Lead - SAP/S4HANA Application Support

INSPIRE | EXHILARATE | DELIGHT

For over six decades, Chalhoub Group has been a partner and creator of luxury experiences in the Middle East. The Group, in its endeavour to excel as a hybrid retailer, has reinforced its distribution and marketing services with a portfolio of eight owned brands and over 300 international brands in the luxury, beauty, fashion, and art de vivre categories. More recently, the Group expanded its expertise into new categories of luxury watches, jewellery, and eyewear.

Every step at Chalhoub Group is taken with the customer at heart. Be it constantly reinventing itself or focusing on innovation to provide luxury experiences at over 750+ experiential retail stores, online and through mobile apps, each touch point leads to delighting the customer.

Today, Chalhoub Group stands for 14,000 skilled and talented professionals across seven countries, whose cohesive efforts have resulted in the Group being ranked third in the Middle East and first in Saudi Arabia as a Great Place to Work®.

To keep the innovation journey going, the Group has set up “The Greenhouse”, which is not just an innovation hub, but also an incubator space and accelerator for start-ups and small businesses in the region and internationally. This is just one of the several initiatives taken by the Group to reinvent itself, catalysed by forward thinking and future-proofing. The Group has also been embedding sustainability at the core of its business strategy with a clear commitment towards people, partners and the planet, and by being a member of the United Nations Global Compact Community and signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles.

What you'll be doing

This DevOps Support role is responsible for providing technical leadership and ensuring the successful implementation of the DevOps Support horizontal stream of the Transformation program.

Job Summary  

• This position will take the lead on establishing and managing a comprehensive support model for the organization’s new SAP systems, and will be critical in defining the business-as-usual (BAU) processes and ensuring a smooth collaboration with the appointed System Integrator for Application Management Services (AMS).
• The DevOps Support Lead will focus on modernizing incident management through AI and automation technologies, while ensuring the support model aligns with Group-wide standards and processes
• Additionally, the role will oversee the setup and integration of IT Service Management (ITSM) tools, proactive monitoring systems, and the Group team structure for BAU support. The DevOps Support Lead will also take the lead in managing hypercare support during the critical post-go-live period.
• The DevOps Support Lead will work closely with other functional business and tech leads, stakeholders, and end-users to ensure the support processes put in place are well understood, well communicated to users and thoroughly road-tested before putting into practice
• This role will align with functional technology streams in the program to ensure that the requirements of each functional area are effectively captured in this streams’ scope, and to ensure that dependencies required of functional streams are well managed into DevOps Support
• This role requires knowledge of ERP and enterprise systems, strong leadership capabilities, and excellent communication skills to work with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and vendors.
• Two of the below are assumed to be in collaboration/cooperation with the System Integrator

Support Model Design and Implementation:

• Lead the design and implementation of the BAU support model for SAP systems, ensuring scalability and alignment with organizational objectives.
• Ensure the support model aligns with Chalhoub Group standards, processes, and governance frameworks.
• Collaborate with existing Group Tech + Data stakeholders to define the required operating model and organization design for BAU support, ensuring clear roles and responsibilities across teams and departments.
• Work closely with the System Integrator to establish a clear operational framework for AMS, ensuring roles and responsibilities are well defined
• Service Tooling / ITSM Tools Setup and Integration:
• Lead the configuration, and integration of the Group’s IT Service Management (ITSM) tool (i.e. FreshService) for the support model, including integrations with relevant SAP related tooling such as Cloud ALM
• Ensure the ITSM platform integrates seamlessly with the SAP system and supports incident management, change management, and problem management processes.
• Work with the System Integrator to align their tooling with the organization’s ITSM platform for a unified support ecosystem.
• Ensure the ITSM tool provides visibility and reporting on incidents, service requests, and system health.
• Explore and integrate AI-driven technologies to improve incident detection, triage, and resolution.
• Implement automation tools to streamline repetitive support tasks and reduce manual interventions.
• Develop strategies to proactively identify potential system issues before they impact business operations using predictive analytics and AI.

Incident Management:

• Design and implement an incident management process for SAP systems, ensuring rapid identification, triage, and resolution of issues.
• Collaborate with the System Integrator to set up efficient workflows for incident resolution and escalation.
• Oversee incident tracking and reporting to ensure adherence to SLAs and provide visibility to senior management.

Proactive Monitoring and Alerting:

• Establish robust monitoring and alerting systems to ensure early detection of performance issues and potential disruptions in the SAP systems.
• Implement tools and dashboards to enable real-time monitoring of system health and performance across the SAP landscape.
• Work with the System Integrator to set up alerting mechanisms that provide proactive notifications for potential incidents, enabling faster response times.
• Use predictive monitoring techniques (e.g., AI-based monitoring) to identify and mitigate risks before they impact end-users.

Hypercare Support Leadership

• Take the lead in managing hypercare support immediately following go-live, ensuring rapid response to incidents and minimizing business disruption.
• Coordinate closely with internal teams and the System Integrator to resolve any critical post-go-live issues.
• Monitor system performance and ensure that handover to BAU support is seamless once the hypercare phase is completed.

Knowledge Management:

• Establish a knowledge base for the support team, documenting known issues, resolutions, and best practices to improve the efficiency of the support process.
• Ensure proper training and upskilling of the support team on SAP systems and new tools as they are introduced.

Performance Monitoring and Reporting:

• Develop and maintain dashboards and reports to monitor support performance, including incident resolution times, system uptime, and other critical metrics.
• Provide regular updates to senior leadership on the performance of the support model and any significant incidents or challenges.

Collaboration and Communication:

• Act as the main point of contact between internal teams and the System Integrator for all AMS-related activities.
• Facilitate regular meetings and reporting to ensure alignment on support goals, performance metrics, and continuous improvement opportunities.
• Ensure clear communication channels are established for end-users to report issues and receive updates on incident status.
• Manage relationships with external vendors, including the System Integrator, to ensure effective service delivery and ongoing performance improvement.

What you’ll need to succeed

• Strong understanding of business processes and how they are supported by ERP systems.
• Experience working with ERP and enterprise systems is mandatory, particularly in a support and service management role
• Experience working with SAP is MANDATORY, and ideally with S/4 HANA versions
• Prior demonstrated experience of working with ITSM tooling with
• Experience managing large hybrid teams and offshore teams who perform support activities
• Experience managing external vendors to a budget / target and ensuring close scope management
• Minimum of 8-10 years of experience in technology implementation and management.
• Proven experience as a technical lead or similar role in large-scale transformation programs

Behavioural skills and certification:

• Strong leadership and team management abilities
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Problem-solving and analytical skills
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
• Detail-oriented with a strong focus on quality.
• Proactive and self-motivated with a strong sense of ownership.
• Adaptable and able to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Committed to continuous learning and professional development.

Education and Professional Certification:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., PMP, ITIL, ERP certifications) is a plus

What we can offer you

With us, you will turn your aspirations into reality.  We will help shape your journey through enriching experiences, learning and development opportunities and exposure to different assignments within your role or through internal mobility. Our Group offers diverse career paths for those who are extraordinary, every day.  

We recognise the value that you bring, and we strive to provide a competitive benefits package which includes health care, child education contribution, remote and flexible working policies as well as exclusive employee discounts.  

We Invite All Applicants to Apply

It Takes Diversity Of Thought, Culture, Background, Differing Abilities and Perspectives to truly Inspire, Exhilarate and Delight our customers. At Chalhoub Group, we are committed to inclusion and diversity.

We welcome all applicants to apply and be part of our exciting future. We ensure equal opportunity for all our applicants without regard to gender, age, race, religion, national origin or disability status.