Interim Chief Operating Officer — Supply Chain SaaS Delivery

The mandate

Nine enterprise implementations have passed their planned go-live dates as data onboarding and customer configuration expanded beyond standard product boundaries. The delivery chief resigned after renewal risk surfaced, leaving product, services and customer success without one executive accountable for acceptance and recurring operation.

The interim must begin within three weeks for nine months, covering backlog recovery and two renewal cycles. Permanent COO recruitment begins after standard deployment and exception economics are approved, with extension possible for six weeks if a strategic go-live moves.

Handover is complete when seven priority customers reach signed production acceptance, implementation backlog age is within tolerance, services margin and recurring support measures hold for two quarters, and the successor approves one non-standard deployment exception.

The interim may change programme leadership, pause custom work, reallocate ₹12 crore within the recovery budget and negotiate milestones. Customer settlements above ₹6 crore, permanent senior hiring, product forks, contractual changes above ₹20 crore value and workforce action above 7% require CEO or board approval.

Core product roadmap, new-logo sales and customer supply-chain policy are outside scope. The COO owns implementation and supported use of contracted capabilities without assuming product strategy or client operating decisions.

Why this seat is open

The backlog showed that custom delivery had become an unpriced substitute for product decisions. Functional leaders each optimise their own queue and cannot settle the full customer obligation. A temporary COO can restore acceptance discipline before permanent scale leadership takes over.

What you will own

• Re-baseline nine priority implementations around contracted outcomes, customer inputs, product gaps and signed acceptance artefacts.
• Decide which custom requests stop, become paid change or enter the reusable product backlog.
• Establish standard deployment gates for data, configuration, integration, testing, training and operating readiness.
• Validate remaining cost and capacity for every in-flight programme using comparable delivery evidence.
• Negotiate customer recovery paths within delegated commercial authority and escalate larger settlements.
• Deliver seven signed go-lives and two quarters of controlled services margin and support performance.
• Transfer customer commitments, exception decisions, delivery forecasts, talent review and the next renewal calendar to the permanent COO.

Candidate qualifications

• Held COO, customer operations chief or SaaS delivery director authority in enterprise supply-chain software.
• Recovered a multi-customer implementation backlog with signed production acceptance.
• Distinguished product gaps from configuration, data and client dependency failures.
• Built repeatable deployment methods without masking genuine enterprise complexity.
• Directed delivery and customer-success organisations above 500 people.
• Managed services margin, recurring revenue and renewal risk as connected outcomes.

Non-negotiables

• Available in Bengaluru within three weeks.
• No current role with priority customers or implementation partners.
• Will not treat unsigned custom work as implementation progress.
• Must have direct customer acceptance and operating P&L authority.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm availability and disclose any customer or implementation-partner conflict.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe an implementation backlog you reduced and the acceptance rate achieved.
3. 49 words maximum. How do you decide whether a customer request belongs in product or paid change?