Sap Fico Project Manager

Role & responsibilities

Function: Enterprise Technology Solutions Finance Products, Europe
Experience: 10–14 years in SAP Finance, including 4+ years owning solution design and delivery of change through a partner-led development team
Reporting to: Finance Products Lead, Europe

Role Purpose

Own the SAP Finance (FICO) product for Europe on the build-and-change side. The role is the accountable interface between European Finance business users and the Accenture development pod: converting business demand into the right solution design, getting it built and released on time and to quality, and owning every dependency the partner team will not own — integration, cross-functional, data, security and infrastructure.

This is a product ownership role, not a coordination role. The person is expected to have an opinion on the design, to say no to the wrong design, and to be credible in front of both a Finance Controller and an Accenture solution architect.

Demand and solution design ownership

• Own the European Finance change pipeline end to end: intake, qualification, business case challenge, solution option analysis, prioritisation with process owners, and release planning.
• Work with business users and process owners to get to the best solution rather than the first one proposed — standard SAP over custom, global template over local workaround, reuse over rebuild. Document and defend the rationale.
• Review and sign off functional specifications, solution design documents and architecture decisions produced by the Accenture solution managers before build starts; ensure design fits the global template, the S/4HANA roadmap and the enterprise architecture guardrails.
• Assess and challenge impact on adjacent processes — O2C, P2P, R2R, tax, treasury, costing, intercompany, statutory and group reporting — before committing to a design.
• Maintain the product backlog, roadmap and release calendar for Finance applications in Europe, with clear prioritisation logic visible to stakeholders.

Managing the Accenture delivery team

• Manage the Accenture pod covering solution managers, functional consultants, developers and testers: work allocation, sprint or release commitments, estimate review, dependency clearing and progress tracking.
• Hold the partner accountable for design quality, build quality, unit testing, documentation and on-time delivery; review estimates critically and challenge padding, scope creep and rebadged effort.
• Run the delivery governance cadence — design authority reviews, daily/weekly stand-ups, sprint or release reviews, defect triage, go/no-go decisions — and escalate early when a date is at risk.
• Own the quality gates the partner delivers into: design review, code review/ATC, SIT, UAT entry and exit criteria, cutover readiness and hypercare exit.
• Drive knowledge retention, documentation standards and reduced key-person dependency across the pod; sign off knowledge transfer before resource rotation.

Cross-team liaison (dependencies outside the partner scope)

This is a core part of the role, not an occasional extra. The Accenture team will not own these; the Product Manager does.

• Integration / BTP team — specify and drive interface requirements, iFlow design on SAP Integration Suite/CPI, API and event design, error handling and monitoring (AIF), interface testing windows and cutover sequencing.
• Data and MDM teams — master data readiness, data quality rules, migration and conversion objects, ownership of data-related design decisions.
• Security and GRC — role design, segregation-of-duties impact, access approvals and audit/SOX evidence for changes.
• Basis / infrastructure / transport management — landscape availability, transport sequencing across releases, system refresh impact on in-flight change.
• Other functional product teams and regional/global template owners — cross-module dependencies, template change requests, alignment where a European requirement touches the global core.
• Third-party and downstream systems — banking, tax engines, consolidation and reporting platforms, local statutory tools.
• Own the dependency and risk register for the Finance product; chase, unblock and escalate rather than waiting to be told a dependency has slipped.

Stakeholder management and delivery accountability

• Act as the trusted point of contact for European Finance leadership, Controllers, Shared Service Centres and country Finance teams; communicate design trade-offs, timelines and constraints in business language.
• Manage expectations honestly on scope, cost and date — including saying no, or not yet, with a reasoned alternative.
• Own the plan and the date: baseline it, track it, report status without varnish, and land releases on time with no unmanaged surprises at cutover.
• Protect the financial close calendar — no release, cutover or freeze-window decision that puts month-end, quarter-end or year-end close at risk.
• Represent the Finance product in change advisory boards, architecture forums and release governance.

Required Skills & Experience

• 10–14 years in SAP with strong hands-on functional depth in FICO — GL, AP, AR, Asset Accounting, Banking, Taxation, Product Costing, CO-PA, Intercompany, period-end close. S/4HANA experience expected.
• Proven track record of owning solution design and delivering change through a third-party system integrator (Accenture, TCS, Infosys, Capgemini, IBM or similar) — managing their solution managers and developers, not just receiving their output.
• Demonstrated experience in a large global FMCG/CPG environment of large scale — multi-country, multi-company-code, multi-currency, global template with local statutory variance, high transaction volumes, complex trade and promotional accounting.
• Strong integration literacy: able to write and challenge an interface requirement, understand SAP BTP / Integration Suite (CPI) patterns, IDocs, APIs and events, and debug integration issues alongside technical teams.
• Cross-module fluency across FI/CO to MM, SD, PP, and to reporting and consolidation layers; able to spot the downstream impact of a Finance design decision.
• Product management discipline: backlog and roadmap ownership, prioritisation frameworks, requirement writing, release planning, benefits tracking.
• Delivery methods: Agile/Scrum and SAFe alongside stage-gated project delivery; comfortable with Jira or Azure DevOps and with ServiceNow-based change governance.
• Change and release governance: ChaRM / Solution Manager / Cloud ALM, transport discipline, CAB, emergency change protocols, audit-ready traceability.
• Excellent written and spoken English; ability to influence senior Finance stakeholders and hold a partner to account without escalating everything.

Good to Have

• Experience with Central Finance, Group Reporting, Universal Journal, or a Finance transformation/S/4 conversion programme.

European statutory, VAT/e-invoicing, and local compliance exposure (e-invoicing mandates, SAF-T, Intrastat)