Head of Procurement Platforms — Platform Owner (Technology)

Job description

Prudential’s purpose is to be partners for every life and protectors for every future. Our purpose encourages everything we do by creating a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our people, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and we support our people’s career ambitions. We pledge to make Prudential a place where you can Connect, Grow, and Succeed. The Head of Procurement Platforms is the Technology Platform Owner for the Coupa Source-to-Pay (S2P) ecosystem, accountable end-to-end for the stability, evolution and transformation of the platform serving all in-scope markets across the region and the full employee base. The role owns three integrated mandates: Run the platform — guarantee BAU service levels for a high-volume incident and service-request workload across multiple Coupa instances. Improve the platform — own the continuous-improvement pipeline of enhancements, change requests and release cycles, with disciplined governance against the group's universal core model and master-data governance standards. Transform the platform — stand up and run a sustainable, project-driven delivery structure to industrialise the migration of in-scope markets onto the strategic Coupa configuration, sequenced with the broader Finance ERP transformation. The role sits firmly on the Technology side and partners as a true platform owner with Group Procurement, Group Finance, Risk, Audit and adjacent platform teams (ERP, Middleware, Identity & Access). Job Responsibilities Platform Ownership & Technology Governance Act as the single accountable Technology owner for the Coupa S2P platform across all production instances and in-scope markets. Define and enforce platform standards (configuration, master data, integrations, approval matrices) in line with the group's universal core model and master-data governance framework. Operate within a unified ERP–Coupa change and incident framework, including a unified Change Control Board, a common P1–P5 SLA matrix and a shared incident dashboard. Own platform-level audit readiness across SOX/ITGC, privileged-access controls, backup and audit-trail compliance. Be the accountable Technology counterpart to the platform vendor, including incident escalation, premium support engagement and crisis management. BAU Technology Maintenance — Incident & Service Request Management Lead the L2 / L2.5 platform support layer for the Coupa ecosystem, accountable for resolving a high volume of incidents and service requests every year with measurable SLA performance. Drive systemic resolution of recurring SLA-breach themes — integration outbound, workflow and status defects, approval routing, due-diligence and risk-rating lifecycle, expense processing and reporting strain. Close transparency gaps by establishing a true triage and communication layer that owns user notifications, status updates and SLA cadence so requesters always know where they stand. Bring all platform tickets into a single, governed service-management tool with full SLA tracking and reporting. Co-own the rebalancing of Level 1 service requests with the Business Help Desk, including SOPs, role bundles, training and access design. Harden the integration layer with the ERP, the General Ledger, identity and HR systems, and the supplier portal — including proactive monitoring of supplier onboarding, invoice outbound, expense flows and master-data sync. Continuous Improvement — Change Requests, Enhancements & Releases Own the end-to-end Change & Release pipeline: from CR intake through impact assessment, design, build, key-user testing, UAT, hyper-care and post-implementation review. Manage a continuously evolving backlog of strategic and local change requests across all in-scope markets. Manage the platform's annual major releases, periodic maintenance windows and ad-hoc updates with disciplined Change Board scoping and key-user communication. Drive the master-data governance approval engine for global and local master data — chart of accounts, cost centres, tax codes, commodity mappings, approval chains, programmes and due-diligence templates. Build a CR prioritisation discipline with Procurement, Finance, Risk and the markets so that high-volume local demand does not destabilise BAU. Project-Driven Structure for Migration & Transformation Stand up and lead a strategic Coupa “Rollout Factory” — a sustainable, repeatable delivery engine to migrate the remaining markets onto the strategic Coupa configuration, sequenced with the broader Finance ERP rollout. Build the L3 release, change and project layer with the appropriate seniority profile, including an intellectual-property retention strategy and a progressive reduction of dependency on the external System Integrator. Industrialise the rollout playbook: templated configuration, standard cutover, standard test packs, standard hyper-care — and drive unit-cost reduction per market migration as velocity scales. Partner with the ERP programme to avoid double cutovers, jointly plan readiness, and align under a single Ecosystem Programme Steering Committee. Lead in-flight transformation workstreams including legacy retirements, governance-tool transitions, identity and access deepening, privileged-access management onboarding, and the migration to an enterprise service-management platform. Coordinate technical readiness across peripheral systems (HRIS, identity, GL, data lake, middleware) for every market go-live — across SIT, UAT, mock cutover, cutover and hyper-care phases. Stakeholder Management Be the senior Technology face of the Coupa platform to Group Procurement, Group Finance, in-market CFOs and Finance Controllers, Risk SMEs, Internal Audit and external auditors. Run cross-market governance forums covering the platform ecosystem, change boards, supplier-performance reviews and release planning. Manage vendor relationships with the platform provider, the external System Integrator (acting as implementation partner) and the managed-services partner. Handle escalations with discipline and transparency, closing out long-standing concerns on response times, ticket transparency and contract renewals. Represent the platform in audit and regulatory engagements, including SOX walkthroughs, privileged-access reviews and audit-trail compliance, working with internal audit and external auditors. Team Management & Leadership Lead and develop a sizeable regional platform team organised into focused delivery pods (functional, technical, integration), with a clear separation of triage, BAU and release/project layers. Strengthen the team's seniority profile and build a senior bench, succession plans and clear career paths into L3 and architecture roles. Mitigate single-point-of-failure and key-person risk through documented SOPs, country-cluster delegation and structured knowledge management. Drive an upskilling agenda: platform training and certification, strategic configuration fluency, integration and API skills, and platform-engineering discipline. Foster a culture of accountability, transparency with users, audit readiness and continuous improvement, and a healthy partnership with the unified Technology L2 across ERP and middleware. Job Qualifications 15+ years in enterprise technology platform ownership, with at least 8 years running a procurement / S2P platform at regional or global scale (Coupa strongly preferred; SAP Ariba, Oracle Procurement Cloud or equivalent considered). Proven track record running large-scale platform support operations: high ticket volumes, multi-country footprint, SLA-governed, audit-regulated. Demonstrated delivery of multi-market platform rollouts and migrations — ideally including ERP / S2P transformation programmes alongside the platform owner's BAU mandate. Strong grounding in Procure-to-Pay end-to-end: requisitioning, sourcing, contracts, invoicing, expenses, supplier management, intercompany processing and AP integration with the GL. Experience operating under SOX / ITGC / DORA or equivalent regulatory environments, with comfort managing external audit engagements. Hands-on experience standing up or industrialising a rollout-factory model, including reducing System Integrator dependency and driving down per-unit delivery cost. Track record managing senior stakeholders across Procurement, Finance, Risk, Technology and external vendors. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Finance or a related discipline; postgraduate qualification or relevant professional certifications a plus. Skills & Capabilities Deep functional and technical knowledge of Coupa modules (Core S2P, Supplier Portal, Sourcing, Contracts, Expenses, Risk Assess) and the surrounding integration landscape with ERP, middleware, identity, HRIS and SSO/AD. Strong service-management discipline (ITIL): incident, problem, change, release, knowledge and major-incident management, with a clear separation of L1 / L2 / L2.5 / L3 responsibilities. Strong engineering and analytical judgement — able to push the team beyond “ticket hammering” into permanent fixes for systemic process fragility (workflow automation, due-diligence lifecycle, integration reliability). Excellent communication — able to translate technical complexity into a crisp executive narrative for C-suite audiences and into plain language for end-users. Strong vendor management and commercial acumen: SoW shaping, SLA design, intercompany recharges, performance scoring frameworks and structured System Integrator exit planning. High-energy, hands-on, accountability-driven leadership style, with the maturity to operate calmly during incidents and crises. Comfort with modern service-management and governance tooling, master-data governance documentation, and modern automation and self-service patterns. Resilient under pressure, with a strong instinct to protect L3 capacity, professionalise escalation, and turn recurring incidents into governed product and problem backlog items. Prudential is an equal opportunity employer. We provide equality of opportunity of benefits for all who apply and who perform work for our organisation irrespective of sex, race, age, ethnic origin, educational, social and cultural background, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, disability or part-time / fixed-term work, or any other status protected by applicable law. We encourage the same standards from our recruitment and third-party suppliers taking into account the context of grade, job and location. We also allow for reasonable adjustments to support people with individual physical or mental health requirements.