Senior Manager, ERP & Business Applications

Senior Manager, ERP & Business Applications

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, ERP & Enterprise Applications provides strategic leadership and accountability for the organization's ERP platform, and related modernization initiatives. This role is responsible for defining and executing the strategy and roadmap for the ERP while ensuring operational reliability, security, scalability, and alignment with the organization's long-term business objectives.

The Senior Manager will lead the modernization of legacy ERP capabilities and associated business processes, balancing the need to maintain stable day-to-day operations with the transformation required to support future growth. The role serves as a strategic partner to business and technology leadership, translating organizational priorities into technology investments, application roadmaps, and measurable business outcomes.

This position provides leadership for ERP application development, business application support, integrations, and SQL database administration, while establishing effective governance, portfolio prioritization, delivery practices, and vendor partnerships.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and ERP Modernization

• Define and execute the enterprise applications and ERP strategy, roadmap, and multi-year modernization plan.
• Lead the evaluation and modernization of legacy ERP capabilities, applications, integrations, and supporting technologies.
• Develop business cases, investment recommendations, and implementation strategies for major ERP and enterprise application initiatives.
• Balance operational stability, technical debt reduction, business demand, and long-term transformation priorities.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and standardize business processes, improve data quality, increase automation, and reduce manual or redundant activities.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, automation, and analytics, to improve business capabilities and operational performance.

Business and Technology Leadership

• Serve as a strategic partner to business leaders across manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, finance, quality, and other functional areas.
• Establish strong relationships with stakeholders and ensure technology investments are aligned with enterprise priorities.
• Lead cross-functional discussions to resolve competing priorities, clarify ownership, and drive alignment on major initiatives.
• Translate business strategy and operational requirements into actionable technology strategies and investment plans.
• Communicate application strategy, modernization progress, risks, dependencies, and investment needs to executive leadership.

Enterprise Applications Portfolio and Delivery

• Provide overall leadership for the ERP and enterprise applications portfolio, including application development, support, integrations, and modernization initiatives.
• Establish portfolio governance processes to evaluate, prioritize, fund, and sequence technology investments.
• Ensure effective management of application demand, project portfolios, development backlogs, resource capacity, and delivery commitments.
• Establish consistent practices for requirements management, solution design, development, testing, release management, change management, and production support.
• Monitor delivery performance and establish corrective actions when projects, programs, or operational services are at risk.

Application and Technical Leadership

• Lead and develop teams responsible for ERP development, application support, business analysis, integrations, and SQL database administration.
• Establish clear accountability between business application teams, software engineering, database administration, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and data teams.
• Partner with technical leaders to establish appropriate application architecture, engineering standards, integration strategies, and modernization practices.
• Drive the reduction of technical debt and improve application scalability, maintainability, performance, and resiliency.
• Develop organizational capabilities needed to support future ERP and enterprise application requirements.

SQL Database Administration and Operational Resilience

• Provide leadership and management oversight for SQL database administration supporting ERP and critical business applications.
• Ensure appropriate strategies and operational practices for database availability, performance, capacity, maintenance, security, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery.
• Establish accountability for testing and validating restoration, recovery, and business continuity capabilities.
• Partner with Infrastructure and Cybersecurity leadership to manage platform dependencies, vulnerabilities, patching, access controls, and operational risks.
• Ensure significant application and database incidents are effectively managed, root causes are addressed, and recurring issues are systematically eliminated.

Governance, Risk, and Financial Management

• Establish governance structures for ERP and enterprise application decisions, including prioritization, architecture, investments, risk, and modernization.
• Identify and manage technology, operational, cybersecurity, vendor, and implementation risks.
• Develop and manage budgets, resource plans, and investment proposals for enterprise applications and modernization initiatives.
• Manage strategic relationships with ERP vendors, system integrators, consultants, and other technology partners.
• Ensure external partners are accountable for delivery quality, knowledge transfer, and achievement of expected business outcomes.
• Support audit, compliance, cybersecurity, and business continuity requirements related to enterprise applications and data.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in ERP, enterprise applications, software engineering, or business systems leadership.
• 5+ years of experience leading technical, application, development, or enterprise technology teams.
• Demonstrated experience leading major ERP implementations, upgrades, modernization programs, or enterprise application transformations.
• Experience supporting complex ERP environments within manufacturing, industrial, supply chain, or other operationally intensive organizations.
• Strong understanding of enterprise business processes, including manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, inventory, finance, and related operations.
• Experience with application development, integrations, enterprise architecture, vendor management, and technology portfolio management.
• Working knowledge of SQL Server and database administration, including performance, high availability, backup and recovery, disaster recovery, and security.
• Demonstrated ability to develop technology strategies, manage significant investments, and communicate effectively with executive leadership.
• Strong leadership, organizational change, stakeholder management, financial management, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience modernizing a legacy, custom-developed, or highly customized ERP platform.
• Experience leading complex transformation programs involving multiple business functions and geographic locations.
• Experience with manufacturing systems, MES, quality systems, supply chain technologies, or plant-floor integrations.
• Experience establishing application governance, product management, or modern software delivery practices.

Leadership Profile

The successful candidate will be a strategic, collaborative, and execution-focused technology leader capable of leading both operational excellence and business transformation.

This individual must be able to create alignment among business and technology stakeholders, establish clear priorities, make informed investment and risk decisions, and lead teams through significant organizational and technology change. The Senior Manager must balance the immediate demands of maintaining critical ERP operations with the long-term responsibility of building a modern, scalable, and sustainable enterprise application environment.

Key Measures of Success

Success in this role will be measured by:

• Progress against the ERP modernization and enterprise applications roadmap.
• Reliability, availability, and performance of critical business applications.
• Successful reduction of technical debt and legacy technology risk.
• Delivery of major initiatives within agreed scope, timeline, budget, and business outcomes.
• Improved business process standardization, automation, and user adoption.
• Application development throughput, cycle time, and delivery predictability.
• Reduction in recurring production incidents and operational issues.
• Database availability, performance, backup success, and recovery readiness.
• Successful disaster recovery and restoration testing.
• Business stakeholder satisfaction and confidence in IT delivery.
• Development and retention of high-performing application and technical teams.
• Effective management of technology investments, vendors, and external partners.