Functional Architect, Syspro

Innovative Chemical Products Group (ICP Group) is a leading formulator and manufacturer of specialty coatings, adhesives, and sealants serving the construction and industrial end markets. ICP Group is comprised of leading brands known for innovation, quality, and performance. Founded in 2015 and supported by a lean corporate team, ICP Group has scaled rapidly through organic and acquisition growth into one of the largest coatings, adhesives, and sealants companies in North America.

ICP Group is headquartered in Andover, MA and has manufacturing and distribution sites throughout North America, Latin America, UK, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

ICP Group is seeking a Functional Architect to serve as our senior SYSPRO expert. This role owns the system improvement and optimization backlog for the live SYSPRO environment, so that the implementation team stays focused on projects and deep platform knowledge sits in more than one place. Reporting to the Director of ERP/WMS Service Delivery, the Functional Architect holds the pen on the SYSPRO functional blueprint that both the service delivery and implementation teams work to.

The standards in that blueprint are set jointly with implementation leadership rather than imposed on them, and once agreed, the Architect maintains them and applies them consistently across both teams. This is a hands-on senior role. The right person is the one other people go to when a process does not fit the system, who can explain the answer in language the business understands, and who can hold a design line without turning it into a territorial argument.

• Hold the pen on the SYSPRO functional blueprint and platform version standard, covering finance, inventory, manufacturing, supply chain, and sales order processing. The Trans Lution WMS functional blueprint is owned by the Trans Lution WMS functional owner; the two are kept aligned at the SYSPRO and Trans Lution boundary. One standard applies across live and in-flight companies, because they share one configuration.
  
  The CIO ratifies it, and neither director changes it alone.
• Serve both the service delivery and implementation teams equally. Although this role reports into service delivery, its blueprint remit is chartered to serve both teams, and it is not an instrument of either director.
• Set functional design standards, configuration conventions, naming, and documentation requirements with both directors consulted. Standards are agreed across the teams, ratified by the CIO, then maintained and applied by the Architect.
• Recommend how business requirements should be met in the system, favoring standard functionality over customization and documenting the reasoning whenever customization is justified.
• Maintain a coherent blueprint across operating companies, so that local needs are met without fragmenting the platform.
• Review proposed changes from both teams for design integrity, risk, and downstream impact, raising concerns early rather than blocking late.
• Escalate unresolved design disagreements to both directors and, where they cannot agree, to the CIO, with the options and the trade‑offs written down, rather than settling them by seniority or by stalling.

• Own the system improvement and optimization backlog for live SYSPRO functionality, from intake through delivery and benefit confirmation.
• Work with business leaders to surface inefficiencies, then translate them into prioritized, scoped improvements.
• Deliver configuration changes hands-on where appropriate, and direct others where the work is better placed with an analyst or partner.
• Ensure every change is tested against a written test plan and released without disruption to daily operations.
• Retire technical and functional debt deliberately, including redundant customizations and unused configuration.

• Serve as the deepest internal source of SYSPRO functional knowledge, and deliberately reduce single-person dependency by transferring that knowledge.
• Stay current on the newer SYSPRO version, including new functionality that could replace customization or manual process.
• Assess new SYSPRO modules and capabilities against ICP requirements, and make clear recommendations.
• Maintain a functional knowledge base that outlives any individual, covering configuration decisions, process…