Role Purpose and Scope

Lead the end-to-end planning, governance, and controlled delivery of the SAP S/4HANA re-engineering program, ensuring approved scope, schedule, cost, quality, compliance, and operational-readiness objectives are achieved. Act as the central coordination and escalation point for business process owners, SAP functional and technical teams, implementation and AMS partners, infrastructure, cybersecurity, integration, data, ITQA/CSV, Quality, and senior management.

The program may include re-engineering, optimization, migration, integration, validation, deployment, and stabilization across FI/CO, MM, PP, QM, PM, SD, WM, EXIM, SAP Fiori, DMS/OpenText, LIMS, and related enterprise interfaces.

Key Responsibilities

Program Governance and Delivery

- Own the integrated program plan, milestones, workstreams, critical path, resources, budget, dependencies, stage gates, and deployment readiness.
- Establish governance, decision rights, reporting cadence, escalation routes, and controlled project documentation.
- Coordinate functional, technical, integration, data, infrastructure, security, testing, validation, training, change, cutover, and support activities.
- Prepare executive dashboards, forecasts, steering updates, decision papers, and audit-ready records.

Solution and Business Alignment

- Coordinate design and delivery across SAP modules and interfaces, ensuring requirements, controls, reports, workflows, roles, and process variants are addressed.
- Facilitate fit-to-standard and design workshops; manage cross-module dependencies and alignment with target architecture and clean-core principles.
- Engage business owners from Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Quality, Maintenance, Sales, Supply Chain, Warehouse, Regulatory, and supporting functions.
- Secure timely decisions, resource participation, acceptance criteria, approvals, and sign-offs while translating technical issues into clear business impacts and options.

Vendor, Commercial, Risk, and Change Control

- Manage implementation, AMS, infrastructure, and other partners against contracts, statements of work, service levels, plans, quality criteria, and knowledge-transfer commitments.
- Validate staffing, capability, estimates, effort, utilization, invoices, deliverables, and change requests; challenge unsupported effort, avoidable customization, and scope deviation.
- Maintain integrated risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies with accountable owners, mitigation, target dates, and escalation status.
- Operate formal scope and change control with impact assessment across timeline, cost,



resources, compliance, architecture, testing, and operations.

Quality, Validation, Data, and Technical Readiness

- Govern unit, integration, user-acceptance, regression, performance, security, and interface testing, including coverage, defect triage, retesting, evidence, and exit criteria.
- Coordinate with ITQA/CSV and Quality on GxP classification, validation/CSA strategy, requirements, specifications, risk assessments, traceability, test evidence, deviations, CAPA, and release approval.
- Ensure data integrity, audit trails, electronic records and signatures, segregation of duties, access controls, and applicable regulatory requirements are addressed.
- Coordinate data cleansing, mapping, migration, reconciliation, interfaces, environment readiness, performance, backup, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, transports, and technical monitoring.

Cutover, Go-Live, and Stabilization

- Govern mock cutovers and the final cutover plan, including sequence, owners, timing, reconciliation, contingency, fallback criteria, and command-center arrangements.
- Coordinate training, procedures, communications, adoption, support readiness, business continuity, and formal go-live approvals.
- Lead hypercare, incident and defect resolution, performance monitoring, operational handover, knowledge transfer, and residual-action closure.
- Track benefits, lessons learned, financial and contract closure, risk acceptance, and archival of project records.

SAP, Technology, and GxP Knowledge

- Strong knowledge of SAP S/4HANA transformation, implementation, rollout, optimization, or migration, with an understanding of SAP ECC, SAP B1 transition implications.
- Cross-functional awareness of FI/CO, MM, PP, QM, PM, SD, WM, Fiori, roles and authorizations, GRC/security, integrations, workflows, reporting, and production support.
- Working knowledge of SAP Activate or a comparable methodology, SAP Solution Manager and/or Cloud ALM, data migration, cutover, testing, release, and transport management.
- Awareness of SAP BTP, clean-core principles, extensibility, master-data governance, integration services, and application-lifecycle management is preferred.
- Working knowledge of GAMP 5, 21 CFR Part 11,



EU Annex 11, electronic records and signatures, audit trails, data integrity, risk-based validation/CSA, traceability, deviation, CAPA, change control, and periodic review.
- Ability to critically review solution documents, project plans, estimates, validation records, test evidence, and technical proposals without performing hands-on configuration.

Qualifications and Experience

- Bachelor’s degree in IT, Computer Science, Engineering, Management, or a related discipline; MBA/PGDM or relevant postgraduate qualification preferred.
- PMP, PRINCE2, SAP, ITIL, Agile, or comparable certification is advantageous.
- 10 –12 years of relevant experience, including substantial SAP program/project delivery responsibility; 10+ years preferred.
- Experience leading at least three major SAP S/4HANA implementation, re-engineering, rollout, upgrade, migration, or transformation through key lifecycle phases.
- Proven ability to coordinate multiple business functions, SAP workstreams, vendors, and senior stakeholders in a complex enterprise.
- Experience with SOWs, commercials, effort validation, change requests, partner performance, and SAP delivery in pharmaceutical, life-sciences, or regulated manufacturing environments is strongly preferred.

Core Competencies

- Program leadership, governance discipline, structured problem solving, and risk-based decision-making.
- Executive communication, facilitation, negotiation, conflict resolution, and stakeholder influence.
- Commercial and vendor acumen, documentation discipline, audit readiness, and a solid closure mindset.
- Ability to lead through ambiguity, changing priorities, time constraints, and cross-functional dependencies.

Key Performance Indicators

- Achievement of approved milestones, stage gates, budget, quality, and go-live objectives.
- Timely closure of critical risks, issues, decisions, dependencies, and defects.
- Completeness of validation, testing, security, data, cutover, and handover deliverables.
- Vendor performance, commercial control, business readiness, adoption, operational stability, and audit readiness.

Role Expectations

- Operate as a hands-on delivery owner with independence, transparency, and professional challenge.
- Be available for critical workshops, cutover, go-live, and issue-resolution windows.
- Protect confidential business, commercial, quality, security, and personnel information.
- Travel to manufacturing units or company locations as required for workshops, testing, deployment, and stabilization.

📌 CO- Associate Director - SAP IT (Hyderabad)
🏢 Sekhmet Pharmaventures
📍 Hyderabad