Sr Project Manager Consultant - Retail/Financial System Modernization

ASAP/NetSource is seeking an experienced independent Senior Project Manager consultant to lead the full replacement and migration of an end-of-life PeopleSoft V9 financial platform. This mission-critical, company-wide program includes ERP financial replacement, integrations, audit remediation alignment, and go-live with hypercare under IT Modernization governance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead all phases of the financial system replacement, including vendor selection, contracting, implementation, data migration, cutover, and hypercare.
• Act as the single accountable owner of program scope, timeline, budget, and quality.
• Maintain the master project plan, milestone register, RAID log, and executive status reporting for program oversight.
• Chair the weekly steering committee with the CFO, CIO, and Controller, escalating decisions and risks that require executive action.
• Coordinate the RFI/RFP-equivalent evaluation and selection process led by the business committee.
• Manage the system integrator (SI) relationship and hold the SI accountable to contractual deliverables, quality gates, and timelines.
• Negotiate change orders, scope variations, and resource adjustments with vendors.
• Partner with Finance leadership to align the program with ongoing audit remediation activities and material weakness resolution.
• Own the organizational change management plan, including communications, training strategy, and business readiness assessments.
• Maintain stakeholder maps and manage expectations across Finance, IT, Operations, Legal, and external auditors.
• Identify, quantify, and mitigate project risks, with focus on resource commitment gaps across Finance, IT, and change management workstreams, as well as key-person dependency and knowledge transfer risk tied to employee turnover.
• Maintain a 90-day rolling risk assessment and present mitigation plans at each steering committee meeting.
• Define and manage the parallel-run strategy to ensure financial reporting continuity during cutover.
• Own program budget tracking, including forecast versus actual spend, vendor invoices, and capitalization classification (CapEx vs. OpEx).
• Provide monthly written updates to the IT Modernization Steering Committee and quarterly summaries for Board consumption.
• Coordinate with external auditors to ensure the implementation timeline does not conflict with audit cycles or introduce new control gaps.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of project management experience, including at least 3 full-lifecycle ERP financial system implementations (GL, AR, AP, multi-entity consolidation) as the lead PM.
• Demonstrated experience managing implementations of Workday Financials, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or a comparable enterprise cloud ERP from contract through go-live.
• Demonstrated experience operating as an independent consultant or in a contract PM capacity on enterprise programs.
• Experience managing system integrators and holding external implementation partners accountable to contractual commitments.
• Prior experience in retail, higher education, or similarly complex multi-site, multi-entity environments is strongly preferred.
• Experience working on programs with active financial restatements, audit remediation, or material weakness disclosure environments is a significant advantage.
• Strong command of fundamentals: WBS, critical path, dependency management, change control, and risk registers.
• Ability to communicate at the Board level with crisp, accurate language, and to lead technical delivery conversations with architects and developers.
• Strong financial literacy, including the ability to read a P&L, understand ledger structure, and have informed discussions with the CFO and Controller.
• Proven ability to manage programs where employee retention is a live risk, including experience building knowledge transfer plans and succession for key roles.
• Familiarity with data migration methodology for financial systems, including chart of account mapping, opening balance validation, and historical data archiving.
• PMP certification required.

Technologies

• PeopleSoft V9, Oracle
• Workday Financials, NetSuite, Sage Intacct
• PMP, SAFe, PMI-ACP

Scope of Work

• Program Leadership
• Vendor & Implementation Management
• Stakeholder & Change Management
• Risk Management
• Financial & Reporting Governance

Key Deliverables

• Vendor selection recommendation package with scoring rationale and committee sign-off documentation.
• Executed implementation project plan with milestones, owners, and dependency map.
• RAID log maintained and distributed weekly throughout the engagement.
• Data migration strategy document validated by Finance and approved by external auditors.
• Monthly executive status reports and quarterly Board-level summaries.
• Go-live readiness assessment and hypercare transition plan.
• End-of-engagement knowledge transfer package for internal company IT ownership post-go-live.

Engagement Details

• Location: Florham Park, NJ (hybrid)
• Contract type: contract
• Compensation: USD 55–75 per hour
• On-site expectations: minimum of three days per week on-site, with two days remote.

Program Governance and Operating Model

This engagement operates under the company’s IT Modernization governance framework. The selection committee is chaired by IT and includes business owners from Finance, Operations, and Legal. Vendor selection follows a structured committee process with AI-assisted evaluation and scoring against five weighted criteria: risk reduction, cost/TCO, strategic fit, time to value, and implementation risk.

The consultant reports to the VP of MIS with a dotted line to the CFO for the duration of the financial system program. A dedicated steering committee meets weekly during implementation phases. On-site presence is required for all steering committee meetings, key vendor sessions, and milestone reviews. The engagement will be structured as a statement of work under a master services agreement.

Success Criteria (Target Timeline)

Within approximately 12 months, success includes: vendor selection and implementation contract execution on schedule and within board-approved budget; staffing of all workstream leads with no critical resource gaps; completion of a data migration strategy documented, validated with Finance, and approved by external auditors; delivery of first integration milestones (GL, AR, AP) on time with zero unplanned financial reporting disruptions; and maintenance of a current risk register with clear escalation paths and full steering committee visibility at each meeting.