The IS&T Project Lead acts as a Business Analyst, collaborating closely with business department leads in Controlling, Accounts Receivable (A/R), Accounts Payable (A/P), Tax, and Treasury to fully define requirements and develop tailored solutions. While the primary focus will be on SAP FICO, this role also involves working with various interfaces and integrations within the finance and controlling domain.
In partnership with the Central Organization and under the guidance of the IS&T Finance and Controlling Manager, the Project Lead identifies opportunities and defines the business roadmap to ensure alignment with global strategic initiatives.
Key Responsibilities
General Responsibilities
- Ensure a solid support model is planned and executed by various support teams, including upstream systems.
- Lead and manage projects in coordination with local IS&T teams and Central (Headquarters) teams.
- Build strong relationships with counterparts in Central and other zones to represent the organization in the global IS&T community.
- Act as a primary point of contact for Finance and Payment Applications, ensuring all business initiatives align with global strategy.
Application Management
- Regularly communicate with department heads to ensure service level agreements (SLAs) are met for application management.
- Partner with local and central counterparts to define new initiatives, acting as a valuable business partner to define project scope and requirements.
- Contribute to application management planning by leveraging user feedback and best practices to propose future enhancements.
- Define and apply security policies related to applications within scope.
- Own monitoring and production support for ERP (SAP) systems and related integrations (Middleware, ETL, job schedules).
Project Management
- Create and maintain project plans for assigned business initiatives.
- Collaborate with managers and key users to define project scope, requirements, and deliverables.
- Coordinate project tasks across business users, local IS&T teams, and Central IS&T in France.
- Prepare and manage User Acceptance Testing (UAT) scenarios, ensuring results are documented accurately.
- Deliver management status reports and communicate progress to the Executive Team and Central IS&T.
- Co-manage resources within the IS&T organization for seamless project execution.
Required Qualifications and Skills
Work Experience
- Experience in finance, controlling, and payment business domains.
- Proven expertise in implementing SAP projects and supporting finance-related processes.
- Knowledge of high-level finance processes, including:
- Accounts Payable (A/P)
- Accounts Receivable (A/R)
- Accounting
- Year-end financial consolidation and reporting
Technical Skills
- Proficiency in SAP ECC 6.0 with a focus on FI/CO core modules.
- Familiarity with SD/MM integration points with finance.
- Strong understanding of Idoc/EDI interfaces, processing, and troubleshooting.
- Experience with SAP Batch Jobs, LSMW, and Batch Input Sessions.
- General integration/interface knowledge (development skills not required).
- Preferred:
- Knowledge of SAP FI/CO database tables.
- Experience with SAP AFS solutions.
- Payment method application experience.
- Retail process knowledge.
Soft Skills
- Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
- Effective communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Organized, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple priorities.
- Comfortable with programming languages and development methodologies.