Role Summary
The Principal Technical Functional Analyst serves as the design authority and senior technical/functional analyst for LN, PLM and EAM platforms. This role ensures end‑to‑end solution integrity, strategic alignment between business objectives and IT capabilities, and long‑term sustainability of the ERP roadmap.
This position, which collaborates with the VP of Information Technology, focuses on aligning standard ERP functions with business needs while keeping customizations to a minimum. The role bridges business process owners, ERP delivery team, and external vendors.
Core Purpose
- Ensure the ERP and supporting systems enables business strategy, operational efficiency, and scalability—not merely system stability.
- Provide guidance on ERP and supporting systems configuration, integration, security, and limited customization to support enterprise objectives
- Own and govern ERP and supporting systems design decisions across modules, integrations, data, and technical architecture
- Protect long‑term maintainability, upgradeability, and value realization of enterprise systems
Key Responsibilities
Business & Process Leadership
- Lead or oversee cross‑functional process analysis and requirements definition across Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and related domains
- Work with business process owners to embrace standard system functionality to provide successful outcomes, process harmonization and enterprise consistency.
- Act as a trusted advisor to business leaders on how to utilize systems capabilities
Ownership
DDefine and govern the ERP solution blueprint, including:
- Core modules and functional scope
- Integrations and middleware
- Security roles and access controls
- Technical and environment architecture
- Work with VP of IT to approve configuration approaches, custom developments, extensibilities, and integrations to ensure architectural integrity and upgrade readiness
- Establish ERP design standards and guardrails
Implementation & Lifecycle Governance
- Oversee ERP and supporting systems implementations, upgrades, and major enhancements to ensure alignment with the enterprise requirements, budget, and risk profile
- Lead the effort to set standards for:
- Testing strategy and quality assurance
- Data migration and data quality
- Cutover and go‑live readiness
- Post‑deployment hypercare and stabilization
- Ensure lessons learned are incorporated into future releases and roadmap planning
Stakeholder & Vendor Management
- Serve as a translator between business stakeholders and technical teams
- Lead the conversations providing clear direction to system integrators and software vendors, validating recommendations against enterprise standards and business priorities
- Influence roadmap decisions with ERP and supporting systems vendors while protecting organizational interests and architectural integrity
Governance, Risk & Continuous Optimization
- Influence ERP and supporting systems design authorities, architecture review boards, and change governance
- Control what enters the ERP and supporting systems backlog and what proceeds to build and deployment
- Monitor ERP and supporting systems adoption, system performance, data quality, and business value realization
- Involvement in continuous improvement initiatives across processes, controls, reporting, and automation
Typical Skills & Experience
Required
- Cross‑functional business process expertise across multiple ERP domains
- Hands‑on experience with at least one major ERP platform (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Infor LN)
- Strong technical literacy, including:
- Integrations and middleware
- Data migration and master data governance
- Security roles and controls
- Environment strategy and release management
- Performance and upgrade considerations
- Ability to lead teams and influence stakeholders while guiding delivery teams
- Experience managing conflict between local business needs and global enterprise standards
Preferred
- Experience serving as ERP design authority or enterprise solution architect
- Background in manufacturing or asset‑intensive industries
- Experience leading multi‑year ERP roadmaps and large‑scale transformations
