Senior SAP Business Objects Reporting Lead

At WPP, technology is at the heart of everything we do, and it is WPP IT's mission to enable everyone to collaborate, create and thrive. WPP IT is undergoing a significant transformation to modernize ways of working, shift to cloud and micro-service-based architectures, drive automation, digitize colleague and client experiences and deliver insight from WPP's petabytes of data.

As we continue this journey, there is a need for a Senior Business Objects Reporting Lead to support the Maconomy Global ERP rollout programmes along with resolving BAU reporting issues and requests.

This is a hands-on leadership role, where you will actively contribute to report design and development while ensuring your team delivers on time and to the highest standards.

What you'll be doing:

Key Responsibilities:

• Leadership & Mentoring: Lead, mentor, and manage a team of SAP Business Objects analysts & developers. Provide hands-on training, technical guidance, and support to ensure the successful execution of their tasks. Set clear objectives for the team and monitor progress against project timelines.
• Report Design & Development: Design, develop and enhance complex reports, drawing data from multiple data sources including Maconomy (Core and Legacy) and conforming to WPP standards.
• Requirements Gathering & Analysis: Collaborate with various business stakeholders to understand their reporting needs. Translate these needs into detailed technical specifications for the reporting team.
• Data Modelling & Universe Design: Contribute to the design and development of SAP Business Objects universes, ensuring data consistency and integrity. Work closely with the Maconomy implementation team to understand the underlying data structure and map it to reporting requirements.
• Data Warehouse: Lead the implementation of a data warehouse to provide a greater reporting offering.
• Testing & Quality Assurance: Create and execute detailed test plans to ensure report accuracy and reliability. Conduct unit, integration, and user acceptance testing, promptly resolving any identified defects.
• Deployment & Support: Work with the Release Management Workstream to manage the deployment of reports to Test and Production environments. Provide ongoing support and maintenance, including troubleshooting issues and addressing user requests.
• Documentation: Maintain comprehensive documentation for all reports (new and existing), including technical specifications, user guides, training materials, and a clear audit trail.
• Performance Optimization: Monitor report performance and identify areas for optimization. Implement strategies to improve report execution times and reduce system load.
• Best Practices & Standards: Promote and enforce best practices and standards for Business Objects development within the team. Stay updated with the latest SAP Business Objects features and functionalities.

What you'll need:

Skill Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Finance, or a related field.
• Experience of Finance ERP solutions and data structures.
• Experience with Maconomy ERP and a solid understanding of project accounting and financial General Ledger (GL) ledgers including AP, AR, FA, HR will be highly beneficial.
• SAP Business Objects /suite including report design and universe design. Administration, setup, installation. SAP Business Objects certification is preferred but not mandatory
• Database, MS SQL*SERVER, SQL, PL/SQL
• Data Warehouse, ETL, Pentaho
• An understanding of the Software development lifecycle
• Understanding of Business Intelligence requirements

Personal Attributes:

• Strong leadership and mentoring abilities, with a patient and supportive approach to developing junior team members.
• Meticulous attention to detail and a passion for delivering high-quality work.
• Proactive and results-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Clear and confident communicator, skilled at presenting ideas and solutions to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Adaptable and resilient, able to navigate challenges and changes in a dynamic project environment.