Purpose & Overall Relevance for the organisation
The Service Matter Expert (SME) plays a key operational and governance role within the Global Product Supply – Purchase Order Management (POM) organization.This role supports global and regional teams by providing expertise across all purchase order management processes, since the order is release to the factory until it is shipped out. All the changes from delays, quantity changes, ship mode updates, or even cancelations are part of the tasks in scope to have a most accurate supply picture to fulfil the demand. These should be managed between our locations and factories, which make this position so important to develop continuous improvement, process flows, and ensuring operational excellence within the teams of Purchase Order Management.The Service Matter Expert acts as a bridge between Purchase Order Management teams, Markets (adidas locations), Factories and liaison officers to secure smooth, timely, and compliant execution.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as functional expert for end-to-end Purchase order management processes, ensuring adherence to global standards and SOPs.
- Support markets and factories during production and purchase order lifecycle events.
- Provide expert guidance during system or process changes, go-lives, and regression testing.
- Deliver ad‑hoc analysis (e.g., excess impact, bottleneck identification).
- Identify root causes for recurring issues and propose corrective actions.
- Monitor performance trends to support decision-making and risk mitigation.
- Drive improvement initiatives within purchase order management teams to increase efficiency and service quality.
- Ensure processes comply with global standards and support ongoing harmonization.
- Participate in new tool deployments, enhancements, and user acceptance test cycles.
Key relationships
- Support stakeholder teams (product supply interface, customer fulfilment, deployment teams), market meetings, escalation support
- Collaborate with other departments and regions to ensure smooth handoffs and process integration.
- Act as a liaison between operational teams and senior management for escalations, reporting, and strategic alignment.
Knowledge, Skills and abilities
- Strong understanding of end-to-end Purchase Order Management and supply chain operations.
- Ability to interpret and resolve complex operational scenarios and exceptions.
- Analytical mindset with ability to handle large datasets and extract insights.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to prioritize in a fast-paced, high-volume environment.
Requisite Education and Experience/ Minimum qualifications
- Experience with SAP S/4HANA, AFS (Apparel & Footwear Solution module in SAP).
- Background in global supply chain, operations, or logistics.
- Experience managing service tickets or request handling platforms (e.g., Smartsheet, ServiceNow).
- Experience with Power BI
adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. We are an equal opportunity employer.