Your role
The Application Consultant for the SAP PP-PI area acts as E2E responsible for the Production Planning topics to provide state of the art solutions and services. This includes the implementation of appropriate systems enhancements following established processes to meet customer requirements. The Application Consultant will interact with our Business facing organization to plan, prepare, execute and monitor projects as well as individual Change Requests. This will be done by leveraging technical skills provided by external partners.
In this role we require an expert knowledge of SAP PP-PI and the adjacent modules combined with a good understanding of associated F2PL/PL2P (“Forecast to Plan”/”Plan to Produce”) business processes integrated with ERP systems. Thus he/she should be in the position to consult business partners to find suitable and sustainable solutions meeting customer demands.
Service Performance Monitoring of the Application Managed Services provided by our strategic partners belongs to the role to meet the agreed KPIs. This includes periodic reviews and the use of defined processes to hand over new services.
At Merck Production Planning is connected to several ERP systems to centrally plan across the enterprise system landscape. The integration and the participation in architecture design decisions is also part of this position.
Responsibilities (optional)
Ensure customer satisfaction through proper solution design delivery, applications life cycle management and service performance monitoring while maintaining necessary internal (process, security) and external (GxP) compliance.
Secure minimal business disruption on application go live based on proper design and formal project hand-over process.
Operational Vendor Management & Reporting
- Manage vendor service performance against below processes
- Establish the required improvements plan as per identified gaps and/or defined requirements
- Secure timely issuance of periodic performance report and annual service reviews
Incident Management
- Lead the resolution of critical or complex incidents including related crisis management when appropriate
- Coordinate communication and coordination with the relevant stakeholders (Infrastructure, GIAM team, business key users, etc)
Problem Management
- Lead master plan and priorities toward ticket elimination and automation
- Proactively suggest possible solutions and propose an action plan for improvement to management
Change and Release Management
- Establish documentation of current and target application architecture (incl. CMDB)
- Establish and implement the Life Cycle Mgmt plan for applications in scope
- Secure Change Management processes in line with relevant SOPs
- Ensure complete and accurate handover documents created prior to production release
- Manage the application portfolio at the most appropriate level of release
Project Delivery
- Lead technical design of applications/solutions in portfolio
- Provide technical services and functional advice on the implementation of business applications
- Provide functional/technical support to project teams
- Provide the technical input for defining and maintaining the development standard and guidelines
Who you are:
Education/Professional Experience
- Bachelor/Master degree or equivalent in Computer Sciences and/or Business Administration
- 8-year experience in software or applications services
- 2-year experience within an international environment
Languages
- English mandatory (written and spoken)
- Good German skills recommended because of lots of documentations in German and less English communication skills in that area.
Skills & Competencies
- Good interpersonal and organizational skills
- Strong written and oral communication skills
- Ability to make decisions and act autonomously
- Expert knowledge regarding the use of functionality within SAP PP-PI
- Good knowledge in PP-PI with Process Management and planning (SOP, DP, MRP)
- Good knowledge in CIF and IDocs
- Basic knowledge in the surrounding modules (QM, WM, MM, LE, SD, CO)
- Basic knowledge in ABAP – development, exits, debugging, etc.
IT Process roles (optional)
- Operational Vendor Management & Reporting
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Change and Release Management
- Project Delivery and Service Introduction
- Application Life Cycle Management
- Disaster Recovery Planning and Testing
- Information Security – Patch Management, Information classification
- Operational Compliance – DP, GxP (user management), licenses management, training plan and execution, FSA – error management of iDocs, BI session, transaction error