Global Program Director: Strategic Customer Engagements

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Join Our Team

As Global Customer Engagement & Services (GCE&S) organization under the Customer Services & Delivery (CS&D) Board Area, we help customers to innovate fast and realize the business benefits from their SAP investments. We are looking for a Global Program Director: Strategic Customer Engagements to focus on our largest strategic accounts globally. She/he needs to have the qualification and business acumen to manage large scale, high risk, accounts, stakeholders and delivery teams that span organizational and national boundaries including multiple business units and multiple service partners/vendors. This is to be performed based on the business strategy and the desired results: customer value driven, outcome oriented, in-scope, on-budget, on-schedule, and consistent with quality standards. 

 
She/he is expected to be able to:

• Manage Strategic Customer Engagements directly
• Sponsor of Strategic Customer Strategy
• Defining a Framework on best practices and the Cloud Transformation which supports worldwide to deliver customer outcome and to satisfy the important customers
• Liaise and coordinate with regional/global Stakeholders 
• Pro-active, problem solving, "can-do" attitude and “customer first” mindset
• Ability to de-escalate customers by ordering, structuring, and bringing in the management's attention to a major incident or a problem

The Global Program Director: Strategic Customer Engagements is responsible for supporting our customer’s transformation strategy through the management of cloud, on-premise or hybrid implementation initiatives. Most projects will utilize agile/activate methodologies. She/he has the qualifications and business acumen to manage large-scale strategic projects that span organizational boundaries including multiple business units and service partners. She/he develops into providing leadership to cross-functional teams responsible for delivering defined project outputs to time, budget and project quality criteria. Furthermore, the new colleague is responsible for the success of assigned projects by ensuring adherence to SAP’s Activate project management methodology and best business practices, provides mentoring to the project team members, status communication and updates both to the customer and SAP management.

What You will Do:

As a crucial part of SAP's total solution global delivery strategy, SAP focuses on the overall success of customers' SAP solutions.

EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS:

Sales cycle

• Build credibility / trust with customers.
• Assist the SAP license sales and service sales teams in closing of software or services deals by providing oversight on implementation planning & estimating and coordinating multiple SAP Lines of Businesses and partners as required (Bid Management).

Delivery

• Set-up and lead all phases of the project lifecycle, including planning, design, development, testing, implementation, documentation, training, and closure.
• Work with Customer Stakeholders, Partners and SAP Management to effectively manage and lead projects to ensure successful completion and significant impact on customer business KPI.
• During implementations, manage overall services relationship, steering committee and project office, between customer, partner and SAP to ensure that projects are delivered on-time, within budget and with the highest levels of customer satisfaction through billable consulting.
• Manage expectations on the development of solid project plans, with milestones and clear deliverables (in IT and business terms), handling risks, issues and objections.
• Select, direct and develop your team members in accordance with the project goals.
• Oversees the customer engagement journey and ensures effective governance and alignment across multiple internal and external stakeholders such as SAP Services, SAP Product support, Partners and customer’s System Integrators or other Hosting Partners.
• Actively oversees and drives cloud transformation agenda with key client stakeholders.
• Maximize the customer success by helping to manage complexity, ensure stable operations, mitigate risk and lowering total cost of operation, support customers on their journey to the intelligent enterprise.
• Actively participate in the governance meetings with customers and other SAP stakeholders (extended account team) and provides direction to the teams on delivery.
• Ensures effective end-to-end customer engagement and governance is applied across including commercial arrangements (costs and profitability), customer expectations, delivery team success, customer reporting.
• Enable SAP delivery teams to protect and grow engagement scope, leverage and cross-sell opportunities and manage commercial change requests.
• Provide consultative expertise to the client, including guiding clients through key decisions and tradeoffs to maintain project scope and timeline. 

Value creation

• Analyze and execute on strategic projects, build consensus among project stakeholders, ensure alignment of project tactics with corporate strategy and communicate project goals at a strategic level as well as actively identifying and developing more business opportunities.
• Oversees the customer engagement journey and ensures effective governance and alignment across multiple internal and external stakeholders such as SAP Services, SAP Product support, Partners and customer’s System Integrators or other Hosting Partners.
• Maximize the customer success by helping to manage complexity, ensure stable operations, mitigate risk and lowering total cost of operation, support customers on their journey to the intelligent enterprise.

 Experience & Language Requirements: 

• Master's degree, preferably in finance, commerce, engineering, information technologies, computer science, MBA or equivalent
• Excellent knowledge of project management methodologies. SAP methodologies (including SAP Activate and SAP Solution Manager).
• Demonstrated ability to command the attention and respect of senior level leaders and confidently make presentations to large and executive audiences
• The candidate must possess experience managing a number of internal and external stakeholders, so interpersonal skills and abilities will be vital to succeed in this role
• Team oriented: ability to build strong relationships at every level of the organization. Being a strong motivator who knows how to influence others to deliver consistently their best work
• Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills – fluent in English
• PMP certification or other project management certifications are desirable

Work Experience & Key Competencies:

• Excellent proven program/project management experience at a consulting / system integration company
• Minimum 15-20 years project management experience (SAP software) with numerous large-scale implementations (at least 4-5 with a total value of > $10 M)
• Demonstrated ability to scope, structure and manage medium - to large scale, medium to high complex projects with modern delivery mixes on time, on budget and within quality criteria that maximized business benefits for customers
• Demonstrated experience in managing, aligning and working with various levels within a customer organization (project, business, executive) as well as different parts of large global organizations
• Excellent customer focus / Networking / Relationship Building
• Knowledge of one or more functional business processes (Logistic, Finance, etc.)
• Knowledge about SAP Private/Public Cloud offerings
• RISE Methodology knowledge

SAP'S DIVERSITY COMMITMENT 
To harness the power of innovation, SAP invests in the development of its diverse employees. We aspire to leverage the qualities and appreciate the unique competencies that each person brings to the company.
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EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disability.

Compensation Range Transparency: SAP believes the value of pay transparency contributes towards an honest and supportive culture and is a significant step toward demonstrating SAP’s commitment to pay equity. SAP provides the annualized compensation range inclusive of base salary and variable incentive target for the career level applicable to the posted role. The targeted combined range for this position is $240,900 - $409,600 USD. The actual amount to be offered to the successful candidate will be within that range, dependent upon the key aspects of each case which may include education, skills, experience, scope of the role, location, etc. as determined through the selection process. Any SAP variable incentive includes a targeted dollar amount and any actual payout amount is dependent on company and personal performance. Please reference this link for a summary of SAP benefits and eligibility requirements: SAP North America Benefits.