Head of Applications

Ketjen•Houston, TX

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Ketjen Corporation, a provider of advanced catalyst solutions to leading producers in the petrochemical, refining, and specialty chemicals industries, is hiring a Head of Applications. This role will lead the ERP and broader application landscape that runs the business, encompassing almost 200 applications across various functions including finance, supply chain, manufacturing, commercial, quality, EHS, research, legal, and HR. The core ERP is SAP, supported by master data governance, cloud services, and specialized systems. Experience in manufacturing, particularly within chemical process industries, plant operations, product quality, and regulatory requirements, is highly valued. A significant aspect of this role involves establishing a business relationship manager (BRM) model from scratch, aligning BRMs with business functions to serve as the link between users and the IT applications team.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, business, or a related field.
At least 10 years in enterprise applications leadership.
Direct experience with SAP or a comparable ERP.
Experience building or running a business relationship manager or IT business partner model.
A track record of managing a large application portfolio.
Strong stakeholder management skills across finance, supply chain, commercial, and other functional leaders.
Experience managing software vendors, contracts, and implementation partners.
Experience supporting applications in a manufacturing environment, including working with plant, operations, quality, EHS, maintenance, and supply chain stakeholders.
Comfort building a function and team from a limited starting point, with a willingness to stay hands-on when needed.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with SAP S/4HANA is essential.
Experience with SAP RISE is strongly preferred.
Experience transitioning application support to a managed services partner, ideally following a carve-out, divestiture, or merger.
Background in manufacturing, with strong preference for chemicals, specialty materials, refining, or another process industry where SAP and related applications support plant operations, quality, EHS, maintenance, and supply chain execution.
Additional valued experience with SAP IBP, SAP Concur, SAP Master Data Governance, SAP Business Technology Platform, and Salesforce.
Experience in a private equity-owned or sponsor-backed company.

Responsibilities

Identify, select, recruit, and lead business relationship managers.
Set the operating model for how business relationship managers gather requirements, manage demand, and prioritize competing requests.
Own the SAP roadmap end to end, including core ERP modules, master data governance, and supporting cloud platforms and planning services.
Prioritize enhancement requests, upgrades, and new capabilities against business value and team capacity.
Partner with finance, supply chain, and manufacturing leaders to ensure the ERP evolves with business needs.
Evaluate the current application landscape and build a full inventory of existing applications, ownership, and costs.
Rationalize the portfolio by identifying redundant tools, outdated systems, and necessary gaps.
Own the integration layer connecting systems to each other and to the core ERP.
Maintain master data standards and ownership across functions.
Finish remaining application contract and licensing items tied to the Albemarle separation.
Confirm data ownership and access are fully settled for applications moved off shared infrastructure.
Manage relationships with SAP, implementation partners, and other software vendors.
Lead application strategy and vendor direction for key application contracts.
Evaluate and transition day-to-day application support to an application managed services partner.
Define the application managed services partner landscape, including services and integration into the IT operating model.
Define processes for managing partner relationships, service performance, issue escalation, and SLA reporting.
Build a disciplined intake and approval process for new application requests.
Build the applications team structure, including BRMs, functional analysts, and necessary in-house developers or configuration specialists.
Set delivery standards for testing, change management, and user adoption.
Own the applications budget and report on cost, delivery, and adoption.