Global Process Owner Master Data Management (MDM)

Global Process Owner Master Data Management (MDM)

Sofia, Bulgaria Remote

About Swissport

We are a global leader in sustainable and responsible airport services provision, renowned for our unwavering commitment to safety, operational excellence, and exceptional service, shaping a future where air travel thrives on reliability, efficiency, and experience.

In 2023, with the support of more than 60,000 colleagues, Swissport provided best-in-class airport ground services for some 232 million airline passengers and handled roughly 4.7 million tons of air freight at 115 cargo centres. Across a global network that is unparalleled in the industry, Swissport served airlines at 286 airports in 44 countries across six continents.

The culture of Swissport is shaped by our corporate values, which guide our actions and decision-making processes. These values are at the core of our culture, shaping our business and underpinning our commitment to measuring our impact. They capture the essence of who we are at Swissport and help us deliver value across the entire company.

"Show You Care" underlines that our actions are perceived and valued from the perspective of the people around us. So, whatever we do, we do it purposefully and consciously, taking in the perspective of our colleagues, customers, and passengers.

“Doing the right things” means that we do the things that are valuable to our colleagues, customers, and passengers. We are trained to do this safely and trusted to do the right thing in any given situation.

"Win as a Team" highlights the importance of teamwork. Either we win as a team, or we fall as individuals. Together, we can surpass ourselves and handle any situation.

These values capture the essence of who we are and our unwavering commitment to excellence, and give actionable guidance for individual behaviour of employees, leaders, and executives, serving as a compass for how to act and deliver.

Job Summary

Lead and deliver all sales & commercial activities in the sub region in close partnership with the country commercial teams to achieve revenue, sales, and profit targets in line with financial objectives while ensuring full compliance with Swissport’s governance, policies and procedures.

Job Summary

The Global Process Owner Master Data Management (MDM) is responsible for the transformation, governance and enhancement of master data processes across the organization. In scope of MDM are the finance and enterprise master data objects underpinning the end-to-end processes: Chart of Accounts and general ledger accounts, cost centers, profit centers, internal orders and projects, fixed asset master data, business partners (customers and vendors), banks and payment data, as well as the organizational structures (company codes, plants, segments) they depend on.

This role plays a critical leadership position in the SAP S/4HANA public cloud implementation program, driving the design, build and global roll-out of a standardized master data model and governance framework. The position leads the MDM workstream through the template build phase and subsequent multi-country implementations, ensuring strict adherence to SAP Best Practices and Fit-to-Standard principles, and owns data readiness (cleansing, mapping, migration and validation) for every go-live.

The position must collaborate with functional departments on global, cluster and country level while influencing decisions where required. The Global Process Owner is responsible for designing and implementing standardized best-in-class master data creation, change and retirement processes, defending the global data model against local deviations, and ensuring all internal and external regulations (audit, tax, data protection) are met. Additionally, the role drives the establishment and continuous improvement of MDM Shared Services operations, delivering excellent data quality to the business in line with agreed operating targets.

Job Responsibilities:

1. Strategy & Governance

• Vision and roadmap. Drive the global MDM vision and roadmap. Turn group strategy into operational goals with senior stakeholders from Global Finance, IT, Procurement, Commercial and Cluster Finance. Keep it aligned with the Finance Transformation, the Target Operating Model and Finance Shared Services. Make sure master data can support enterprise-wide AI, analytics, reporting and data products.
• Governance and data ownership. Set up and own the MDM governance framework. This covers data ownership and stewardship for Finance, Procurement, Commercial, Operations and IT, decision rights, and a data council that settles cross-functional requests. Work with the other Global Process Owners (GPOs) to keep master data consistent for controls, performance measurement and reporting.
• Policies, standards and controls. Define global standards, templates and policies: naming conventions, mandatory attributes, approval workflows, segregation of duties, and lifecycle rules (retention, archiving, obsolete records). Set master data risk indicators and controls with Internal Control, and oversee compliance with audit and regulatory requirements.

1. Global Design

• End-to-end process blueprint. Own the standard process for creating, changing, extending and retiring master data across Record-to-Report, Plan-to-Perform, Procure-to-Pay and Order-to-Cash. Review it regularly with stakeholders.
• Global data model and integration. Define and own the global master data model for S/4HANA with the Record-to-Report and Plan-to-Perform GPOs. It covers the group Chart of Accounts, account groups, cost center and profit center hierarchies, business partner roles, asset classes and organizational structures. Keep one source of truth across S/4HANA and connected applications, including through acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations.
• Fit-to-Standard and localization. Lead Fit-to-Standard for master data. Approve all deviations and exceptions based on a stated reason and an impact analysis. Validate mandatory local requirements (tax classifications, statutory identifiers, bank formats) and protect the global core across countries and stations.

1. S/4HANA Public Cloud Programme

• MDM workstream lead. Lead the MDM workstream within the programme's governance and timelines. Act as business lead: turn data requirements into IT requirements and align on tooling (SAP Master Data Governance, workflow and data quality solutions). Confirm that master data is ready before each go-live. Assess the twice-yearly SAP releases and decide which features to switch on.
• Data migration. Own the migration strategy with IT and the implementation partners: cleansing and mapping rules, mock migrations and cut-over validation.
• Roll-outs and transition to operations. Act as the global expert and main contact during country and cluster roll-outs. Ensure a smooth move through hypercare and stabilization, then hand over to Shared Services and business-as-usual teams.
• Change and adoption. Drive change management and adoption of the standard processes. Define role-based training for requesters, approvers and data stewards, and build a global data steward community that keeps data ownership alive after go-live.

1. Operations & Continuous Improvement

• MDM Shared Services. Design and set up the MDM Shared Services team. Agree the split of tasks with clusters and countries, lead the transfer of local maintenance to the center, and support its first months of operation.
• Performance and continuous improvement. Define data quality and service KPIs (completeness, accuracy, duplicates, request cycle time, SLAs, internal customer satisfaction). Run regular performance reviews and a continuous improvement roadmap focused on automation, efficiency and standardization.

Qualifications and Competencies:

• University Degree in Business Administration, Finance, Information Management or related field; minimum 7 years in master data management, finance systems or process management, with strong exposure to Finance and Accounting
• Deep understanding of finance and enterprise master data objects (Chart of Accounts, cost and profit centers, business partners, fixed assets), their role in the end-to-end processes and the related audit and control requirements
• Proven SAP S/4HANA implementation experience with deep knowledge of master data structures, organizational units, business partner concept, SAP Master Data Governance and data migration tooling (Migration Cockpit), and SAP Best Practices
• Demonstrated track record in large-scale SAP programs including global data model design, data cleansing and migration, multi-country roll-outs and standardized implementations
• Experience with Shared Services concepts and implementation, in particular centralized master data maintenance
• Strong stakeholder management with ability to defend the global data model against local deviations and secure buy-in across functions, global locations and organizational levels
• Excellent project management of global teams in matrix structures with strong analytical, data quality and process optimization skills
• Hands-on, results-driven with excellent learning agility, high energy and ability to challenge status-quo for best-in-class solutions
• Excellent communication skills with high proficiency in English, able to articulate clearly at all organizational levels
• Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor and align data owners and stewards across complex, interdependent Finance and business domains in a global matrix environment
• Willingness to travel globally up to 30%

This job description indicates the general nature and level of work expected of the incumbent.  It is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities required of the incumbent.  Incumbent may be required to perform other related duties.