Richard Elliott

Richard Elliott

Verified

Senior SAP S/4HANA Business Cutover Manager

Ponteland, United Kingdom

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About

I am a hardworking, self-motivated IT Consultant with over 26 years SAP/ERP experience, providing expertise to many IT projects in Europe, Asia and USA for Procter and Gamble, Gillette, General Motors, EADS, JTI, Nokia, Vodafone, Cable & Wireless, Alliance Boots, HCL Technologies, Provident (International Personal Finance), Pearson Education , Greggs, Likewize, Mitie, Asda, Adevinta & Delaware.

Experience
15+ years
Location
Ponteland, United Kingdom
Contract preference
Contract
Contract location
Hybrid, Remote
Languages
English

Applications

ERP

Systems

SAP ECC SAP S/4HANA

Industries

Energy Information Technology (IT) Retail & eCommerce

Skills

Decision-Making Client Relationship Management Leadership Stakeholder Management Communication

Cutover Experience

SAP S/4HANA Cutover Lead

Adevinta

Apr 2025 – present
Remote

Cutover Lead for LEGO2 Project to merge Adevinta Spanish business into one legal entity on a SAP S/4 Hana platform.

Currently on track for July’25 go-live.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

SAP Cutover Manager

Rockrose Energy

Mar 2025 – Apr 2025
Remote

I had 3 weeks to develop a SAP cutover plan for a Greenfield S4 Hana Finance project and then execute it.

I created high-level/low-level plans for an MVP (minimum viable product) delivery and we went live in April'25 with a controlled but staggered ramp-up whilst UAT completed other parts of the project.

A very short contract but with my experience I got the project over the line much to the customers' delight.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

Project Lego SAP Cutover Lead

Adevinta

Aug 2024 – Nov 2024
Remote

Cutover Lead for LEGO Project to transform Adevinta Spanish business into 4 new legal entities on a SAP S/4 Hana platform.

My role included a close partnership with the Finance Cutover Manager as well as Finance, People, Integration, Customer, Supplier, Privacy & Legal and Technical workstreams and Accenture (SI) to develop high-level and low-level cutover plans. I also had to work closely with owners of third-party systems such as Concur, Navision CRM & Workday to deploy changes & ensure BAU operations were not impacted.

I have produced various deliverables & documents such as cutover strategy, ways of working, cutover plans, programme weekly updates, raid log updates, entry/exit criteria, walk the wall sessions, Go / No Go meetings and a production cutover.

This project went live end of Nov’24 and Adevinta was thrilled with such a smooth transition and lack of critical/high incidents.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

Future Core Programme Cutover Lead

ASDA

Jul 2022 – Jun 2024
Hybrid

As part of the Future Core Transformation Programme, I managed the Cutover Workstream for Asda as they migrated their business from Walmart systems onto a brand new RISE with SAP S/4 Hana platform running on Microsoft Azure, with SAP Ariba to digitalise procurement operations.

My role involved a close partnership with the Cutover Managers of the business functions of Finance & Procurement, Commercial & Supply Chain to align to the programme plan and ensure high-level & low-level cutover plans for each stage of the programme. I have also worked very closely with other workstream leads such as Data, Environments, Test, and Service Ops as well as several 3rd party vendors such as SAP, TCS & Blueyonder.

I have produced various deliverables & documents such as cutover strategy, ways of working, cutover plans, programme weekly updates, raid log updates, entry/exit criteria, walk-the-wall sessions, Go / No Go meetings as well as managing several dress rehearsals and production cutover.

After completing a complex 3-month production cutover plan which included SAP CFIN replication, Finance & Procurement went live Jan’24, Commercial went live Jun’24 & Supply Chain's first DC cutover has a planned go-live in Aug’24 following technical cutover.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

Cutover Lead

Mitie Group Plc

Mar 2022 – Jul 2022
Hybrid

As part of the Forte Transformation Programme I successfully managed a 7-week cutover plan for over 20 systems including SAP, Maximo, Biztalk and Microsoft Azure.

I worked with third-party partners such as Wipro & Peacock Engineering to develop a 1300-line runbook which I reviewed daily during the cutover. I managed dress rehearsals as well as checkpoint calls and developed documentation to support various stages of the project.

The go-live allowed Mitie customers to raise facilities management requests through an app which would interface into a Maximo system which would schedule Mitie engineers via an app to be dispatched to fix the issue. The customer would be able to see an end-to-end journey of their request via the app or portal.

The cutover was extremely challenging and it went live on time with great success.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

Cutover Manager

Likewize (formerly Brightstar UK)

Jan 2021 – Mar 2022
Hybrid

Likewize provides forward and reverses logistic operations for mobile phone tech protection & support from their fulfilment center based in Crewe for several major customers.

I managed the cutover of several O2 Telefonica order channels onto a new platform consisting of AWS S3, JDE 9.2, SAG, and Manhattan Warehouse whilst ensuring other channels could continue to operate BAU.

I have also managed the cutover of Barclays & Aviva Device Protection schemes onto Likewize systems.
I also conducted the cutover for a Global Accounting scheme and delivered the cutover plan for the Classic Programme which includes various customer channels.
ERP

SAP Cutover Manager

Greggs Plc

Feb 2019 – Mar 2020
Remote

As part of the Greggs Sunrise Programme, I was given the task of producing a cutover strategy to migrate Greggs Supply Chain systems at their Balliol Site from a legacy AS400 system to SAP ECC6 including a SAP Fiori UI on the factory floor.

Given that this is Greggs's largest production site which can manufacture over 8 million savoury products on a weekly basis there was a lot of stakeholder interest from the executive board given that cutovers at previous sites had encountered several issues.

My role also included managing the sourcing, build, installation, and test of 50 PCs, 30 touchscreens, and 30 printers on the factory floor which was running 24/7 production operations.

Within less than 60 working days I successfully managed the cutover to SAP. This included:
  • Creating a cutover plan to include Master Data Migration, Finance, Training, Product Costing, IT, Stock Data Loads, Planning, Purchasing, Hardware, Resourcing and Business Readiness
  • Co-ordinated several code migrations through a very complicated landscape
  • Managed 2 Trial Cutovers
  • Co-ordinated the hardware procurement / install / testing
  • Delivering and driving the weekend cutover plan.
The actual cutover into SAP was a resounding success and in the first 48 hours of production start-up, the Balliol site had produced over 1 million sausage rolls using the new SAP solution without any P1 issues.

I have also completed a four-stage cutover strategy for Greggs Balliol Logistics which includes converting all Warehouse and Logistics operations from AS400 to SAP EWM. I produced detailed cutover plans for these cutovers including 3rd party logistic partners, as well as arranging the swapping out of legacy wireless scanners and implementation of new WAP and they have all gone live with great success.
SAP S/4HANA ERP

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