Senior Director SAP S4 Project Lead IT

Xylem is a Fortune 500 global water solutions company dedicated to advancing sustainable impact and empowering the people who make water work every day. As a leading water technology company with 23,000 employees operating in over 150 countries, Xylem is at the forefront of addressing the world's most critical water challenges. We invite passionate individuals to join our team, dedicated to exceeding customer expectations through innovative and sustainable solutions.

The Role:

The Senior Director SAP S4 Project Lead IT is responsible for planning, executing, and managing SAP implementation, migration, and enhancement projects. This role involves coordinating cross-functional teams, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and delivering projects on time and within budget.

The Senior Director SAP S4 Project Lead IT collaborates with stakeholders, oversees system integration, and ensures compliance with best practices and industry standards.

This role also requires the Lead to harmonize the ERP solutions with other enterprise technologies including but not limited to the data management, business intelligence, sales and operations, manufacturing and engineering solution sets throughout their respective lifecycles.

The Lead will interact with all levels within the company, including technical and business leads across various functional organizations who will help define the strategic approach within a complex and diverse ERP landscape. He or she will oversee projects to execute the roadmap in the most efficient and effective manner, including implementation, configuration, development and operational support of all ERP systems. The Lead will provide both technical and people leadership coupled with broad and deep hands-on ERP experience.

Core Responsibilities:

• Lead SAP projects from initiation to completion, ensuring successful delivery.

• Define project scope, objectives, timelines, and resource requirements.

• Collaborate with business stakeholders to gather requirements and align SAP solutions with business goals.

• Manage project risks, budgets, and change requests efficiently.

• Oversee system integration, data migration, and end-user training.

• Coordinate with SAP consultants, developers, and IT teams to optimize SAP solutions.

• Ensure compliance with SAP best practices and industry standards.

• Provide leadership and mentorship to project team members.

Strategic Planning:

Collaborate with IT leadership, business leadership, internal and external subject matter experts to define and align the ERP strategy with Xylem’s and its overarching strategies. Continuously seek to improve the ERP ecosystem and streamline operations to improve performance, reduce costs and increase agility to respond to changing business needs.

Develop a roadmap that expands, reduces or sustains the ERP footprint through consolidation, replacement, upgrades and other means, both with and without significant investment, gaining consent and engagement from senior leadership, and communicating regular updates on progress across all ERP related initiatives.

Follow established development methodologies and best practice enterprise architecture standards to harmonize the ERP strategy with the overarching Xylem information systems architecture, standards and strategies. Participate as a key contributor to the ever-evolving Xylem enterprise architecture and information framework, working collaboratively across the various IT service delivery teams.

Development and Operations

Oversee the ERP Project that provides development, configuration and operational support. Collaborate with Enterprise Applications process leaders to manage demand, set priorities, estimate and deliver projects within scope, schedule, budget and quality metrics. Ensure the security, availability and performance of the ERP landscape.

Build innovative solutions to reduce complexity and simplify the application landscape. Source internal and external technical resources. Balance business needs with effective and agile software development practices. Establish standards and tools across the ERP team based on industry best-practices, leveraging both agile, iterative and waterfall development methodologies and DevOps processes as appropriate.

Partner with enterprise applications process leads, integration, master data management, database administration, infrastructure and security teams, business subject matter experts and external vendors to provide end-to-end support of global ERP applications and supporting systems and services. Help establish global Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and ensure they are met or exceeded. Monitor and report on SLA performance. Ensure response to escalated issues/incidents.

Oversee project management activities for ERP projects where needed. Collaborate to standardize key processes and systems. Ensure adherence to all defined policies, procedures and standards. Ensure ERP inventory and documentation are current and accurate. Collaborate with the Training and Communications team to provide ERP eLearning to end users.

Stay current on new technologies impacting the ERP ecosystem. Research and continuously improve ERP functionality, availability and performance. Participate in architecture committees. Ensure maximum, measured efficiency and effectiveness of ERP systems.

Staff Management:

Manage the budgets associated with the ERP Program staff. Provide training, coaching, mentoring, supervising and evaluation of staff to maintain optimum performance of job duties. Create accountable, motivated and continuously learning teams. Ensure the successful transfer of knowledge from the existing and future ERP systems. Coach direct reports to develop, nurture and build solid relationships with their business partner counterparts. Ensure collaboration and efficiency between internal and external team members. Resolve all issues and points of conflict within your team, the business partner organization, and escalate to leadership as required.

Vendor Relationship Management:

Work collaboratively with the VMO to develop, manage and nurture solid relationships with external technology partners providing ERP products and services. Support the evaluation and selection of new vendors as needed to execute ERP strategy. Measure and monitor the ERP vendors and how they meet or exceed service delivery SLA metrics. Ensure delivery, reliability, quality and accuracy of estimates and timelines. Act as the escalation point for vendor issues related to ERP technologies. Lead and coach ERP managers in successful vendor relationship management.

Governance:

Contribute as a member of the Enterprise Back Office Solutions leadership team. Represent the ERP team in governance bodies, including architecture, change and demand management committees and strategy discussions. Ensure compliance to all statutory and legal requirements in countries where ERP systems are used, and provide support to Corporate Audit’s efforts in conducting and continuously improving the risk management activities across ERP systems. Help establish and participate in ERP System User Groups.

Ensure adherence to Xylem’s Smart Steps project management methodology, support business case development and approve relevant project documentation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in MIS or CS preferred, or relevant concentration, with 14+ years of experience; or a Graduate Degree (Masters) in MIS or CS preferred, or relevant concentration, with 12+ years of experience; or relevant and equivalent business or IT experience of minimum of 14-18 years

• 10+ years of solid experience managing the development and delivery of large-scale ERP application platforms, operations and support in international business environments, with at least 5 years’ experience in a manufacturing environment. Hands-on experience deploying and supporting ERP solutions like SAP, Infor, Oracle and Epicor preferred

• Experienced in offshoring and outsourcing of support and operations activities.

• Excellent people manager and leader of leaders, able to inspire and communicate effectively with a remote (onshore/offshore), multicultural team

• Proven track record of building, maintaining and managing strong relationships with global business leaders across many different stakeholder groups

• Excellent customer service ethic

• Knowledge and understanding of operations processes, supply chain management, finance and accounting processes

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, interpersonal and collaborative skills, and the ability to communicate technology concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences

• Proven track record and experience developing solutions and successfully executing programs that meet objectives of excellence in a dynamic environment

• Poise and ability to act calmly and competently in high-pressure, high-stress situations

• Must be a critical thinker with strong problem-solving skills.

• Excellent analytical skills, able to manage multiple projects under strict timelines, work well in a demanding dynamic environment and meet overall objectives

• Project management skills; financial/budget management, scheduling and resource management.

• Ability to lead and motivate cross-functional, interdisciplinary and virtual teams across diverse time zones to achieve tactical and strategic goals

• Experience with contract and vendor negotiations

• High level of personal integrity, and the ability to professionally handle confidential matters and show an appropriate level of judgment and maturity

• High degree of initiative, dependability and ability to work with little supervision

• English language fluency

Salary range:

Join the global Xylem team to be a part of innovative technology solutions transforming water usage, conservation, and re-use. Our products impact public utilities, industrial sectors, residential areas, and commercial buildings, with a commitment to providing smart metering, network technologies, and advanced analytics for water, electric, and gas utilities. Partner with us in creating a world where water challenges are met with ingenuity and dedication; where we recognize the power of inclusion and belonging in driving innovation and allowing us to compete more effectively around the world.