IT Order Management Leader

Accountabilities: Lead Daily Operations: Manage day-to-day IT order management activities, allocate workloads, plan team capacity, monitor queues, coach team members, and establish clear ownership, backup coverage, and escalation procedures. Manage Expense Requests: Validate business justifications, supporting documentation, budget codes, and required approvals before requests advance through the purchasing process. Resolve incomplete submissions with requestors and approvers. Oversee SAP Shopping Carts: Ensure purchasing requests contain accurate descriptions, quantities, pricing, account assignments, delivery information, and supporting references. Track approval progress and address rejected or incomplete submissions. Manage Purchase Orders: Coordinate timely purchase order creation and authorized release, verify supplier details and commercial terms, and manage amendments or cancellations in collaboration with procurement teams. Monitor Fulfillment: Track supplier acknowledgments, delivery commitments, outstanding items, and partial shipments. Resolve delays and discrepancies with suppliers, IT teams, and business requestors. Ensure Receipt Confirmation: Coordinate with authorized stakeholders to ensure goods receipts and service entry confirmations are recorded after delivery or service acceptance. Maintain supporting evidence and reconcile outstanding quantities. Track Invoices and Exceptions: Monitor invoices through processing and payment status, working with accounts payable to resolve purchase order mismatches, receipt discrepancies, pricing or quantity differences, blocked invoices, and missing documentation. Drive Order Closure: Review aging requests, open purchase orders, and outstanding invoices. Ensure required fulfillment and financial checks are complete before closing orders, and resolve residual balances and cancellations in accordance with client policies. Maintain Governance and Controls: Enforce approval limits, segregation of duties, transaction accuracy, and complete audit trails. Maintain standard operating procedures (SOPs), conduct quality reviews, and provide traceable documentation for audits. Lead Automation Initiatives: Identify repetitive activities suitable for automation, including request validation, status tracking, reminders, reconciliation, and reporting. Prioritize initiatives based on feasibility, time savings, and expected business impact. Improve Processes and Remove Bottlenecks: Map workflows and handoffs, identify approval dependencies, conduct root cause analyses, and coordinate corrective actions with stakeholders. Lead testing, adoption, and SOP updates while preserving required controls and exception handling. Manage Client Governance and Reporting: Conduct operational reviews, maintain performance dashboards, communicate risks and dependencies, and establish clear recovery owners and deadlines. Deliver Measurable Results: Track improvements in end-to-end processing time, service-level attainment, overdue requests, blocked orders, automation coverage, manual effort, rework, transaction accuracy, fulfillment performance, team productivity, and client satisfaction. Requirements Relevant Leadership Experience: Demonstrated experience leading IT order management, procurement operations, or procure-to-pay services for enterprise clients, with direct responsibility for team performance and service delivery. SAP Purchasing Expertise: Practical experience with SAP purchasing workflows, including shopping carts or requisitions, purchase orders, goods receipts or service entries, and invoice status tracking. Procurement and Financial Controls: Strong understanding of expense approvals, account assignments, purchase order and invoice reconciliation, order closure requirements, and applicable approval controls. Operational Management: Ability to manage high transaction volumes, prioritize aging and business-critical orders, resolve escalations, and coordinate dependencies across procurement, finance, suppliers, IT teams, and business stakeholders. Process Improvement and Automation: Experience leading workflow optimization and automation initiatives, including process mapping, root cause analysis, requirements definition, user acceptance testing, and benefits measurement. Technology Familiarity: Practical exposure to automation technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), low-code tools, or SAP integrations is preferred. Service Delivery Experience: Background in managed services, shared services, or a global capability center (GCC) is an advantage, along with familiarity with IT purchasing operations. Client and Stakeholder Communication: Strong communication, relationship management, and operational reporting skills, with the ability to present performance trends, communicate risks, and drive accountability across stakeholder groups. Education: A bachelor's degree in business, supply chain, information technology, or a related discipline is preferred. A bachelor's degree in a technical or scientific field is specified in the original requirements. Equivalent relevant professional experience may also be considered. Continuous Improvement Mindset: Demonstrated ability to simplify workflows, reduce processing time, improve transaction quality, maintain auditability, and deliver measurable operational benefits. Location and Contract Arrangement: The role is advertised as a 1099 independent contractor opportunity, with Austin, Texas, or another location in Texas preferred. The precise work arrangement and contractual terms should be confirmed during the hiring process. Benefits Autonomy and ownership: Opportunity to lead operational delivery, shape process improvements, and drive automation initiatives with meaningful responsibility for outcomes. Collaborative environment: Work alongside a broad, globally distributed team with expertise across technology, business operations, and client services. Professional impact: Influence enterprise purchasing operations by improving efficiency, transaction accuracy, service quality, and process controls. Continuous improvement opportunities: Lead automation projects and introduce scalable workflows that reduce manual effort and improve end-to-end performance. Client-facing leadership: Collaborate with enterprise stakeholders across procurement, finance, IT, suppliers, and business operations. Contract arrangement: The position is structured as a 1099 contractor engagement. Compensation, payment terms, contract duration, and renewal conditions were not specified and should be confirmed with the hiring team. Additional benefits: Healthcare coverage, paid time off, retirement benefits, bonuses, and other employment perks were not detailed. As a contractor, eligibility for employee benefits should be clarified before accepting an offer.