VP Customer Excellence | Up to 140K base | Remote in Germany

VP Customer Excellence | €180K–220K OTE + equity | Vertical Enterprise Software | Remote in Germany

This isn't a build-from-scratch role, and it isn't a maintain-what-exists role either. It's a transformation mandate, which is honestly the harder of the two. You're inheriting a tenured, capable team and a product that's deeply embedded in SAP, and your job is to take both through real structural change: new processes, new discipline, a different mindset, without losing what already makes the team good.

My client is a PE-backed enterprise software company serving the utilities and circular economy space. The product is built and embedded entirely on SAP, not just "SAP-compatible," it actually runs inside SAP. Revenue sits in the high teens of millions of euros, growing around 30% year on year, with retention above 95% and clients who've been on the platform for two decades. A new CEO is pushing the business from a founder-era, comfortable operating model into a professionalised, software-led growth company. At the same time, a wave of long-tenured customers is being moved through a major underlying platform migration (old on-premise licenses shifting to modern, cloud-based pricing), which is reshaping a lot of commercial conversations right now.

Responsibilities

• Turn the services organisation (20+ people) into a genuine sales-enablement function, not a standalone delivery shop
• Install PM governance, effort estimation discipline and a formal, accurate handover between sales and services
• Bring structure to a currently informal, inconsistent delivery process so implementation timelines get shorter and more predictable
• Shift the team's mindset from "maximise billable days" to "get the customer live as fast as possible"
• Read the KPIs that actually matter here, utilisation especially, and act on them, including making hard calls on underperformance
• Design a bonus and incentive structure that drives the right behaviour, replacing one built purely around individual utilisation
• Act as a real sparring partner to the commercial organisation, feeding delivery and customer insight back into how deals get structured
• Bring a skeptical but capable, long-tenured team through a big change without alienating them or losing their domain expertise

Requirements

• Has personally led a delivery organisation transformation before, not just operated a mature one, and not just built something from a blank sheet. Dealing with entrenched people and legacy systems is the specific muscle this role needs
• Genuine, hands-on SAP ERP implementation experience.
• The product lives inside SAP, and without real SAP delivery experience (SAP Activate methodology or similar) you'll struggle with the day to day of this job
• Execution-focused, challenger mindset. Comfortable pushing back on the status quo instead of defaulting to "yes"
• Strong stakeholder management and executive presence, someone who leads change by example rather than by decree
• Has seen real operational excellence in a KPI-driven, performance-oriented delivery culture
• German native, fluent English
• Comfortable with a remote-first setup that still means regular in-person time with the team, the office and clients

Nice-to-Haves

• An additional European language
• Previous experience in a PE- or VC-backed environment

Salary & Benefits

• OTE: €180,000 – €220,000 (Up to 140K base)
• Equity: Meaningful long-term incentive package