Iftekhar Hossain is Head of the SAP Center of Excellence (CoE) for BAT’s Americas region, where he is responsible for the lifecycle of various SAP platforms that support the group’s multi-billion dollar business. After serving as the company’s Senior Director for Global IT Testing and Assurance, in Q4 2022 he moved from North Carolina, USA, to Monterrey, Mexico, to establish a regional SAP CoE for the FTSE 100 corporation. Among the company’s 46K+ employees, he occupies a unique position as one of the few IT leaders to have played a pivotal role in implementing transformative SAP programs across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, covering 160+ countries.
Since launching his professional career with BAT in 2003, his career trajectory has evolved with various SAP platforms in the last two decades. SAP has noted BAT’s SAP implementation as one of the most complex running in the fast-moving consumer goods industries worldwide, and Iftekhar is recognized as an industry expert in the IT quality assurance domain, among other disciplines, with invaluable experience leading SAP deployments at truly global level.
Q: Iftekhar, you’ve spent your entire career with Reynolds American/British American Tobacco (BAT), an FTSE 100 multinational corporation. Tell us what led you to join BAT in Bangladesh in 2003, right after earning your BBA degree in Computer Information Systems from Baruch College, and how you rose through IT roles in Malaysia to your current role as head of BAT’s SAP Center of Excellence (CoE) for their Americas region.
A: While growing up in Bangladesh, I looked up to an uncle who had worked for BAT for many years. He was always travelling around the world for work, while handling exciting career challenges. I was intrigued by the idea that you could have a job that allowed you to travel to Asia, Europe, Africa, and Americas. During my teenage years, when my friends would say that they wanted to become a doctor or an engineer, I said that I wanted to join BAT and have a career like my uncle. So, when I graduated college, BAT was my first choice as an employer.
Little did I know then that no one achieves their career goals just by joining a multinational company. You must pay your dues to get to where you ultimately want to reach. I rose quickly through roles of increasing responsibility by a combination of hard work, continuing my professional development, valuable mentoring from senior leaders, and seizing opportunities to work on exciting IT projects on a truly global scale that established me internally and externally as an information technology expert with the ability and experience to envision and manage complex, multimillion dollar implementations.
Q: How did you build the BAT CoE, and what differentiates this from typical SAP systems? What does your present role encompass?
A: When I first moved to Monterrey, Mexico, in 2022 to head the SAP CoE for BAT’s Americas region, which includes the USA, Mexico, Canda, Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, and Colombia, plus offshore supplier resources in India and elsewhere, I was charged with creating a new operational entity that would streamline SAP service delivery and thus improve efficiencies in business processes across multiple markets. Because nothing like the CoE existed in the Americas, I had to build this department up from scratch by discovering what kind of SAP services the region needs to keep business running and growing, what skill sets are required to deliver those services, and where are the best places inside and outside of Mexico (but within the region) to secure those skill sets for the best price while ensuring quality delivery. I also had to determine what kind of work I could outsource to an external supplier versus keeping work in-house and building internal intellectual property, among many other critical decisions.
In designing this new SAP CoE, I was able to draw on my diverse experiences in BAT’s Malaysian office, where as Head of Global IT Testing & Assurance, I established a testing CoE to provide platform agnostic test management and execution services for SAP, CRM, and other systems. I was also responsible for leading end-to-end testing services for BAT’s five-year long flagship SAP implementation program called Target Operating Model and One SAP (“TaO”) across 180+ countries, as well as (BAT subsidiary) Reynolds American’s multimillion dollar SAP implementation program called TaO to Evolution (T2E) over a two-year period. In addition, I was the person responsible for introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the testing space, which enabled BAT to achieve an approximately 80% reduction in manual testing for key global digital platforms. I am one of a very small group of global IT leaders to have this widescale SAP experience, so this prepared me to tackle the challenge of building a new CoE for the Americas.
My present role as Head of SAP CoE Americas encompasses everything to do with the SAP platforms that all the BAT operating companies use in this region. I am responsible for leading the delivery of designing, building, testing, and deploying change requests raised by business entities, performing ongoing maintenance of delivered changes to ensure they are delivering the required business outcome, providing ongoing support services, and overseeing upgrades for our ERP estate to keep them current in the Americas. BAT’s ERP estate comprises more than 29 different, interconnected SAP platforms working seamlessly together to achieve the company’s business goals. It is significant to note that BAT’s SAP implementation is one of the largest and most complex in the world, and we were able to achieve this implementation in an industry-defying record of five years, as compared to the typical 10-year timeline. I lead an excellent IT team that includes 20+ engineers and is growing rapidly. My mission is to provide cost effective, quality SAP services to BAT Americas that keep business thriving, to retain BAT’s leading position in the market.
Q: Throughout your career, you have been responsible for formulating and delivering complex IT implementations on a global scale. From Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to managing an Application Management Services (AMS) transition project, to heading IT Supplier Performance and Service Delivery, to SAP Testing Lead, you’ve consistently worked to develop frameworks that produce lower cost of operations and higher service quality. Have you developed key strategies to facilitate successful implementations?
A: I always try to answer the following five simple questions before embarking on all major initiatives, and I keep revisiting those answers to ascertain whether we are on the right track, or whether we need to course correct to ultimately deliver successful business outcomes that will generate return on investment.
1) Why are we doing what we are doing? Question every requirement. If we don’t have full conviction behind the reason for doing something, then it is likely not worth doing.
2) Who are we doing this for? We must know who our end customers are, and must keep them consistently involved throughout the delivery journey to make sure they will actually adopt what we are delivering.
3) What is the outcome we are aiming to deliver? We have to understand what our customers want, and ask for proactive periodic feedback to increase the chance of success at every given opportunity. There is no point in delivering something that has no takers.
4) When do we need to deliver the desired outcome that our customers want? Speed and quality are of the essence. Accept the fact that delivering the perfect solution late is the same as delivering nothing in this constantly changing business world.
5) How are we going to deliver the required outcome for our customers? How do we know that the delivered outcome is indeed the right one? For any given problem, there will always be multiple solutions. We must demonstrate the professionalism of exploring multiple options along with their pros/cons before coming to a consensus. We should define what success means at the start to take subjectivity out of the equation as much as practically possible later in the journey.
If we can answer these questions with clarity and keep revisiting them throughout the delivery process, to ensure that the project stays relevant, viable, and fit for purpose, success will follow.
Q: In 2013 you were named Global SAP Testing Lead for BAT’s entire enterprise, which involved deploying a single SAP template for over five years across more than 180 countries. Even SAP considers this BAT multi-million pound implementation to be one of the most fastest worldwide, and as a result, you have been referred to as one of the “fathers” of the global IT Test Strategy framework for the BAT consumer group of companies. How did you develop your SAP expertise and transition to this position?
A: This was the Target Operating Model and One SAP (TaO) project, which was an extremely ambitious project at the outset due to its scale and complexity. The goal was to enable consistency in working across the 180+ BAT markets via the deployment of a single global SAP template, with the strict aim of increasing business responsiveness, while simultaneously reducing the total cost of ownership for BAT’s scattered legacy IT systems. TaO wasn’t just a flagship global project for BAT, but also for the ERP industry at large. Globally renowned research and advisory organizations published research papers on TaO, hailing it as “one of the largest ever SAP-enabled global transformation projects.” Whereas industry standards for this scale of a program had been at least 10 years, our plan was to accomplish it all in five years.
The expectations were daunting. I was accountable for ensuring that the SAP template being designed and built was free from any major bugs before we went live in any country. If all failed to function precisely, there was high risk of BAT operations running globally coming to a complete halt, along with significant regulatory repercussions both locally and internationally.
This was a career defining role for me. Looking back, I realize that it took 10 years of multi-faceted work experience to prepare me to lead the massive TaO implementation. Earlier in my career, I often volunteered to work on projects or initiatives that would allow me to work across geographical boundaries and cultures, and across various IT platforms. I always intentionally wanted to work on complex projects that my peers would generally avoid. I had confidence that high risk would yield high returns. This is how I gained hands-on work experience with IT systems implementation in different countries on different platforms, and developed project and service delivery management expertise for complex global IT solutions and application support operations. I also earned various professional certifications that together made me ready for the acid test that was TaO. In 2016, BAT was the sole winner of the prestigious SAP “Business Transformation Distinction Award” for this global transformation. It is very gratifying that the strategy I prepared to ensure IT quality assurance for this program became the model for the BAT group to follow for all their related IT needs globally.
Q: The SAP testing and systems that you developed in that early TaO implementation evolved into the framework for BAT’s overall Global IT Quality Assurance Center of Excellence. What were some of the challenges in this process and what did you learn from them?
A: Up until TaO, the subject of software testing in BAT rarely came up. It wasn’t getting the focus it deserved, as compared to design, build, deployment, and other areas. Speed was the priority, and testing was almost an afterthought. However, there is a relationship between speed and quality. Companies that don’t get that balance right are doomed to eventually encounter problems. Take the real-life example of what the world experienced with the July 2024 CrowdStrike update, that inadvertently crashed the majority of Windows® computers worldwide and cost billions of dollars in losses across multiple industries. One of the major methods of averting this kind of disaster proactively is via robust software quality assurance testing.
I had to work within BAT to gradually change that mindset. Now, instead of IT quality assurance coming at the end of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), it is engrained from the very beginning of any IT transformation we do (SAP or non-SAP), and we invest millions of dollars to do it right.
Q: In the decade following the TaO, you were promoted to Senior Director of Global IT Testing & Assurance and then Head of SAP CoE-Americas. In addition to your SAP expertise, you have also been recognized for significant achievements in automation, including implementing an automation framework that enabled BAT to achieve more than 90% automation coverage for their SAP testing at enterprise level. Tell us about how you innovated automation strategies to achieve this result? How else are you using artificial intelligence (AI) and automation tools in SAP ERP processes across BAT Americas?
A: As I have said, “speed and quality are of the essence.” However, getting this delicate balance right requires strategic forward thinking, along with resources to enable the needed strategy. As the Head of Global IT Testing and Assurance, I had to constantly navigate the changes that were always being introduced into our SAP estate and other platforms. No one can or should stop those changes, because they are vital to our business growth.
However, with change comes risk. What happens if the changes we are introducing inadvertently break a vital existing business process? When we introduce a new change or functionality, we need to make sure that everything that came before continues to work as it was. If not, it will be akin to building the second floor of a building while making the first floor completely unhabitable in the future. This was the same riddle I had to solve for BAT. Businesses wanted their requested new SAP changes to go into the production system as soon as possible, but I had to make sure that before allowing any change to go live, a plethora of existing business functionalities were tested globally. There was no way for me to ask business users to do this continuous cycle of quality assurance manually, as it would have taken years to introduce new system changes. Automation was the answer for this seemingly impossible dilemma. I had to conduct a quick but effective campaign in BAT’s business community, to find out what are the key critical business processes we were supporting via SAP, and identify what were the technical functionalities within SAP that were enabling those business processes, and then implement the right automation tool that could automate the testing of these processes with minimal human intervention, with maximum speed and the highest quality in the shortest possible time. With 90% of automation of our SAP testing suite, that’s exactly what I managed to achieve.
Now that my role has evolved to Head of an overall SAP CoE for a region, I am no longer satisfied with running automation in testing environments. Thus, I am now evaluating what repeatable tasks are being performed manually in the live system that can be replaced by AI/automation, without exposing the company to any new undue risk.
Q: Based on your experience, you are now recognized globally as an expert in SAP Quality Assurance. In a recent article for ERP TODAY, you advised SAP users to start planning now for the SAP S/4HANA transition that will occur on December 31, 2027. Since SAP is the world’s leading Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, this will impact many businesses and likely cost them millions of dollars/pounds to implement. Describe the problem for us. What do you think global organizational IT leaders need to do?
A: The crux of the issue is that most companies worldwide are running older SAP ERP platforms, and SAP will stop supporting these legacy systems on December 31, 2027. This kind of transformative upgrade initiatives generally take years to complete, however, the current adoption rate for the new SAP S/4HANA system is now approximately 30% of SAP ERP users. Since we are only 3.5 years away from the deadline, this is highly alarming.
What makes the situation even worse is that the SAP experts who can enable this magnitude of a task are in high demand, but short supply. If majority of these companies keep waiting until the last minute to make this happen, they will likely find it difficult to source talents with the necessary skills and experience to manage the transformation. To underscore the severity of the problem, we are talking about thousands of businesses worldwide potentially coming to a complete halt on January 1, 2028, if they don’t get started on this transition.
The good news is that we have not yet crossed the point of no return. My top four tips to the SAP leaders in their respective organizations would be to:
1) Understand the future strategic goals of your business right away and ascertain how S/4Hana will be able to help you achieve those goals. Don’t start a multi-year, multimillion dollar project based solely on technical drivers. You will not succeed.
2) Make sure you can secure sponsorship from the most senior business stakeholders of your organization to get behind this transformation, not just the IT leaders. Remember, IT exists for business, not the other way around.
3) Take inventory of what skill sets will be needed to make this transformation happen. Know how many of those skills you currently have within your team, but more importantly, what you don’t have. You need to know where you can source those missing skills from, and how long it is going to take you to build the team that will be able to usher you into the new era of ERP.
4) Please start now. Don’t waste a single day. The clock is ticking!
Q: In your article, you cautioned IT leaders about underestimating the importance of change management in adopting SAP S/4HANA. As an IT expert, how did you develop the leadership skills to execute effective change management in the complex technology projects you’ve led throughout your career? Besides having the necessary technical expertise, why do you think this is important for overseeing a systems transition?
A: As a leader in the information technology domain, first and foremost, I had to truly accept the fact that for any tech to exist successfully there must be a solid reason behind it to even come into being. If I am bringing something new to business based on shaky drivers or short-term gimmicks that are not able to add any kind of tangible or intangible value to the bottom line over a sustained period of time, then all I am doing is wasting resources. Before you try to sell anything, you must understand who your customers are and what they need and want. As I have said, IT exists for business, not the other way around. When you are brining any kind of change to your IT landscape, you must ensure that the business users you are trying to enhance through tech are fully behind you. You want them to see you as their trusted partner who is not introducing change just for the sake of it, but to enable them to do their work better and ultimately grow the business. You must take them along on the journey, and keep them involved every step of the way, so that they can constantly see and believe that the outcome you are delivering will do what was promised and will bring about the desired change. You want your end user community to be your spokesperson. This will not happen unless you are facilitating the change management process proactively and consistently throughout the transformation journey.
Q: How do you foresee the relatively recent acceleration of AI, machine learning, and automation tools impacting ERP systems over the next decade? What guidance do you have for organizations?
A: We are very fortunate to be living in the golden age of technological advancements. With the recent giant leaps achieved by AI and automation, I expect to see mundane, repeatable, and routine tasks no longer requiring any human intervention in the short-to-medium term, freeing us to give our full attention to real value-adding tasks that will result in even more life-changing leaps for humankind. In a decade or two, autonomous AI may be knocking on our doors. I am confident that if we continue to use these developments responsibly and ethically, there is no limit to what we can do.
Q: Given the breadth of new technologies, as well as the coming SAP S/4HANA platform, how do you train your IT teams to keep current? Are you involved in mentoring? What advice do you give younger engineers?
A: I am a firm believer in the principal that change is the only constant. Any individual or teams who cannot embrace change as opportunities will become obsolete very quickly. That is the mantra I personally live by and that is the same mantra I instill in my group of mentees. As a rule, I spend a minimum of five hours every week searching for emerging tech trends, and I am always on the lookout for new ways of doing old activities to promote higher effectiveness and efficiency. I do not jump at every shiny new tech that hits the market, however, if the tech is something that will genuinely help you in achieving your goals in a way that had never been possible before, then you owe it to yourself and to your team to learn more about it. I also believe that we should not just expect our companies to decide to send us for trainings where we can learn new skills. Our future is in our own hands. Take ownership, challenge the status quo, and be the master of your own destiny at every given opportunity by continuously reinventing yourself, or get ready to be left behind.
