Customer Onboarding & Data Governance Manager

AWC, Inc.•St. George, LA

About The Position

The Customer Onboarding & Data Governance Manager will focus on bringing clear, enterprise-wide ownership to how we onboard, set up, and maintain every customer account. This role will be the single point of accountability for the customer master data lifecycle: coordinating Sales, Credit, Accounts Receivable, Legal, Logistics, and IT to make sure every new customer is set up right the first time, and every existing account stays accurate as it grows and changes. Customer maintenance combines customer onboarding, master data governance, process design and cross-functional leadership. The ideal candidate is a process builder at heart: someone who can bring order to a cross-functional process, hold other departments accountable to deadlines without direct authority over them, and treat customer data as a company asset. The function will be designed around strong controls, including segregation of duties between customer account setup and credit approval. A significant part of this role during its first 12-18 months will be leading customer master data validation and clean-up in preparation for AWC's upcoming ERP implementation. You will be the primary owner of getting our customer data audited, corrected, and conversion-ready.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Supply Chain, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
5+ years of experience in customer master data management, order-to-cash operations, credit/AR, sales operations, or customer onboarding
Demonstrated experience coordinating cross-functional processes involving Sales, Credit, and Finance
Strong working knowledge of ERP customer master data structures (e.g., SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics) and CRM systems
Hands-on experience with data validation, cleansing, or de-duplication, ideally as part of a system conversion or data migration project
Working knowledge of sales/use tax exemption documentation, W-9/W-8 requirements, and basic credit/KYC concepts
Strong process-design and documentation skills
Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with ERP implementations or system conversions strongly preferred
Prior experience leading customer or vendor master data clean-up as part of an ERP implementation, from audit through post-conversion validation
Experience designing or leading a centralized customer master data / customer maintenance function from the ground up
Familiarity with EDI and AP automation/invoicing portals (e.g., Ariba, Coupa, Tungsten)
Comfort managing a blended team of permanent staff and contract/temporary resources during a project-driven workload surge

Responsibilities

Own the design and governance of AWC's end-to-end customer administrative lifecycle, from signed commitment through full operational status and ongoing maintenance.
Establish the enterprise standard for how customer setup and maintenance should move across systems and departments, including: Customer commitment and handoff from Sales; Credit, KYC, and fraud screening coordination; Customer master record creation and validation; Tax setup and payment terms configuration; Pricing and rebate data coordination; Shipping, billing, invoicing, and technology/portal requirements capture; Account activation (go-live); Post-go-live stabilization; Ongoing maintenance and periodic account review.
Define clear process stages, required inputs and outputs, roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and handoffs across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT.
Establish process ownership and cross-functional accountability for customer administrative data and timely completion of required handoffs.
Ensure processes are designed around the end-to-end customer lifecycle and data accuracy, rather than optimizing individual departments or activities.
Own customer master data validation and clean-up in direct preparation for AWC's ERP implementation — a major focus area of this role in its first 12-18 months.
Lead a full audit of existing customer master data across current systems to identify duplicates, missing or incomplete records, outdated addresses, and inconsistent tax or credit information.
Define data quality standards and validation rules for customer master fields ahead of ERP conversion.
Partner directly with the ERP project team on data mapping, conversion test loads, and mock cutover cycles, flagging and resolving data issues before they reach production.
Validate converted customer data post-migration, reconcile discrepancies against source systems, and formally sign off on data readiness before go-live.
Facilitate cross-functional sessions with Sales, Credit, and AR to understand current-state data challenges and establish scalable future-state standards.
Identify and improve legacy practices, duplicate work, unclear ownership, and unnecessary local variations in how customer data is captured and maintained.
Translate inconsistent or undocumented customer setup practices into clear, practical, repeatable enterprise standards.
Establish governance mechanisms that keep customer master data accurate, current, and consistently maintained.
Document and define process owners, contributors, decision rights, and escalation paths across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT.
Maintain segregation of duties between customer account setup and credit approval; partner with Credit to confirm KYC and fraud screening are complete before account activation, without owning the credit decision itself.
Establish standards for when and how customer master data may be changed, including maker-checker approval on sensitive fields (credit terms, tax status).
Create mechanisms for identifying and addressing re-onboarding or account review triggers (M&A, ownership change, significant volume change, new locations, expiring certificates or contracts).
Maintain a full audit trail of customer master data changes and ensure compliance-related documentation (tax certificates, insurance, contracts) remains current.
Establish KPIs that measure the health of the customer onboarding and maintenance process (cycle time, first-invoice accuracy, data quality/duplicate rate, re-onboarding responsiveness).
Identify bottlenecks, recurring failures, and root causes across the customer administrative lifecycle.
Lead cross-functional improvement efforts that reduce rework, delays, and administrative friction for Sales, Credit, and AR.
Establish a disciplined approach for continuously evaluating and improving the customer maintenance function and its supporting SOP.
Build stakeholder alignment across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT around the new centralized customer maintenance process.
Clearly communicate the business rationale and customer impact behind the new function and any process changes.
Manage a staffing model that may include internal transfers and contract/temporary resources during the ERP implementation period.
Assess the long-term operating model, organizational structure, and staffing needs for the Customer Maintenance function as the ERP implementation progresses, and recommend a scalable future-state model within 12-18 months.
Monitor adoption of the new intake process and standardized workflow, and adjust based on feedback without allowing informal workarounds to re-enter the process.