Business Architect

Project Role : Business Architect

Project Role Description : Identify opportunities to deliver tangible business value by assessing the current state, capturing high-level requirements, and defining business solutions. Translate business needs into technology-enabled solutions and operating models. Support transformation by developing business cases and guiding implementation of key initiatives.

Must have skills : SAP Ariba

Good to have skills : NA

Minimum 12 Year(s) Of Experience Is Required

Educational Qualification : 15 years full time education

Summary:

As an SAP Ariba Supplier Management Business Architect, you will own a module workstream end to end, from design decisions through to cutover, leading a small team while remaining hands-on for Supplier Management within the Procurement tower of the DRS SAP programme. The role exists to design supplier lifecycle and performance management on SAP Ariba and its integration to the SAP backend, so that onboarding, qualification and risk controls govern downstream buying.

You carry the workstream delivery commitment: defensible estimates, early disclosure of risk, and diagnosis to root cause rather than escalation. You are expected to make AI a measurable productivity lever for your team, governed by a defined validation standard.

You lead a small delivery team and hold the working relationship with the business process owners for this module, while remaining hands-on in configuration.

Roles & Responsibilities:

Scope & Decision Rights: Own the module design. You determine configuration approach, estimates and sequencing for the workstream and approve the deliverables of the engineers you lead cross-module design changes are agreed with the process area lead.

Supplier Lifecycle Design: Design and configure Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance: registration, qualification, segmentation, modular questionnaires, approval flows and supplier status governance.

Supplier Risk & Compliance: Design the supplier risk and compliance controls that determine whether a supplier can be transacted with, and make those controls enforceable in the downstream buying process.

Ariba to S/4HANA Integration: Own the integration design through Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway, including supplier replication to the SAP vendor master, field mapping, error handling and reconciliation.

Process Architecture & Fit-to-Standard: Lead fit-to-standard discussions, challenge requirements that push the solution off standard, and document the decisions and their consequences.

Integration & Dependencies: Work with the MM Purchasing team for downstream buying controls, with Master Data for vendor master governance, and with Finance for the payment-relevant supplier attributes.

Workstream Delivery Ownership: Estimate, sequence and deliver the module workstream against milestones, enforcing the quality gates for configuration, specifications, test evidence and defect containment.

Issue Diagnosis & Corrective Action: Lead resolution where supplier replication failures or qualification controls being bypassed in the live buying process places a milestone at risk: diagnose across configuration, data and integration layers, evaluate options against time and risk, and drive the agreed course to closure.

AI-Enabled Delivery & Joule Agent Specification: Build and maintain the reusable prompt and accelerator set for supplier onboarding scenario generation, replication failure pattern analysis and requirement-to-design drafting, define the validation standard applied within the team, and evidence the effort saved. Use SAP Joule for Consultants as standard practice and curate its grounding content for this module. Identify Joule agent use cases, write the specification and supply the process context the AI and AIDLC tower builds, and you validate the result against the business outcome.

Team Leadership & Mentoring: Lead a small delivery team, allocate work to capability, review deliverables before release, and develop engineers in both module depth and delivery discipline.

Stakeholder Management: Lead requirement and design workshops with business process owners, present options, impacts and risks in business terms, and defend scope where change threatens the committed date.

Professional & Technical Skills:

Must-Have Skills

Ariba SLP: Design and configuration ownership of Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance, including registration, qualification, segmentation and modular questionnaires.

Ariba Integration: Demonstrated experience with Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway and supplier data replication to SAP vendor master, including error handling.

Supplier Master Governance: Strong expertise in vendor master data structure, duplicate control and the governance model around supplier creation.

Process Architecture: Demonstrated capability to capture requirements, define the target process and produce a defensible solution design rather than a configuration inventory.

Business Case & Stakeholder Work: Demonstrated experience translating procurement business needs into solution and operating model decisions with clear impact statements.

Hands-On Currency: Current and continuous hands-on configuration work on the primary skill, with no sustained break from build activity in the last 18 months.

AI-Enabled Delivery: Demonstrated use of AI to raise workstream throughput through prompt sets, accelerators or analysis routines adopted by others, governed by a defined validation standard.

SAP Joule for Consultants & Agent Specification: Working use of SAP Joule for Consultants, including grounding it in client-specific content, together with the capability to identify Joule agent use cases in the module and specify them for a dedicated AI capability to build. Where prior Joule exposure is absent, working proficiency is expected within 90 days of joining.

Evidence of AI Adoption: Demonstrable adoption of AI in delivery work, evidenced through AI assistant use, reusable accelerators, automation of recurring delivery tasks or codified playbooks adopted by others, together with the judgement to verify generated output before it is acted on.

Workstream Management: Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of an SAP module workstream: estimation, milestone commitment, defect management, integration test and cutover.

Team Leadership: Demonstrated leadership of a small delivery team and direct ownership of business stakeholder relationships, including contested scope discussions.

Good to Have Skills

Ariba Sourcing, Contracts, Buying & Invoicing

SAP Business Network and trading relationship management

SAP Fieldglass for contingent labour

Ariba APIs and extensibility

Additional Information:

A 15-year full-time education is required, as stated in the approved demand record.

Minimum 12 years of experience on the primary skill, as specified in the approved demand record.

Hands-on configuration work on the primary skill current at the point of application.

Workstream ownership across at least two full lifecycle SAP implementations or large rollouts.

Evidenced examples of AI-assisted delivery methods adopted by other members of the team.

Working proficiency in SAP Joule for Consultants, either held on appointment or achieved within 90 days of joining.