Unilever - SAP Basis Application Manager

About Unilever :

On any given day, two billion people use Unilever products to look good, feel good and get more out of life.

With more than 400 brands focused on health and wellbeing, no company touches so many people's lives in so many different ways.

Our portfolio ranges from nutritionally balanced foods to indulgent ice creams, affordable soaps, luxurious shampoos and everyday household care products. We produce world-leading brands including Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Axe, Hellmann's and Omo, alongside trusted local names such as Blue Band, Pureit and Suave.

From long-established names like Lifebuoy, Sunlight and Pond's to new innovations such as the Pureit affordable water purifier, our range of brands is as diverse as our worldwide consumer base.

Unilever has more than 400 brands, 14 of which generate sales in excess of - 1 billion a year.

Many of these brands have long-standing, strong social missions, including Lifebuoy's drive to promote hygiene through handwashing with soap, and Dove's campaign for real beauty.

About Enterprise Solutions :

Enterprise Solutions is a part of Unilever IT (ETS). It is responsible for IT Innovation, IT Solutions Implementation, IT Run & Support for all the Enterprise Applications in core business functions like Supply Chain, Finance, Sales. The Solutions would largely comprise of Enterprise Applications from SAP, Oracle & In-house developed solutions. The Teams within Enterprise Solutions are structured around

IT Innovation : Design & Program ownership of IT Solutions, driven by SMEs

IT Landscapes : The Total Ownership of the IT Instances, both Global & Regional

Application Mgmt : Owning the Run & Maintain for all applications, including User Support

Enabling Functions : Functions like Project Delivery, System Resilience, Supplier Management, etc

Role Details :

The Application Services team plays a vital role in introducing technology innovation to the business in the form of new and enhanced IT services and in delivering a portfolio of integrated global and regional IT services that enable the business to operate and grow. Application Services delivers second line application support and maintenance services for the Core Platforms, Global Applications and Regional Legacy & Heritage applications in accordance with agreed service levels and ETS Support goals and managing the relationship with, and performance of, all third party providers of application development, support and maintenance services.

As a part of the Application Services Support & Maintenance team, the purpose of the Application Support & Maintenance Manager role is to ensure that IT services are delivered in accordance with the agreed scope and service level agreements; opportunities for achieving greater cost effectiveness are proactively investigated and actioned upon and applications are reviewed and consolidated to remove redundancies, working with various Service Providers.

Accountabilities and responsibilities :

Following are the verticals that an Application Support Manager - SAP Application Basis would be responsible for :

- Application Support and Maintenance - Ensuring our services are available and fit for purpose.

- Vendor management - Managing and building relationships with vendors

- Delivering Reliable & Secure Operations - Ensure Run Operations

- System Performance Optimization - Deliver continuous optimizations

- Housekeeping - Ensure the upkeep of the systems as per best practices

- Resilience and Availability - Ensure Availability and Resilience of Applications.

Driving Innovations :

- Ensure that the Service Providers deliver IT services (Application Support and Application Maintenance) in accordance with the agreed scope & service level agreement (SLA) for all the SAP Estate managed-, in accordance with all applicable performance metrics, including CPIs, KPIs, ESR, user satisfaction targets, operating level agreements and underpinning contracts.

- Ensure that Service Providers resolve incidents and issues in an efficient and effective manner, and that the root cause analysis studies are conducted and clear improvement plans are identified

- Ensure that service requests (SRs) are implemented according to the agreed SLA

- Establishes problem resolution procedures and defines consequences of non-compliance

- Works with Service Delivery teams during issue escalation for coordination, planning and reviews

- Work with Service Providers to plan for progressively reducing incidents, improving availability of services and thereby increasing user/client satisfaction.

Vendor Management :

- Engage with Third Party Vendor teams to deliver Service Levels.

- Hold vendors accountable for quality and timeliness of deliveries through governance mechanisms

- Ensure the right level of skills and knowledge exists within teams to be able to run Application Support operations at all times.

Delivering Reliable & Secure Operations :

- Ensure regular System Monitoring & Health Checks

- Bring in pro-active measures to measure system performance

- Deliver on the Uptime & Availability Targets

- Manage Incidents and Problems as per set SLAs

- Ensure Security and SOX Compliance across the SAP Landscape

System Performance Optimization :

- Ensure landscape performance KPIs and success criteria are established and followed for the landscape, relevant teams in Landscape and services are coordinated accordingly.

- Manage the landscape performance KPI monitoring process and ensure KPI's are measured correctly.

- Where necessary, initiate and manage projects to keep the KPI's in agreed scale and even plan for further improvements in a proactive manner, engage necessary resources.

- Gather detailed information on where KPI's are not met & facilitate responsive actions which may then be transformed into improvement projects.

- Work with all levels of contacts from cross functional teams for further enhancing the KPI's and system performance.

- Ensure strict Governance to keep the performance of the systems to acceptable levels of performance across the landscape.

Housekeeping :

- Periodically check and schedule the housekeeping activities like archiving as per retention policy, undertaking Re-Organization of tables. Identifying top contributors to growth of the database, performance and put up action plan to optimize.

- Monitor SAP Landscapes for the effectiveness of DVM related activities carried out by Application teams in line with the Retention Policy that is set for reporting and providing feedback during Application reviews.

- Ensure housekeeping jobs are running as scheduled and new jobs are put into process as needed, ensure other housekeeping actions are also planned and taken as well,

- Ensure that improvement activities are carried out according to landscape methodology, agreed design, meeting Unilever global standards, security and performance criteria and General IT & SOX controls.

Resilience and Availability :

- Bring in or operate pro-active measures to measure service performance.

- Plan for and ensure Proactive Application maintenanceto prevent unplanned disruption due to incompatibility of software versions & incomplete/untested release packages

- Ensure high availability of Applications to the Unilever business by designing and deploying high quality maintenance plans, coveringbackup, archiving, housekeeping, health checks, job runs, administration, etc.

- Working in coordination with the Program Innovation teams and managing the transition of application management responsibility from the Innovation team to Application Maintenance Team.

- Ensure minimal business disruption. In case of a disruption, resolve the issue and the root cause with less downtime

Process and Technology knowledge required :

Business Processes :

- ITIL Process Framework

Main Associated Technologies / Applications (current view) :

- SAP Netweaver AS ABAP & AS JAVA

- Database Systems like DB2

- Operating System AIX, WinTel

- HANA, BW Accelerators