles.
- Experience in a manufacturing or process-industry organisation with complex, multi-location operations.
- Participation in or leadership of approximately three to four end-to-end SAP implementations, rollouts or major transformation programmes.
- Hands-on experience in at least one significant SAP upgrade, migration or version-transition programme.
- Strong experience with SAP S/4HANA; experience with both ECC and S/4HANA would be advantageous.
- Deep expertise in SAP FI/CO or equivalent depth in one major SAP module.




- Broad understanding of integration across FI/CO, MM, SD, PP, QM, PM and associated business processes.
- Experience managing functional consultants, technical teams and external implementation partners.
- Demonstrated ability to work directly with senior business stakeholders and resolve complex process or system issues.
- Experience across implementation, enhancement, production support, testing, cutover and user adoption.
- Practical knowledge of SAP controls, authorisations, ITGC and audit requirements.

Preferred Industry Background Candidates with experience in one or more of the following will be preferred:

- Food processing or CPG
- FMCG
- Chemicals or fertilisers
- Cement, metals or other process manufacturing
- Automotive or industrial manufacturing
- Multi-plant manufacturing organisations with integrated finance, procurement, production, sales and logistics processes

4. Technical and Functional Knowledge

Functional

- Deep expertise in FI/CO or another core SAP module.
- Good understanding of end-to-end business processes and cross-module integration.
- Knowledge of product costing, actual costing, Material Ledger and profitability analysis is highly desirable.
- Understanding of master data, workflows, approvals, controls and period-end processes.
- Ability to interpret business requirements and assess whether they require process correction, configuration, development, master-data changes or user training.

Technical

- SAP S/4HANA application architecture and landscape.
- ABAP development concepts and functional specification review.
- CDS views, Fiori, workflows, APIs, IDocs, BAPIs and integration interfaces.
- SAP Basis, transports, performance and upgrade concepts.
- Roles, authorisations and segregation-of-duties principles.
- Data migration, conversion and reconciliation.
- Integration with external enterprise and plant systems.
- General awareness of SAP BTP, Signavio, RISE, Cloud ALM or similar SAP transformation capabilities would be an advantage.

5. Education and Certifications

Essential

- Bachelors degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Commerce, Finance, Business Administration or a related discipline.

Or
- Chartered Accountant, Cost Accountant, MBA Finance or equivalent business qualification, particularly for candidates with FI/CO depth.
- SAP certification in the candidates core module.
- SAP S/4HANA, SAP Activate, project management, IT service management or architecture certification.
- Relevant experience or certification in business-process management, audit, controls or change management.

6. Leadership and Behavioural Competencies The successful candidate should demonstrate:

- Strong business orientation and commercial understanding
- Ability to combine functional depth with technical judgement
- Structured problem-solving and root-cause analysis
- Credibility with business and plant stakeholders
- Executive communication and presentation skills
- Ability to challenge requirements constructively
- Sound judgement under operational pressure
- Collaboration across functions and organisational levels
- Decisiveness and personal ownership
- Team development and mentoring ability
- Solid delivery discipline
- Integrity, control consciousness and attention to detail
- Willingness to remain hands-on when critical issues require intervention

7. Expected Outcomes The Head – SAP Applications will be expected to:

- Strengthen the business understanding and solution capability of the internal SAP team.
- Improve turnaround time and quality of SAP enhancements.
- Increase adoption of standard SAP functionality.
- Strengthen integration and process consistency across Finance, Manufacturing, Procurement, Sales and Supply Chain.
- Improve SAP controls, documentation, audit readiness and change governance.
- Deliver upgrades and major projects with controlled business disruption.
- Improve master-data quality and reporting reliability.
- Establish a explicit, business-aligned SAP roadmap.
- Build stronger trust and collaboration between business users and the SAP team.

📌 Head SAP Applications (Chennai)
🏢 AP Management Consultants
📍 Chennai