Programme & Transformation Leadership
For programmes too large, too political, or too broken for business as usual.
23 countries, 70 entities, twenty of which arrived mid-flight. Boards, works councils, regulators. And a group merger that moves the ground while you are still delivering.
Why I get the call
Difficult programmes almost never fail on the technology. They fail on seventy entities with seventy agendas. On a works council nobody consulted in time. On a regulator who reads the law differently than the consultant did. On a board that was asked the right question too late.
That is where I work. Not as the architect of a solution, but as the person who moves a solution through an organisation that resists it, across borders, jurisdictions and competing interests, until a decision is made and holds.
Six years at SAP Deutschland, two in consulting, independent since 2011. 266 project months, mostly where scale, regulation and politics meet.
Transformation & Transition
36 + 33 project months
System changes that must not stop the organisation while they happen. Deciding greenfield against brownfield honestly, cutting the transition so it stays reversible, and holding operations across the cut. SAP ERP’s end of maintenance is putting this question to a great many companies at once, with a date attached.
Turnaround & De-escalation
Three programmes, 90 days each
Programmes already tipping over: trust between client and vendor is gone, the steering committee only escalates, nobody dares state the numbers. Stabilising means establishing the truth first, then governance, then delivery, and finally a handover into operations that actually holds.
Technology as a board decision
Advisory at board level
Investment appraisal, sourcing strategy, build-vs-buy-vs-partner, technology risk in M&A. The questions whose answer lies in how much change the business can actually absorb.
Current mandate
Rolling out an EU directive while the group reorganises underneath it.
Implementing the EU Posted Workers Directive across an industrial group: 23 active countries, 50 entities, a regulatory footprint of 31 EU/EFTA states. That was the plan.
Then a group merger landed mid-flight. Roughly 20 further entities joined, the user and IT landscape started moving, the legal constructs had to be substantially reworked, and legal authority shifted from external counsel to in-house. The scope grew. The original 50 kept their date and are delivered in scope, on time and on budget. The additional 20 run in four waves to November 2026: three are successfully closed, the fourth is just starting.
- Aligned C-level across every active country on a single compliance strategy: each entity with its own starting position.
- Engaged authorities for audit management and regulatory clarification; political advocacy via BDI Berlin and BusinessEurope Brussels.
- Shaped and accompanied the works council negotiations at group and local level, through to approval.
- Established a central shared service centre with escalation protocol and power-of-attorney framework.
- Built decision papers that let the board re-align quickly at the critical points.
- Role
- Regional Program Director
- Industry
- Industrials, Germany
- Entities
- 70 (50 + 20 via merger)
- Active in
- 23 countries
- Footprint
- 31 EU/EFTA states
- Users
- 70,000
- Volume
- €12m investedexternal and internal effort; internal is not budgeted, the total never stood in any approval
Evidence
Where the time actually went.
since 2003
What clients say
“Mr Scharr grasped the tasks assigned to him very quickly and carried them out independently and with very good results. Even in difficult situations he always kept the necessary overview […] I thank Mr Scharr for his commitment and can recommend him at any time.”Klaus KunathHead of IT.R, MVV
“Your work was marked by very high competence and reliability. You succeeded in focusing the internal SAS team on the essential topics and in passing on your knowledge. Great commitment, many thanks.”Jörn WeigleCIO, SAS
Own instrument · S/4HANA
We build the instruments ourselves.
For the technical side of the S/4HANA transition we built our own tool: caern makes the migration readiness of a custom-ABAP estate measurable.