Digital marketplace · Multi-region, global · Role: Communications & Engagement Lead

The challenge
A global marketplace business was replacing its core finance platform with SAP S/4HANA — rolled out in three waves across multiple regions and workstreams. The technology programme was well-resourced and on track. The real risk sat elsewhere: hundreds of people across finance, operations and shared services would have to change how they worked day to day — in different countries, at different levels of readiness, all against a fixed deployment schedule. Get the people side wrong, and a technically successful go-live still fails.

What I did
I owned the programme-wide communication and engagement strategy, built around the governance milestones and each deployment wave. Working closely with programme leadership, IT and Finance, I coordinated messaging across every workstream and region so that no group was surprised by what was coming. I drove readiness and adoption through targeted communications, training support and leadership toolkits, and managed senior stakeholder engagement throughout — including C-suite briefings and executive updates as each wave approached cutover.

The outcome
All three waves went live as planned, with regions and functions kept aligned through each transition.