Travel and Expense Team Manager

Job Purpose and Impact

The Team Manager – Global Travel & Expense Operations will lead a Bengaluru-based team responsible for delivering accurate, timely and employee-focused Travel & Expense (T&E) support in a global team. The role will oversee operations,  ServiceNow T&E tickets, SAP Concur queries and operational support, such as Dunning, co-ordination on Z-file errors, UCP processes, and other T&E operational work.

The successful candidate will bring strong SAP Concur expertise, a sound accounting background, disciplined people leadership and a strategic mindset. The role is expected to simplify and standardize processes, reduce recurring manual work, resolve root causes, create measurable efficiencies and oversee ServiceNow enhancements that improve T&E workflows, reporting, knowledge management and the employee experience.

Key Accountabilities

• Lead the day-to-day delivery of Global T&E operations, establishing clear priorities, ownership, service standards and escalation paths.
• Oversee ServiceNow tickets related to T&E, including intake, categorization, assignment, aging, resolution quality, SLA performance, backlog management and escalations.
• Oversee the identification, investigation and timely resolution of Z-file errors, Dunning, UCP Process, Payment queries with a focus on root-cause elimination and prevention of repeat failures.
• Monitor operational KPIs and SLAs, ticket volumes; use performance insights to drive corrective actions and continuous improvement.
• Bring a strategic and forward-looking mindset to the function, balancing immediate operational delivery with the long-term scalability of Global T&E operations.
• Identify repetitive, manual and non-value-added activities and lead initiatives to simplify, standardize, automate or eliminate them.
• Act as the T&E business lead for ServiceNow enhancements and workflow improvements that support the Global T&E team.
• Improve ticket routing, categorization, workflow automation, user experience, knowledge articles and self-service capabilities, and oversee the design and finalization of T&E metrics dashboards.
• Partner with Digital Technology, to resolve system issues and deliver sustainable improvements across Concur, ServiceNow, SAP, JDE and connected processes.
• Build team capability across SAP Concur, accounting, ServiceNow, problem solving, process improvement, controls and stakeholder management.
• Manage capacity, workload, cross-training, succession planning and business continuity for critical T&E activities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Commerce, Business Administration or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10 or more years of relevant experience in Travel & Expense, finance operations, accounting operations, shared services or a comparable global operational environment.
• Demonstrated people-management experience of 6+ years , including leading, coaching and developing teams in a complex service-delivery environment.
• Strong hands-on and functional expertise in SAP Concur Expense, including workflows, exceptions, integrations, deployments and operational support.
• Experience managing or overseeing ServiceNow tickets, workflows, reporting and enhancement requirements.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to influence across functions and levels.
• Experience with SAP and/or JDE and a strong understanding of ERP interfaces , migrations or decommissioning activities.
• Experience building and leading employee-facing support services, including phone-based support channels, case management processes, service metrics and operational governance
• Hands-on experience in Power BI and/or Power Apps for dashboard development, data visualization and operational metrics reporting would be an added advantage.