The Customer Onboarding & Data Governance Manager will focus on bringing clear, enterprise-wide ownership to how we onboard, set up, and maintain every customer account. This role will be the single point of accountability for the customer master data lifecycle: coordinating Sales, Credit, Accounts Receivable, Legal, Logistics, and IT to make sure every new customer is set up right the first time, and every existing account stays accurate as it grows and changes.
Customer maintenance combines customer onboarding, master data governance, process design and cross-functional leadership. The ideal candidate is a process builder at heart: someone who can bring order to a cross-functional process, hold other departments accountable to deadlines without direct authority over them, and treat customer data as a company asset. The function will be designed around strong controls, including segregation of duties between customer account setup and credit approval.
A significant part of this role during its first 12-18 months will be leading customer master data validation and clean-up in preparation for AWC's upcoming ERP implementation. You will be the primary owner of getting our customer data audited, corrected, and conversion-ready.
Customer Master Data & Account Lifecycle Ownership- Own the design and governance of AWC's end-to-end customer administrative lifecycle, from signed commitment through full operational status and ongoing maintenance.
- Establish the enterprise standard for how customer setup and maintenance should move across systems and departments, including:
- Customer commitment and handoff from Sales
- Credit, KYC, and fraud screening coordination - verifying customer identity and legitimacy and screening for fraud risk before extending credit; screening itself is performed by Credit, with completion confirmed by this role before account activation
- Customer master record creation and validation
- Tax setup and payment terms configuration
- Pricing and rebate data coordination with the Pricing & Rebate Analyst (data accuracy only; pricing strategy remains owned by Pricing & Rebate)
- Shipping, billing, invoicing, and technology/portal (EDI, AP automation) requirements capture
- Account activation (go-live)
- Post-go-live stabilization
- Ongoing maintenance and periodic account review
- Define clear process stages, required inputs and outputs, roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and handoffs across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT.
- Establish process ownership and cross-functional accountability for customer administrative data and timely completion of required handoffs.
- Ensure processes are designed around the end-to-end customer lifecycle and data accuracy, rather than optimizing individual departments or activities.
Customer Data Clean-Up, Standardization & ERP Readiness- Own customer master data validation and clean-up in direct preparation for AWC's ERP implementation - a major focus area of this role in its first 12-18 months.
- Lead a full audit of existing customer master data across current systems to identify duplicates, missing or incomplete records, outdated addresses, and inconsistent tax or credit information.
- Define data quality standards and validation rules for customer master fields ahead of ERP conversion.
- Partner directly with the ERP project team on data mapping, conversion test loads, and mock cutover cycles, flagging and resolving data issues before they reach production.
- Validate converted customer data post-migration, reconcile discrepancies against source systems, and formally sign off on data readiness before go-live.
- Facilitate cross-functional sessions with Sales, Credit, and AR to understand current-state data challenges and establish scalable future-state standards.
- Identify and improve legacy practices, duplicate work, unclear ownership, and unnecessary local variations in how customer data is captured and maintained.
- Translate inconsistent or undocumented customer setup practices into clear, practical, repeatable enterprise standards.
Data Governance & Controls- Establish governance mechanisms that keep customer master data accurate, current, and consistently maintained.
- Document and define process owners, contributors, decision rights, and escalation paths across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT.
- Maintain segregation of duties between customer account setup and credit approval; partner with Credit to confirm KYC and fraud screening are complete before account activation, without owning the credit decision itself.
- Establish standards for when and how customer master data may be changed, including maker-checker approval on sensitive fields (credit terms, tax status).
- Create mechanisms for identifying and addressing re-onboarding or account review triggers (M&A, ownership change, significant volume change, new locations, expiring certificates or contracts).
- Maintain a full audit trail of customer master data changes and ensure compliance-related documentation (tax certificates, insurance, contracts) remains current.
Performance & Continuous Improvement- Establish KPIs that measure the health of the customer onboarding and maintenance process (cycle time, first-invoice accuracy, data quality/duplicate rate, re-onboarding responsiveness).
- Identify bottlenecks, recurring failures, and root causes across the customer administrative lifecycle.
- Lead cross-functional improvement efforts that reduce rework, delays, and administrative friction for Sales, Credit, and AR.
- Establish a disciplined approach for continuously evaluating and improving the customer maintenance function and its supporting SOP.
Change Management, Staffing & Future-State Structure- Build stakeholder alignment across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT around the new centralized customer maintenance process.
- Clearly communicate the business rationale and customer impact behind the new function and any process changes.
- Manage a staffing model that may include internal transfers and contract/temporary resources during the ERP implementation period.
- Assess the long-term operating model, organizational structure, and staffing needs for the Customer Maintenance function as the ERP implementation progresses, and recommend a scalable future-state model within 12-18 months.
- Monitor adoption of the new intake process and standardized workflow, and adjust based on feedback without allowing informal workarounds to re-enter the process.
What Success Looks LikeThe Customer Onboarding & Data Governance Manager will help create an environment where:
- Customer onboarding is clear, consistent, and easy to navigate from signed commitment through full operational status.
- Cross-functional roles, responsibilities, decision rights, and handoffs across Sales, Credit, AR, Legal, Logistics, and IT are understood and consistently followed.
- Customer requirements - shipping, billing, invoicing, and technology/portal - are captured accurately and only once.
- Customer master data is accurate, de-duplicated, and ready for ERP conversion.
- Segregation of duties between account setup and credit approval is real, enforced, and auditable.
- Pricing and rebate data is accurate in the customer master record, with clear ownership resting with the Pricing & Rebate Analyst.
- Re-onboarding and account review triggers are proactively identified and addressed rather than missed.
- Teams across the enterprise operate from one standardized process rather than department-specific workarounds.
- Leaders have meaningful metrics to understand the health of the customer administrative lifecycle.
- AWC can scale to more customers, locations, and system complexity without adding unnecessary rework or risk.
Skills you'll need:- Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Supply Chain, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
- 5+ years of experience in customer master data management, order-to-cash operations, credit/AR, sales operations, or customer onboarding
- Demonstrated experience coordinating cross-functional processes involving Sales, Credit, and Finance
- Strong working knowledge of ERP customer master data structures (e.g., SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics) and CRM systems
- Hands-on experience with data validation, cleansing, or de-duplication, ideally as part of a system conversion or data migration project
- Working knowledge of sales/use tax exemption documentation, W-9/W-8 requirements, and basic credit/KYC concepts
- Strong process-design and documentation skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Direct experience with ERP implementations or system conversions strongly preferred
Here's what will set you apart:- Prior experience leading customer or vendor master data clean-up as part of an ERP implementation, from audit through post-conversion validation
- Experience designing or leading a centralized customer master data / customer maintenance function from the ground up
- Familiarity with EDI and AP automation/invoicing portals (e.g., Ariba, Coupa, Tungsten)
- Comfort managing a blended team of permanent staff and contract/temporary resources during a project-driven workload surge
The Rewards:- Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
- 401(K) Match
- Competitive Pay
- Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance Package
- Employer Paid Life Insurance
- Paid Time Off and Holiday Pay
- Career Development Opportunities
