Head of Procurement Platforms — Platform Owner (Technology)

Prudential’s purpose is to be partners for every life and protectors for every future. Our purpose encourages everything we do by creating a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our people, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and we support our people’s career ambitions. We pledge to make Prudential a place where you can Connect, Grow, and Succeed. The Head of Procurement Platforms is the Technology Platform Owner for the Coupa Source-to-Pay (S2P) ecosystem, accountable end-to-end for the stability, evolution and transformation of the platform serving all in-scope markets across the region and the full employee base. The role owns three integrated mandates: Run the platform — guarantee BAU service levels for a high-volume incident and service-request workload across multiple Coupa instances. Improve the platform — own the continuous-improvement pipeline of enhancements, change requests and release cycles, with disciplined governance against the group's universal core model and master-data governance standards. Transform the platform — stand up and run a sustainable, project-driven delivery structure to industrialise the migration of in-scope markets onto the strategic Coupa configuration, sequenced with the broader Finance ERP transformation. The role sits firmly on the Technology side and partners as a true platform owner with Group Procurement, Group Finance, Risk, Audit and adjacent platform teams (ERP, Middleware, Identity & Access). Job Responsibilities Platform Ownership & Technology Governance • Act as the single accountable Technology owner for the Coupa S2P platform across all production instances and in-scope markets. • Define and enforce platform standards (configuration, master data, integrations, approval matrices) in line with the group's universal core model and master-data governance framework. • Operate within a unified ERP–Coupa change and incident framework, including a unified Change Control Board, a common P1–P5 SLA matrix and a shared incident dashboard. • Own platform-level audit readiness across SOX/ITGC, privileged-access controls, backup and audit-trail compliance. • Be the accountable Technology counterpart to the platform vendor, including incident escalation, premium support engagement and crisis management. BAU Technology Maintenance — Incident & Service Request Management • Lead the L2 / L2.5 platform support layer for the Coupa ecosystem, accountable for resolving a high volume of incidents and service requests every year with measurable SLA performance. • Drive systemic resolution of recurring SLA-breach themes — integration outbound, workflow and status defects, approval routing, due-diligence and risk-rating lifecycle, expense processing and reporting strain. • Close transparency gaps by establishing a true triage and communication layer that owns user notifications, status updates and SLA cadence so requesters always know where they stand. • Bring all platform tickets into a single, governed service-management tool with full SLA tracking and reporting. • Co-own the rebalancing of Level 1 service requests with the Business Help Desk, including SOPs, role bundles, training and access design. • Harden the integration layer with the ERP, the General Ledger, identity and HR systems, and the supplier portal — including proactive monitoring of supplier onboarding, invoice outbound, expense flows and master-data sync. Continuous Improvement — Change Requests, Enhancements & Releases • Own the end-to-end Change & Release pipeline: from CR intake through impact assessment, design, build, key-user testing, UAT, hyper-care and post-implementation review. • Manage a continuously evolving backlog of strategic and local change requests across all in-scope markets. • Manage the platform's annual major releases, periodic maintenance windows and ad-hoc updates with disciplined Change Board scoping and key-user communication. • Drive the master-data governance approval engine for global and local master data — chart of accounts, cost centres, tax codes, commodity mappings, approval chains, programmes and due-diligence templates. • Build a CR prioritisation discipline with Procurement, Finance, Risk and the markets so that high-volume local demand does not destabilise BAU. Project-Driven Structure for Migration & Transformation • Stand up and lead a strategic Coupa “Rollout Factory” — a sustainable, repeatable delivery engine to migrate the remaining markets onto the strategic Coupa configuration, sequenced with the broader Finance ERP rollout. • Build the L3 release, change and project layer with the appropriate seniority profile, including an intellectual-property retention strategy and a progressive reduction of dependency on the external System Integrator. • Industrialise the rollout playbook: templated configuration, standard cutover, standard test packs, standard hyper-care — and drive unit-cost reduction per market migration as velocity scales. • Partner with the ERP programme to avoid double cutovers, jointly plan readiness, and align under a single Ecosystem Programme Steering Committee. • Lead in-flight transformation workstreams including legacy retirements, governance-tool transitions, identity and access deepening, privileged-access management onboarding, and the migration to an enterprise service-management platform. • Coordinate technical readiness across peripheral systems (HRIS, identity, GL, data lake, middleware) for every market go-live — across SIT, UAT, mock cutover, cutover and hyper-care phases. Stakeholder Management • Be the senior Technology face of the Coupa platform to Group Procurement, Group Finance, in-market CFOs and Finance Controllers, Risk SMEs, Internal Audit and external auditors. • Run cross-market governance forums covering the platform ecosystem, change boards, supplier-performance revie…