Head SAP Applications

AP Management Consultants; Chennai District; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,500,000; Full time

Job summary

AP Management Consultants is seeking an experienced Head - SAP Applications to lead functional and technical SAP initiatives in a multi-location environment in India. You will drive strategy, architecture, upgrades and team capability, ensuring standard SAP functionality and robust governance.

The role requires deep FI/CO expertise, S/4HANA experience, and strong stakeholder management to deliver measurable business value and secure smooth project delivery across the enterprise.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience leading SAP functional and application leadership in manufacturing or process industries.
• Proven track record in SAP S/4HANA upgrades, migrations and multi-location deployments.
• Deep FI/CO expertise with cross-module knowledge across MM, SD, PP, QM, PM and related processes.

Responsibilities

• Lead SAP implementations, upgrades, migrations and major transformation programs.
• Develop and own the SAP roadmap aligned with business strategy and digital transformation.
• Govern SAP governance, change management, testing and production readiness.
• Coach and develop SAP functional consultants and ABAP developers.
• Ensure master data governance, controls, audit readiness and process standardisation.

Skills

SAP FI/CO depth

SAP S/4HANA

End-to-end SAP implementations

Cross-module integration

Leadership of functional teams

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering/Commerce/Finance

SAP certification (core module)

MBA Finance or CA/CMA as suitable

Tools

ABAP

CDS views

Fiori

SAP BTP/Signavio

Job description

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

• 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
• Strong 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 clear, business-aligned SAP roadmap.
• Build stronger trust and collaboration between business users and the SAP team.