Project leadership, travel and expense
Rollouts, system changes and harmonisation with a defined end state. I take overall leadership, from gathering requirements through delivery to handover into regular operations.
Most recently responsible for the travel and expense processes of around 100,000 employees in more than 50 countries, and before that for building and rolling out the function globally for around 35,000 employees in 15 countries.
Undertakings I lead
- Global rollouts of travel and expense platforms across country organisations, planned in waves
- Harmonisation of separate system landscapes after a carve-out, spin-off or acquisition
- Integration of add-ons and interfaces to ERP, HR and finance systems
- Building a central travel function as a group-wide centre of competence and service
How I lead them
- Gathering requirements across the countries involved, consolidating and prioritising them
- Defining the global target process and establishing which local deviations are genuinely needed
- Fit-to-standard and fit-gap analysis, assessment of feasibility
- System analysis of configuration, expense types, workflows, approval logic and interfaces as the basis for the target architecture
- Reflecting the travel policy in the system, including approval and validation logic
- Decision papers for open process, system and architecture questions
- Managing dependencies, risks, decisions and escalations
- Reporting to management and the steering committee, tracking schedule, resources and quality
Through to handover
- Test strategy from system and integration testing to end-to-end and user acceptance testing
- Data analysis, data cleansing and migration
- Cutover, go-live and hypercare
- Change management, communication and training for travellers, bookers and approvers
- Support model, roles and responsibilities clarified and handed over in documented form
Interfaces
Travel and expense undertakings rarely fail on the technology. They fail because nobody holds the parties together. I work in the triangle of finance, HR and IT, alongside sourcing, tax, data protection and the works council, and coordinate the key users and local contacts in the countries. Alongside the management of external providers: travel management companies, system vendors and implementation partners, with service levels, escalation paths and regular business reviews.
Systems from projects
SAP Concur Travel and Expense as the central platform, including rollout, administration and release and change management. Alongside online booking engines and add-ons such as Cytric, Navan and Yokoy, and the interfaces to ERP, HR and finance systems.
Method
Project management in classic, agile and hybrid forms, depending on what the undertaking requires. Certified Scrum Master and Product Owner through scrum.org. Alongside process optimisation and change management.
Languages
German as a native speaker, English at negotiation level. I run international projects in both.
If you need to fill an undertaking or bring in project leadership for a fixed term, write me a line about what it involves.