Senior Strategic Business Transformation Advisor

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP) – Federal Payroll Transformation

Position Overview

Our client, a leading Global Systems Integrator, is seeking a Senior Strategic Business Transformation Advisor to support a high-profile Business Transformation Services (BTS) engagement for a major U.S. Federal Government civilian agency.

The agency provides shared services to organizations across the Federal Government and is undertaking a significant modernization of its enterprise payroll capabilities. The program will transform a large-scale, on-premise, highly customized legacy payroll platform supporting 500,000+ employees to a modern SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP) solution.

This is an 18-month, highly accelerated transformation program beginning in October 2026. The successful candidate will serve as a strategic advisor representing the Global SI's Business Transformation Services organization and will work across a complex ecosystem involving the Federal client, SAP consulting and infrastructure teams, and another prime government systems integrator responsible for broader program implementation activities.

The role requires an individual who can operate comfortably at the intersection of business transformation, executive advisory, organizational change, payroll modernization, enterprise technology, and large-scale program delivery.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Business Transformation Advisory

• Serve as a senior strategic advisor to the client and program leadership on the business transformation implications of moving from a highly customized legacy payroll environment to SAP SuccessFactors ECP.
• Help establish and maintain the business transformation vision, objectives, principles, and roadmap for the payroll modernization initiative.
• Translate the strategic objectives of the transformation into actionable business capabilities, operating-model changes, and program priorities.
• Advise executive stakeholders on critical transformation decisions, tradeoffs, dependencies, risks, and implementation considerations.
• Bring an enterprise perspective to decisions that span business processes, technology, data, organizational impacts, and operational readiness.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and modernize payroll-related business processes rather than simply reproducing legacy functionality in the new platform.

Legacy-to-SAP Transformation

• Provide business transformation leadership for the transition from the existing custom payroll platform to SAP SuccessFactors ECP.
• Help stakeholders distinguish between business requirements that must be preserved, requirements that should be redesigned, and legacy capabilities that should be retired.
• Facilitate alignment around future-state business processes and capabilities.
• Identify business, organizational, process, data, and technology impacts associated with the transformation.
• Support development of transformation principles and decision frameworks to manage the significant scope and complexity associated with a 500,000+ employee payroll environment.
• Help ensure that the transformation addresses both immediate implementation objectives and the agency's longer-term modernization strategy.

Cross-Program Coordination

• Operate effectively across a multi-party delivery model involving:
• Federal Government agency leadership and stakeholders
• Global SI Business Transformation Services leadership
• SAP 
• Prime Government Systems Integrator delivery teams
• Business, functional, technical, data, change management, and program leadership teams
• Facilitate alignment among stakeholders with potentially different priorities, methodologies, contractual responsibilities, and delivery objectives.
• Identify cross-workstream dependencies and escalate issues that could materially affect transformation outcomes or the aggressive implementation schedule.
• Help establish clear accountability and decision-making mechanisms across the program ecosystem.
• Represent the Global SI's BTS perspective in program governance and executive-level discussions.

Executive Stakeholder Engagement

• Develop trusted relationships with senior client and program stakeholders.
• Prepare and facilitate executive-level workshops, working sessions, and decision forums.
• Communicate complex transformation issues clearly to both business and technology executives.
• Develop executive presentations, decision papers, recommendations, and transformation assessments.
• Challenge assumptions constructively and provide fact-based recommendations when program decisions require rapid resolution.
• Help executives understand the organizational and operational implications of major design and implementation decisions.

Business Readiness and Organizational Transformation

• Assess organizational readiness for the transition to a new enterprise payroll platform and operating model.
• Identify organizational, workforce, process, governance, and operational changes required to support the future-state solution.
• Partner with organizational change management, training, communications, and business readiness teams.
• Help define business readiness criteria and measurable transformation outcomes.
• Identify potential adoption and operational risks associated with transitioning users and stakeholders from the legacy environment to SAP ECP.
• Support development of a transformation narrative that clearly articulates the "why," "what," and "how" of the modernization effort.

Program Acceleration

Given the program's aggressive 18-month implementation timeline, the advisor will be expected to help the program maintain momentum and rapidly resolve transformation-related issues.

Responsibilities include:

• Identify activities that can be accelerated, streamlined, or executed in parallel.
• Help prioritize critical decisions that could otherwise become schedule constraints.
• Identify transformation risks and dependencies early.
• Facilitate rapid decision-making among business and technology stakeholders.
• Help establish practical governance and escalation mechanisms appropriate for an accelerated federal transformation.
• Maintain focus on business outcomes while balancing implementation realities and contractual boundaries.
• Provide an independent strategic perspective when program teams become overly focused on individual workstreams or technical issues.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in business transformation, strategic consulting, enterprise transformation, or large-scale technology-enabled transformation programs.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a senior advisor to executive stakeholders on complex transformation initiatives.
• Experience with large-scale **HR, payroll, ERP, HCM, or enterprise shared-services transformations**.
• Strong understanding of business process transformation and operating-model modernization.
• Experience working in complex multi-vendor environments involving a client, systems integrators, software vendors, and multiple delivery organizations.
• Ability to operate effectively within large U.S. Federal Government programs and understand the unique governance, stakeholder, and delivery considerations of the Federal environment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead executive workshops and facilitate decisions involving complex and competing stakeholder interests.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and executive communication skills.
• Ability to work independently while operating effectively within a large program organization.
• Experience working in high-pressure, time-constrained transformation programs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP) or SAP HCM.
• Experience with large-scale payroll transformation or modernization.
• Experience transitioning from legacy/mainframe/custom payroll platforms to modern SaaS/cloud-based HCM and payroll platforms.
• Experience with SAP Business Transformation Services, SAP transformation methodologies, or comparable strategic transformation frameworks.
• Experience with Federal Government shared-service organizations.
• Experience supporting programs with hundreds of thousands of employees or other highly scaled enterprise populations.
• Experience with legacy modernization involving COBOL, mainframe, or highly customized enterprise applications.
• Experience with organizational change management and business readiness for major enterprise transformations.
• Experience working alongside SAP and/or major Global Systems Integrators.
• Familiarity with federal enterprise architecture, governance, security, compliance, and acquisition environments.

Core Competencies

Strategic Advisory

• Executive presence
• Strategic thinking
• Business transformation
• Decision support
• Enterprise architecture awareness
• Outcome-oriented consulting

Transformation Leadership

• Business process transformation
• Operating model transformation
• Legacy modernization
• Future-state design
• Organizational readiness
• Change leadership

Program Leadership

• Cross-functional coordination
• Multi-vendor program management
• Risk and dependency management
• Governance
• Issue resolution
• Accelerated delivery

Communication

• Executive presentations
• Workshop facilitation
• Stakeholder management
• Written communication
• Influencing without authority

Success Measures

Success in this role will be measured by the candidate's ability to:

• Establish credibility quickly with senior Federal and program stakeholders.
• Help create alignment around the transformation vision and future-state operating model.
• Accelerate critical business decisions required to maintain the 18-month schedule.
• Identify and mitigate business transformation risks before they become implementation issues.
• Facilitate effective collaboration across the Federal client, Global SI, SAP, and prime SI organizations.
• Help the program transition from a legacy-system replacement mindset to a true business transformation mindset.
• Ensure business readiness and organizational impacts remain visible alongside technology and implementation activities.
• Provide actionable, executive-level recommendations that improve the probability of successful transformation within the aggressive program timeline.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a senior consulting professional who has previously operated as the trusted advisor to executives during a complex enterprise transformation.

This individual should be comfortable moving between strategic discussions with Federal executives and detailed working sessions with business, functional, technical, and program teams. They should understand that the challenge is not simply implementing SAP ECP, but transforming a mission-critical payroll capability supporting more than 500,000 employees while maintaining continuity of operations.

The candidate should be strategic without being theoretical, business-oriented without being disconnected from technology, and comfortable operating in ambiguity and high-pressure environments.

Experience with SAP is highly desirable; however, the primary differentiator is the ability to lead and advise on large-scale business transformation in a complex Federal, multi-vendor environment.

Engagement

This is anticipated to be a full-time engagement for approximately 18 months, beginning in October 2026 and continuing through the planned implementation period.

The position is expected to be primarily remote, with limited travel based on program requirements, executive workshops, governance meetings, and key transformation milestones.