Senior Director - GBS Innovation And Operations Improvement

Purpose & Overall Relevance For The Organisation

Global Business Services (GBS) designs, builds, and operates consistent end to end business solutions for adidas, delivering services across finance, non-trade procurement, and human resources. This contributes to improved operating efficiency, user experience, agility, and decision making, while ensuring a strong compliance and control environment. These outcomes are enabled through standardized processes, globally consistent governance, advanced technologies, and a strong focus on continuous improvement and innovation.

Within this context, the Senior Director GBS Innovation and Operations Improvement will shape, lead, and scale the innovation and AI agenda for adidas GBS. The role will lead the Innovation, Performance Management and Analytics, Process Management and CI Governance, and Automation teams. The role focuses on identifying and scaling opportunities that leverage emerging technologies, automation, and AI to enhance process performance and service delivery across GBS.

Working in close partnership with GBS leadership, Global Process Owners, functions, markets, and Tech, this role connects strategic priorities with practical implementation. It ensures that innovation efforts translate into tangible business outcomes by driving structured exploration, solution development, and scalable deployment across operations and process domains.

Key Responsibilities

Innovation Strategy, Exploration & Roadmap:

• Lead and continuously refine the GBS Innovation vision, strategy, and operating model, aligned with GBS and corporate strategy.
• Establish and manage methodologies, processes, governance, and tools to drive innovation from idea exploration to business transition.
• Develop and maintain a multi-year innovation roadmap, based on core user problems, market trends, and new technology opportunities.
• Define clear KPIs, success measures, and value frameworks to assess and prioritize innovation opportunities.
• Drive internal and external trend exploration to identify breakthrough ideas, best practices, and opportunities.
• Own the creation of strategic narratives, business cases, and leadership material to engage senior executives and drive decision-making.
  
  

Innovation Portfolio & Solution Delivery

• Lead the end-to-end lifecycle of innovation and intelligent automation initiatives — from discovery and problem framing to design, implementation, deployment, scaling, and seamless handover to GBS Operations.
• Ensure fast, high-quality delivery by applying an agile, pragmatic, and flexible approach that accelerates time to value while maintaining strong execution discipline.
• Define clear deliverables, timelines, resource models, critical paths, and risk plans for innovation programs, pilots, and proofs of concept.
• Apply consulting, business modelling, technology assessment, and analytical skills to diagnose challenges and design future state scenarios that improve efficiency, user experience, and process intelligence.
• Oversee the development of structured business process designs, service models, use cases, and technology recommendations, with a strong focus on automation, AI-enabled solutions, and scalable digital capabilities.
• Partner with Global Process Owners (GPOs) and GBS Operations leads to assess end-to-end (E2E) processes, identify root causes of friction and delays, and translate operational pain points into scalable improvement opportunities.
• Propose and prioritize the right mix of approaches (simplification, standardization, automation, AI, analytics) and enabling tools to improve cycle time, quality, and cost across E2E processes.
• Lead solution shaping and tool selection (in collaboration with adidas Tech) for AI-enabled workflows, intelligent automation, and process intelligence; own delivery from build/configuration and integration through go-live, adoption, and measurable value realization, ensuring solutions are designed for controls and reliable day-to-day operation post-handover.
• Build strong and data-driven business cases that demonstrate financial impact, user experience improvements, operational benefits, and rollout readiness.
• Manage external contracting and partnerships for pilot delivery, ensuring compliance, sound governance, and effective risk mitigation.
  
  

Networking, Co-Creation & Stakeholder Management

• Build a strong external innovation ecosystem (startups, academia, incubators, accelerators, consulting firms, other GBS organizations).
• Maintain a close partnership with adidas innovation teams (product, digital, experience design, tech).
• Foster co-creation with GBS leadership, process owners, markets, and functions to ensure strong alignment and adoption.
• Drive a high degree of organizational accountability, ensuring innovation investments ladder up to strategic priorities.
• Position the GBS Intelligent Ops role as a recognized partner within adidas senior leadership circles.
  
  

Finance/Business Transformation Advisory

• Provide advisory support to leaders in Finance and other functions to assess current state, define future operating models, and outline transformation roadmaps.
• Lead the design of target operating models, service delivery models, and technology-enabled business process improvements.
• Drive sustainable cost optimization models through innovative solutions, automation, and advanced digital capabilities.
  
  

People Leadership

• Build, develop, and inspire the Intelligent Ops team and future talent pipeline.
• Create and reinforce a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and outcome-driven innovation.
• Manage flex and cross-functional teams during specific innovation cycles.
• Role model collaborative behavior, bold thinking, and user centricity.
  
  

Key Relationships

• GBS Senior Leadership Team
• Market and Functional leadership teams
• adidas Tech and Digital organizations
• GBS Process and Hub Operations leads
• GBS Hub CI leads
• External startups, agencies, universities, innovation partners
  
  

Knowledge, Skills And Abilities

• Exceptional storytelling and communication skills, including creating compelling narratives for senior executives.
• Strong innovation mindset with proven ability to deliver tech- and non-tech solutions at scale in a global organization.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and business modelling capabilities.
• Deep understanding of digital processes, user experience, service design, and emerging technologies.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguity, iterate quickly, and maintain outcome focus.
• High influencing skills across diverse stakeholders and matrixed environments.
• Strong financial and business acumen; data-driven decision-making.
• Curiosity, resilience, and the ability to challenge the status quo constructively.
• Strong end-to-end process and operations orientation; ability to partner with GPOs to diagnose bottlenecks and design pragmatic interventions that increase speed and efficiency.
• Hands-on experience shaping and selecting tools/approaches (e.g., BPM, process mining, workflow automation, analytics, GenAI) and defining measurable value cases (cycle time, productivity, quality) through scale.
  
  

Requisite Education And Experience / Minimum Qualifications

• 15–20 years of relevant industry experience, with a master’s degree in business, IT, Innovation or a related field (preferred).
• 5+ years of experience leading teams in an innovation or transformation context.
• Strong business process advisory skills, including assessing current state, identifying improvements, and designing future-state processes using modern BPM tools.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with Global Process Owners to drive end-to-end process improvements and to translate process insights into tool-enabled solutions (automation/AI), leading implementation through to adoption and measurable efficiency and speed outcomes.
• Functional expertise in Finance, HR or Procurement to support technology‑led transformation within GBS.
• Proven ability to analyze functional processes and recommend best practices, ERP solutions and emerging technologies (automation, intelligent workflows, analytics, AI, blockchain).
• Experience with innovation methodologies such as Lean Startup and Agile; GBS or Shared Services experience and fluent English are strong advantages.
  
  

adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. We are an equal opportunity employer.

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