SAP Cloud ERP Professional Services Functional Lead

Holistic Partners, Inc; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Part time

Job summary

Holistic Partners, Inc is seeking an SAP Cloud ERP Professional Services Functional Lead for a 12-month contract. The role focuses on owning the functional design, configuration, and stabilization of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services processes across customer projects and lifecycle stages.

You will partner with Finance and HR/time, drive end-to-end project billing, and ensure data integrity for downstream processing.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of SAP project systems/professional-services functional experience, including S/4HANA-era delivery.
• Hands-on configuration experience with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services/customer project processes.
• Strong understanding of project-based services economics, time/cost capture, billing, margin, and revenue-recognition dependencies.
• Experience supporting production operations after ERP go-live.

Responsibilities

• Own the post-go-live functional roadmap and configuration backlog for SAP Professional Services/customer project capabilities.
• Configure and support customer project structures, project stages, work packages, roles, planned effort/cost/revenue inputs, and project lifecycle controls within deployed scope.
• Own functional design for project billing preparation, billing plans, billing elements, project billing requests, and handoffs to billing/accounting.
• Support project financial planning, actual cost/revenue visibility, project margin analysis, and integration with Finance and Event-Based Revenue Recognition.
• Define and maintain project master-data standards, templates, derivation rules, validation controls, and governance.
• Partner with resource-management and time systems to ensure project, role, assignment, budget, and time data are fit for downstream processing.
• Analyze production defects involving customer projects, project billing, time/cost postings, master data, workflow, or integration dependencies.
• Lead functional acceptance criteria, test scenarios, regression packs, and business validation for Professional Services changes.
• Maintain end-to-end process documentation from project setup through time/cost capture, billing, revenue recognition, and closure.
• Drive fit-to-standard decisions and minimize unnecessary custom extensions around project operations.
• Support business teams during billing cycles, project setup peaks, period-end activities, and critical incidents.
• Review SAP release changes affecting Professional Services and determine business impact, test scope, and adoption opportunities.
• Coordinate functional dependencies with Finance, Billing, HR/time, resource management, CRM/engagement systems, data, and integration teams.
• Lead backlog refinement and prioritize changes based on operational risk, business value, and go-live stabilization needs.
• Provide quality oversight for SI-delivered configuration, test evidence, and production fixes.

Job description

Job Title: SAP Cloud ERP Professional Services Functional Lead

Location: Remote with Travel (20%)

Duration: 12 Months Contract

Requirements

• Contracts run through December 2027, with conversion planned for 2028.
• Priority roles (in order)
• Remote, working EST or CST hours. Pacific is acceptable only if the candidate works Eastern or Central hours.
• 40 hours a week, with 10 to 20% travel to Chicago for workshops (1 to 2 times a month). Travel is reimbursed.
• Hands-on S/4HANA Public Cloud experience is required. On-prem only won’t work.

Role Overview

SAP Cloud ERP professional services functional lead Own the functional design, configuration, stabilization, and optimization of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services processes for a project-based enterprise. Focus on customer project lifecycle, work packages, staffing-relevant project structures, time/cost capture integration, project billing, profitability, and operational controls while partnering closely with Finance and adjacent workforce/resource systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the post-go-live functional roadmap and configuration backlog for SAP Professional Services/customer project capabilities.
• Configure and support customer project structures, project stages, work packages, roles, planned effort/cost/revenue inputs, and project lifecycle controls within deployed scope.
• Own functional design for project billing preparation, billing plans, billing elements, project billing requests, and handoffs to billing/accounting.
• Support project financial planning, actual cost/revenue visibility, project margin analysis, and integration with Finance and Event-Based Revenue Recognition.
• Define and maintain project master-data standards, templates, derivation rules, validation controls, and governance.
• Partner with resource-management and time systems to ensure project, role, assignment, budget, and time data are fit for downstream processing.
• Analyze production defects involving customer projects, project billing, time/cost postings, master data, workflow, or integration dependencies.
• Lead functional acceptance criteria, test scenarios, regression packs, and business validation for Professional Services changes.
• Maintain end-to-end process documentation from project setup through time/cost capture, billing, revenue recognition, and closure.
• Drive fit-to-standard decisions and minimize unnecessary custom extensions around project operations.
• Support business teams during billing cycles, project setup peaks, period-end activities, and critical incidents.
• Review SAP release changes affecting Professional Services and determine business impact, test scope, and adoption opportunities.
• Coordinate functional dependencies with Finance, Billing, HR/time, resource management, CRM/engagement systems, data, and integration teams.
• Lead backlog refinement and prioritize changes based on operational risk, business value, and go-live stabilization needs.
• Provide quality oversight for SI-delivered configuration, test evidence, and production fixes.

SAP / Product-Specific Responsibilities

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services / customer project management capabilities.
• Plan Customer Projects and project lifecycle concepts, work packages, billing elements, billing plans, and project billing.
• Manage Project Billing and related billing request/document handoffs.
• Integration with Event-Based Revenue Recognition, General Ledger/Controlling, time recording, expenses, and enterprise resource-management solutions.
• SAP Fiori role-based applications, configuration lifecycle, and Public Cloud release adoption.

Operational Responsibilities

• Own stabilization of customer-project and project-billing processes, with clear severity and SLA-based triage.
• Monitor recurring errors in project setup, time/cost postings, billing preparation, project closure, and integrated master data.
• Maintain business-ready operating procedures, support playbooks, known-error records, and release regression scenarios.
• Drive continuous improvement in project setup cycle time, billing readiness, data quality, and user adoption.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Professional Services operations, Project/Engagement Management, Finance/Controllership, Billing, Revenue Accounting, HR/time, resource management, Data, Integration, Security, QA/Release, and implementation partners.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Business, Finance, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline.
• 8+ years of SAP project systems/professional-services functional experience, including S/4HANA-era delivery.
• Hands-on configuration experience with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services/customer project processes strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of project-based services economics, time/cost capture, billing, margin, and revenue-recognition dependencies.
• Experience supporting production operations after ERP go-live.

Required Technical / Functional Skills

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services/customer projects.
• Project lifecycle, work packages, project billing, billing plans, project master data, and project financial controls.
• Integration with Finance/Controlling and Event-Based Revenue Recognition.
• Time/expense and resource-management integration concepts.
• Fiori applications, testing, defect triage, configuration governance, and release impact assessment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in consulting, accounting, engineering, legal, or other project-based professional services firms.
• Experience integrating SAP with workforce/resource planning or time systems such as Deltec Replicon and Day shape.
• Current SAP credential aligned to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services or related implementation learning is preferred.