Service Manager - Relex

Role Context

The Ultra Fresh team is implementing RELEX SaaS as the planning platform for ultra-fresh demand forecasting and replenishment across METRO. Ultra-fresh is a strategically important assortment area that requires accurate forecasting, reliable replenishment, strong data quality, operational discipline, and high service availability to improve product availability, inventory efficiency, and waste reduction.

The initial implementation covers the pilot countries Germany, France, and Romania, with further global rollout waves planned afterwards. The solution is based on RELEX Forecasting & Replenishment capabilities and includes areas such as forecasting, replenishment, fresh optimization, intraday replenishment, promotions and events, purchase optimization, retail bill-of-materials, and weather-based forecasting.

As Service Manager – RELEX, you will be part of the internal METRO.digital capability built in MD GSC India to support the transition from project delivery to stable run-mode operations and future rollout execution. You will be responsible for ensuring that the RELEX service is operated reliably, monitored effectively, governed properly, and continuously improved in line with business expectations and METRO.digital standards.

You will act as the key service ownership interface between business stakeholders, product, engineering, country key users, RELEX, implementation partners, application managed services, and internal platform teams. Your focus will be on service quality, operational readiness, SLA adherence, incident and problem management, vendor coordination, governance, communication, and continuous service improvement.

How You Will Make an Impact

You will help METRO establish a reliable and scalable operating model for RELEX in Ultra Fresh, ensuring that the solution can support business-critical forecasting and replenishment processes across pilot countries and future rollout waves.

You will contribute to stable application managed services, transparent service governance, faster incident resolution, stronger business confidence, and reduced dependency on external partners by building service management capability inside MD GSC India.

Your Responsibilities

• Own and manage the RELEX service from an operational and service-management perspective, ensuring stable, reliable, and transparent service delivery for Ultra Fresh forecasting and replenishment.
• Define, maintain, and continuously improve the service model, support processes, governance routines, escalation paths, operational documentation, and communication channels for RELEX.
• Ensure that agreed service levels, operational KPIs, support expectations, and business-critical timelines are understood, monitored, reported, and acted upon.
• Coordinate incident, problem, service request, and escalation management across internal support teams, RELEX vendor support, implementation partners, engineering teams, and business stakeholders.
• Ensure timely response, impact assessment, prioritization, communication, mitigation, and resolution for RELEX-related incidents and operational issues.
• Drive problem management activities by identifying recurring issues, coordinating root-cause analysis, tracking corrective actions, and ensuring preventive measures are implemented.
• Support the transition from project delivery to application managed services and run-mode operations, including readiness assessments, hypercare setup, knowledge transfer, support handover, and operational stabilization.
• Coordinate go-live, rollout, and hypercare service activities for pilot and future rollout countries, ensuring service readiness and smooth transition into steady-state operations.
• Monitor service health, including data loads, interfaces, batch runs, operational outputs, support queues, incident trends, availability, and performance indicators.
• Work closely with Solution Experts, engineers, architects, product managers, country key users, and RELEX to ensure that functional, technical, and operational issues are properly understood and addressed.
• Manage the operational relationship with RELEX and other external partners, including service reviews, escalation follow-up, vendor performance tracking, issue prioritization, and continuous improvement discussions.
• Prepare and facilitate service review meetings, operational status updates, stakeholder briefings, post-incident reviews, and other governance ceremonies.
• Communicate actively and regularly on service status, incidents, risks, dependencies, support performance, and improvement actions through internal and external channels.
• Maintain transparency with business stakeholders and country organizations regarding service quality, known issues, planned changes, releases, upgrades, and operational risks.
• Ensure that change, release, and upgrade activities are assessed from a service-impact perspective and that required regression testing, business communication, support readiness, and fallback planning are coordinated.
• Support risk management, security, compliance, data protection, access management, and audit-related activities for the RELEX service in collaboration with the relevant teams.
• Maintain and improve operational documentation, support runbooks, known error databases, escalation matrices, service reports, SLAs, OLAs, and knowledge articles.
• Define and track service objectives and key results together with the squad, product, business, and support stakeholders.
• Use service metrics, incident trends, stakeholder feedback, and operational data to identify improvement opportunities and drive continuous service improvement.
• Promote a culture of ownership, collaboration, transparency, and customer focus across all teams involved in the RELEX service.