Platform Manager – Sasol

Purpose of Job

Lead the definition, creation, thought leadership and provisioning of the SAP/ERP platforms to drive business value and support operations.
Responsible for the general health (availability and stability) of relevant applications and delivery of all contracted services.
Ensure that related ERP Platforms and their upgrades and enhancements are planned, designed, built and deployed successfully to meet the needs of the Product Delivery Teams.
Be accountable for ERP/SAP Platforms roadmaps and ensures that they are aligned to the IM strategy and enable long-term business improvement goals.
Work closely with the Product Team starting from Discover & Describe phase to bring in the technology considerations and opportunities in the demand evaluation. They offer a range of deliveries, from large scale complex programs to simple rapid delivery projects, supported by the relevant knowledge, skills, tools and techniques (e.g. Agile, PMP, MSP).

Key Accountabilities

Develop and manage relationships with technology partners and lead the ERP Platform’s related technology watch upon industry and technology trends to assess for future opportunities and roadmaps.
Understand and manage the application licenses to ensure that they drive optimisation.
Work with relevant teams to identify and implement automation initiatives in the application environments. Drive proactive monitoring and AIOPS of the applications to ensure that systems stability.
Responsible for ensuring the sustained performance of the platform that is driven by AIOPS, tasked with finding automation opportunities to optimise the platforms day-to-day running, define and manage the strategic vision, manage capacity, resources and co-ordinates prioritisation sessions with stakeholders from each portfolio.
Focus on ensuring that Product Portfolio teams underlying platform is stable and responsible for ensuring the sustained performance of the ERP platform, finding automation opportunities to optimise the platforms day-to-day running, define and manage the strategic vision, manage capacity, resources and co-ordinates prioritisation sessions with stakeholders from each portfolio.
Responsible for all the SOX tests in the ERP platform to ensure that they are well executed to prevent risks and audit findings.
Provide input to the strategic direction for Platforms in terms of providing clear north star vision for Sasol’s business and technology.
Work with Enterprise Architects, Senior Solution Architects and technology partners to ensure alignment of IM Platform visions and roadmaps with IM strategy and target Enterprise Architecture and Vendor Management.
Establish and provide platform maintenance roadmap and business case and ensures that proper knowledge management process and systems are in place for platforms and services.
Manage the vendor ecosystem and responsible for the TCO of platforms.
Ensure Requirements Management, Service Design, Process Design and Solution design for Platform and Services.
Prepare proposals for optimisation, upgrades, retirement and/or replacement of Platforms.
Collaborate with Delivery Management to develop DevOps technology strategy and implementation frameworks to align with the different Platform roadmaps.
Drive buy-in and adoption of platforms enhancements and upgrades.
Collaborate with delivery management to ensure that all the solutions and changes adheres to Deployment, Transition & Change Management practices.
Set Service Continuity, Capacity, Event and Availability Management standards for Platform and Services.
Set standards for the support & implementation partners for SLA and KPI framework that is aligned with the vision for the Platforms.
Ensure that all platforms related solutions and changes are tested in accordance with the Quality Assurance & Testing practices and policies.
Drive adoption and implementation of quality assurance and test automation practices in the platforms and solutions.
Work with the IT Hardware and Software Asset Management teams to ensure that there is proper inventory management and asset management for all platform assets.
Collaborate with service providers and other platform managers to ensure configuration management completeness, compliance and correctness.

Formal Education

Universty Bachelor’s Degree (Information Technology) OR Relevant Degree

SAP Certificate (Wish)

Industry Certification in architecture ((e.g., TOGAF, GxP, ISO 9000) – preferable

Certification in a Business Process Management Methodology (e.g., BPM, SDLC, ITIL, DevOps, Agile, COBIT). preferable

Working Experience

11+ relevant experience

SAP & SOX Experience – Must

Certification and Professional Membership

ITIL 4 Foundation. Azure Fundamentals, COBIT 5

Required Personal and Professional Skills