Strategic Program Manager Middle and Eastern Europe (m/f/d)

We help the world run better

At SAP, we enable you to bring out your best. Our company culture is focused on collaboration and a shared passion to help the world run better. How? We focus every day on building the foundation for tomorrow and creating a workplace that embraces differences, values flexibility, and is aligned to our purpose-driven and future-focused work. We offer a highly collaborative, caring team environment with a strong focus on learning and development, recognition for your individual contributions, and a variety of benefit options for you to choose from. 

As the SAP CS&D organization, we help customers to innovate fast and realize the business benefits from their SAP investments. We are looking for a Strategic Program Manager (m/f/d) to focus on our largest strategic accounts in the Middle & Eastern Europe MEE region. 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 CSS Cloud Transformation which supports the Region to deliver customer outcome and to satisfy the important customers
• Liaise and coordinate with regional/global Customer Success/Customer Success 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 SAP Strategic Program Manager (m/f/d) 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.

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

What you'll do

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 deliverable (in IT and business terms), handling risks, issues and objections.
• Select, direct and develop your team members in accordance with the project goals.
• Willingness to travel also internationally.
• 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.
• Continually tries new and better ways to do things and actively brings a broader lens of customer and risk management into their decision making.
• Perform administrative tasks required to manage the engagement (staffing, reporting & controlling).
• 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 delivery teams to Deliver best through proactive mindset and de-escalate critical customer situations.
• Enable regular customer satisfaction feedback.
• Enable SAP delivery teams to protect and grow engagement scope, leverage and cross-sell opportunities and manage commercial change requests.
• Participate in team-internal knowledge sharing and coach other team members.
• Effectively communicate complex ideas and persuade clients to adopt the recommended solution.
• Provide consultative expertise to the client, including guiding clients through key decisions and tradeoffs to maintain project scope and timeline.
• Provide updates on client statuses and escalate issues while maintaining control of the project.
• Stay organized and deliver on commitments, including updating any project tracking systems, maintain data hygiene and fulfilling administrative responsibilities.
   

Value creation

• Create long term value roadmaps and plans with customer to achieve customer business objectives.
• 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.
   

What you bring

• 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)
• Proactive attitude in managing stakeholder satisfaction to position and secure customer success
• 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, another language, is beneficial
• PMP certification or other project management certifications are desirable
• Results-driven / Self-organized / Decision making
• Knowledge of one or more functional business processes (Logistic, Finance, etc.)
• Experience in Client-facing/Service roles
• Exceptional written and verbal Communication skills with fluent German and English
• Proven Presentation skills
• Team Player
• Strong technical aptitude and ability to understand technical concepts quickly
• Ability to prioritize and manage workload to meet deadlines and budget
• Virtual global team management
   

Work Experience:

• Proven project management experience at a consulting / system integration company
• Ideally 12+ years project management experience (SAP software) with numerous large scale implementations (> 5 Mio. $)
• 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
• Results-driven / Self-organized / Decision making
• Knowledge of one or more functional business processes (Logistic, Finance, etc.)
• Fluent German and English

​Bring out your best

SAP innovations help more than four hundred thousand customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with two hundred million users and more than one hundred thousand employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, you can bring out your best.  

We win with inclusion

SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better and more equitable world.
 

SAP is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provide accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: Careers@sap.com.
For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for the SAP Employee Referral Program, according to the eligibility rules set in the SAP Referral Policy. Specific conditions may apply for roles in Vocational Training.

Requisition ID: 406615  | Work Area: Consulting and Professional Services  | Expected Travel: 0 - 80%  | Career Status: Professional  | Employment Type: Regular Full Time   | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid