Product-and-Material Data Recovery Leader

The mandate

Global ERP design has exposed incompatible definitions of product, material, recipe, specification, batch status and market authorisation across sites and functions. Migration teams are cleansing fields without resolving which process decision each attribute supports, and a mock conversion joined released specifications to the wrong pack configurations. The programme’s data executive departed after quality stopped the next wave, creating an eighteen-month gap before several legacy systems lose support.

The interim leader will establish governed data products around regulated process decisions from development transfer through procurement, manufacture, release, distribution and financial reporting. Work includes semantic ownership, creation and change workflows, reference relationships, effective dating, migration lineage, quality evidence and stewardship capacity. The target cannot impose global sameness where legal entity, market authorisation or site process creates a legitimate distinction.

A permanent enterprise data leader and process-owner council must be operating by month twelve. They will approve the final site’s data readiness, resolve a product-versus-material ownership dispute and defend a migration exception to quality governance before handover. The transition pack includes semantics, decision history, stewardship load, validation evidence, technical debt, rejected harmonisations and the next year’s process-and-data roadmap.

The executive can stop migration, reject unowned definitions, set enterprise naming and lineage rules, prioritise data remediation, appoint stewardship roles and approve design decisions within established quality and programme thresholds. It cannot release a batch, change a registered product, approve validation, interpret accounting policy, waive privacy or retention controls, sign vendor changes or direct regulated site operations.

The remit excludes acting as global quality head, process owner for every function, ERP solution architect or permanent master-data operator. Success means reconciled migration, faster governed change, site-owned stewardship and permanent leaders able to maintain semantics as products and markets evolve. Field completeness without process fitness, traceable authority and effective-date control will not count as recovered data.

Why this seat is open

The departed executive allowed cleansing volume to substitute for resolution of contested business meaning, until a mock conversion created a product-release risk. Quality paused the wave while technology ownership remained fragmented. The organisation needs temporary authority able to bind data definitions to regulated process outcomes, make cross-functional choices and qualify permanent governance leaders before ageing systems force a dangerous schedule decision.

What you will own

• Define product, material, recipe, specification, batch, packaging and market relationships through the decisions each entity enables.
• Assign accountable semantic owners and stewards with creation, change, approval, expiry and cross-functional escalation duties.
• Distinguish justified site or market variation from duplicate coding, historical workaround and ungoverned local preference.
• Set migration evidence for lineage, effective dates, referential integrity, status, multilingual attributes and controlled transformation.
• Direct remediation by patient, quality, supply, financial and cutover consequence rather than raw missing-field volume.
• Govern site readiness with representative product journeys, rejected-record disposition, validation evidence and operational stewardship capacity.
• Induct the permanent data leader and council through live ownership and migration decisions and transfer the full semantic record.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led product and material data recovery inside a validated life-sciences ERP transformation spanning multiple regulated sites.
• Understands recipes, specifications, batches, pack configurations, market authorisations, release status and supply-finance relationships.
• Can distinguish semantic governance from technical cleansing and tie each critical attribute to process and control consequences.
• Has stopped a migration where apparent data completeness concealed unsafe relationships, effective dates or status interpretation.
• Can establish global ownership while preserving justified site, legal-entity and market distinctions under quality oversight.
• Demonstrates permanent stewardship capability through leaders who made contested definitions and site-readiness decisions before handover.

Non-negotiables

• Will be based onsite in Bengaluru and complete the scheduled regulated-site residencies and global design authorities.
• Must disclose relationships with life-sciences manufacturers, ERP vendors, data-tool providers, validators and systems integrators.
• Brings validated product-and-material migration accountability; generic master-data governance alone does not qualify.
• Will not permit migration speed or global standardisation to override registered-product, batch-release or traceability requirements.

1. 49 words maximum. Which product-to-material relationship most often reveals false confidence in an ERP migration?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish a justified market variation from duplicate master data?
3. 49 words maximum. What data-readiness decision must the permanent council make before you transfer authority?