SAP Ariba Lead

Role overview

Service delivery and operations

• Lead functional support across Ariba Sourcing, Contracts, Buying and Invoicing, Guided Buying, supplier products, catalogs, and SAP Business Network.
• Act as primary functional and service-level contact for customer stakeholders and delivery partners.
• Own L2/L3 incidents, problems, requests, and changes; restore service, analyze root causes, implement permanent fixes, and reduce recurring tickets.
• Manage SLA/KPI performance, prioritization, backlog, major incidents, reviews, escalations, risks, dependencies, and executive reporting.

Solution delivery and integration

• Lead workshops, fit-gap and impact analysis, design, configuration, specifications, estimation, testing, deployment, and stabilization.
• Maintain integration across Ariba and S/4HANA or ECC for procurement data and transactions, accounting documents, and supplier collaboration.
• Coordinate with SAP MM, Finance, ABAP, Basis, security, integration, infrastructure, and third-party teams on complex issues.
• Oversee supplier onboarding, qualification, enablement, catalogs, account administration, collaboration, and supplier support.

Governance and team leadership

• Govern release assessments, regression testing, adoption decisions, change communications, and production readiness.
• Maintain functional designs, configuration records, interface mappings, SOPs, runbooks, knowledge articles, test evidence, release documents, and audit artifacts.
• Identify automation, standardization, user-experience, clean-core, and service-optimization opportunities.
• Lead and mentor consultants, conduct quality reviews, allocate work, transfer knowledge, and maintain skill and succession coverage.
• Participate in on-call support for priority incidents, critical procurement events, major releases, and planned business activities as required.

Experience and functional expertise

• 15–18 years of overall SAP consulting experience with extensive hands-on SAP Ariba delivery and leadership.
• Experience leading SAP Ariba AMS or large production-support engagements in complex, multi-entity enterprises.
• Deep functional expertise in at least four listed Ariba areas: Sourcing, Contracts, Buying and Invoicing, Guided Buying, Supplier Lifecycle and Performance, Supplier Risk, Catalog Management, and SAP Business Network.
• Strong knowledge of source-to-contract, procure-to-pay, supplier management, contract compliance, catalog buying, invoicing, and supplier collaboration.

Technical and service-management expertise

• Understand Ariba integration with S/4HANA or ECC using SAP Integration Suite, managed gateway, APIs, web services, IDocs, and middleware.
• Understand procurement data, workflows, approval matrices, tolerances, taxation, account assignment, invoice controls, and reconciliation.
• Demonstrate complex incident resolution, root-cause analysis, interface monitoring, data correction, performance improvement, and production stabilization.
• Have ITIL-based experience across incident, problem, change, release, knowledge, service-level, and continual-service-improvement management.

Leadership and communication

• Experience managing onsite and offshore teams, vendors, SAP product support, and multicultural stakeholders in an SLA-driven environment.
• Strong communication, workshop facilitation, negotiation, documentation, presentation, and customer-facing leadership skills.