ERP Operations Manager in Hook

At Elanco (NYSE: ELAN) – it all starts with animals! As a global leader in animal health, we are dedicated to innovation and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets. At Elanco, we pride ourselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We believe that diversity is the driving force behind innovation, creativity, and overall business success.

Your Role:

We are seeking an experienced ERP Operations Manager to assume end-to-end ownership of ERP AMS operations, driving operational stability, continuous improvement, and service excellence. As the first dedicated ERP Ops lead, you will not only manage current operations but will also define the operational framework and standards that will govern how other ERP functional areas (such as Finance or HR) are integrated into our global operations model as the team expands.

Your Responsibilities:

• Day-to-day Vendor Management: Ensuring our SAP Application Managed Services (AMS) partner(s) perform according to their SLAs and driving a customer-first service vision.
• Functional Oversight: Ownership of the day-to-day delivery of SAP services supporting global Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Quality, ensuring high availability and performance of business-critical processes.
• Operational Blueprinting: Defining the "Run" approach for the ERP ecosystem, establishing the templates for incident, change, and release management that will be adopted by future ERP operational pillars.
• Stakeholder Interaction: Engaging with globally dispersed ERP leadership to understand demand patterns, improvement opportunities, and impact assessment for incidents.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Interactions with other IT stakeholders (e.g., SAP Functional Leads, Data Integrity teams, Solution Architects and other Operation Managers covering different service lines) to ensure service suitability and GxP compliance.
• Leadership Reporting: Interactions with Senior IT and Business leadership regarding ERP performance, status of major incidents, and reporting on service improvement initiatives.
• Efficiency & Automation: Work with service partners to increase operational efficiency through the identification of automation opportunities, "shift-left" support opportunities, and proactive monitoring.
• Governance: Provide day-to-day governance of service partners alongside the SIAM team and support the TechOps senior leadership team as required.
• Representation: Represent the TechOps Operations team at SAP service reviews, CAB, Problem Reviews and other appropriate operational forums.

You’ll spend your time:

• Building relationships with key staff at our SAP service partner(s) to ensure timely resolution and efficient escalation of complex ERP issues.
• Establishing the ERP "Run" Playbook, refining operational services alongside the ITSM team to ensure a scalable model for other ERP modules.
• Partnering with ERP stakeholders to understand business-critical cycles and ensure IT operations support peak demand.
• Ensuring GxP compliance and quality practices are embedded in every SAP change and operational activity.
• Attending the weekly CAB and Problem Review Board to ensure ERP operational perspectives and business impacts are represented.
• Engage in Service Operations tasks across all phases of the lifecycle including Incident, Problem, Change and Release processes and be the point of contact for all ERP major incidents.
• Ensuring "Build to Run" readiness, engaging early in the project lifecycle for new SAP deployments to ensure they are supportable.
• Developing communications for senior leaders and end-users reporting on the health of ERP services and progress on improvement plans.
• Staying abreast of SAP trends (e.g., S/4HANA innovations) to guide IT on how to best leverage emerging ERP technologies.

What You Need to Succeed (minimum qualifications):

• Extensive experience in ERP/SAP operations delivery, managing complex, global environments.
• Proven experience managing outsourced AMS partners and driving vendor accountability.
• Demonstrable knowledge of SAP lifecycle management, including transport management, GxP/Validation requirements, and ERP governance.
• Experience in a regulated environment (Life Sciences/Pharma preferred) with knowledge of IT Audits and Quality systems.
• Certified or strong awareness of common ITIL processes.

What will give you a competitive edge (preferred qualifications):

• Strategic thinking: Ability to define operational processes that can be scaled across a growing team.
• Demonstrated influence and communication skills across all levels of IT and business leadership.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to convey complex technical ERP issues in a business-focused manner.

Additional Information:

• Travel: 0%
• Location: UK, Hook or Liverpool