Title : SAP Cloud ERP Professional Services Functional Lead
Location : Chicago, IL (Onsite)
Type: Contract (12+ Months)
Role Overview
SAP Cloud ERP professional services functional lead Own the functional design, configuration, stabilization, and optimization of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services processes for a project-based enterprise. Focus on customer project lifecycle, work packages, staffing-relevant project structures, time/cost capture integration, project billing, profitability, and operational controls while partnering closely with Finance and adjacent workforce/resource systems.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the post-go-live functional roadmap and configuration backlog for SAP Professional Services/customer project capabilities.
- Configure and support customer project structures, project stages, work packages, roles, planned effort/cost/revenue inputs, and project lifecycle controls within deployed scope.
- Own functional design for project billing preparation, billing plans, billing elements, project billing requests, and handoffs to billing/accounting.
- Support project financial planning, actual cost/revenue visibility, project margin analysis, and integration with Finance and Event-Based Revenue Recognition.
- Define and maintain project master-data standards, templates, derivation rules, validation controls, and governance.
- Partner with resource-management and time systems to ensure project, role, assignment, budget, and time data are fit for downstream processing.
- Analyze production defects involving customer projects, project billing, time/cost postings, master data, workflow, or integration dependencies.
- Lead functional acceptance criteria, test scenarios, regression packs, and business validation for Professional Services changes.
- Maintain end-to-end process documentation from project setup through time/cost capture, billing, revenue recognition, and closure
- Drive fit-to-standard decisions and minimize unnecessary custom extensions around project operations.
- Support business teams during billing cycles, project setup peaks, period-end activities, and critical incidents.
- Review SAP release changes affecting Professional Services and determine business impact, test scope, and adoption opportunities.
- Coordinate functional dependencies with Finance, Billing, HR/time, resource management, CRM/engagement systems, data, and integration teams.
- Lead backlog refinement and prioritize changes based on operational risk, business value, and go-live stabilization needs.
- Provide quality oversight for SI-delivered configuration, test evidence, and production fixes.
SAP / Product-Specific Responsibilities
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services / customer project management capabilities.
- Plan Customer Projects and project lifecycle concepts, work packages, billing elements, billing plans, and project billing.
- Manage Project Billing and related billing request/document handoffs.
- Integration with Event-Based Revenue Recognition, General Ledger/Controlling, time recording, expenses, and enterprise resource-management solutions.
- SAP Fiori role-based applications, configuration lifecycle, and Public Cloud release adoption.
Operational Responsibilities
- Own stabilization of customer-project and project-billing processes, with clear severity and SLA-based triage.
- Monitor recurring errors in project setup, time/cost postings, billing preparation, project closure, and integrated master data.
- Maintain business-ready operating procedures, support playbooks, known-error records, and release regression scenarios.
- Drive continuous improvement in project setup cycle time, billing readiness, data quality, and user adoption.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Professional Services operations, Project/Engagement Management, Finance/Controllership, Billing, Revenue Accounting, HR/time, resource management, Data, Integration, Security, QA/Release, and implementation partners.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Business, Finance, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline.
- 8+ years of SAP project systems/professional-services functional experience, including S/4HANA-era delivery.
- Hands-on configuration experience with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services/customer project processes strongly preferred.
- Strong understanding of project-based services economics, time/cost capture, billing, margin, and revenue-recognition dependencies.
- Experience supporting production operations after ERP go-live.
Required Technical / Functional Skills
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services/customer projects.
- Project lifecycle, work packages, project billing, billing plans, project master data, and project financial controls.
- Integration with Finance/Controlling and Event-Based Revenue Recognition.
- Time/expense and resource-management integration concepts.
- Fiori applications, testing, defect triage, configuration governance, and release impact assessment.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in consulting, accounting, engineering, legal, or other project-based professional-services firms.
- Experience integrating SAP with workforce/resource planning or time systems such as Deltek Replicon and Dayshape.
- Current SAP credential aligned to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Professional Services or related implementation learning is preferred.
