I guess not ?!

Are you in business to run administrative tasks, make sure everything is invoiced and prepare your tax declaration? I guess not!

Most probably you’re running your business in order to deliver a particular value to your customers in the market.  And that’s only right.    And the good news is that with our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, based Finance-led ERP offering, we can ensure it stays that way.  Also when you grow.

So what is that offering all about?

That’s what I’d like to give you an on:

PURPOSE … why we’re offering Finance-led ERP solution
VALUE …  why you should care reading further
WHAT     … is it that we bring, and how to make it real.

What happened to me recently…

A couple of months back, I accidentally got into a conversation with a C-level member of a sugar producer.  As you can imagine, being enthusiastic about sugar and far less about accounting.

As any organization, his company was born out of a specific purpose.  The idea of bringing a specific value to the market space.  Be it producing specific products in this particular case or be it delivering a particular service…  Like grocery stores bringing food, beverages and closer to end-consumers.  Or a telco operator ensuring we can all connect to each other using their network.

In order to bring the sugar product to the end-customer, this particular company had built a sales channel and supporting process.  And sourcing of specific raw materials and other resources to keep their business going.  Interacting with different types of business partners, customers and vendors in the first place.   One resource is people you work with within your organization.  There is no organization that runs without people.

To stay in business every organization needs a clear view on their financials.  Not only because regulatory and tax requirements.  But at least to understand whether and how a profit is made, a positive cash balance exists and ensure the financial health of your organization.

What typically makes you tick as a business owner, though, is the specific core value you bring in the market space.  Sugar in case of the partner in my conversation.  Leaving the “administrative burden” aside.

Classic understanding of ERP…

This is the classic way where an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system comes in. Focusing on day to day business execution.  Making sure all indirect and direct procurement is followed up on, including checks on delivery, ensuring correct supplier invoicing and payment. Making sure all sales transactions are registered and invoiced and paid for by your customers as having a healthy cash flow is the bloodline of any business.

Ensuring all business transactions are completely and correctly registered.

And this remains core within what we deliver with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.  Unlocking efficiencies with built-in best practices across all these different standard business processes, autonomously running in the background. Allowing you to focus on your core business.

Where our Finance-Led ERP offering starts…

But this is not where our Finance-Led ERP offering stops… or perhaps I should rather say ‘starts’!

( Project Margin Analysis ) 

Providing on-the-fly access to all necessary  information to drive the right decisions, across the organization is the key interaction business users have with our Finance-Led ERP offering.  Not just have all details on what product or service in what customer segment drives profit or which business partners are causing an issue in my cash flow.

(Value driver tree )

But especially making sure we have a clear view on the future.  Using all operational information we sit on as input, linking this to the financial translation of your business strategy. Only having to care about exceptions during day-to-day operations, leaving the rest to the system.

With full reassurance that you’re doing scenario analyses and take decisions based on a single accurate, complete and fully trustworthy dataset.  Ensuring all regulatory requirements are met.

( Check Electronic Document Consistency )

Across countries… also when you grow beyond new (international) borders, allowing you to outperform your competitors and turn compliance into a strategic differentiator.

Sounds nice.  But where’s the meat ?

Of course any marketing message does.  But as any finance professional this needs to become tangible.

So where does the information in the margin dashboard comes from. And how come is this all accurate and available at any time needed?

That’s where the best practice processes come in, on the procurement as well as sales side.

Combining our industry specific process knowledge with latest technology capabilities, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public editions allows you to

This does not only come with efficiency gains
like automating and optimizing order-to-fulfill with process intelligence

But genuinly support you in driving better business, creating more value
like facilitating invoicing negotiation with preliminary billing documents
and gaining instant insights into the lifeblood of your company… the cash flow situation

At the same time ensuring this business value is protected
Amongst other by capturing and managing revenue using a compliance ruleset

Let’s ask ourselves the following…

We’ve not only reimagined the procurement and sales processes. But also core finance.

Let me make you think about this question: Why is a financial close a periodic process?  Is a legal close required on a monthly basis?  Isn’t a monthly managerial close far too slow? How can value be generated from all finance data and tasks that are executed?

A more effective way of steering your business across the organization, by keeping your cost of finance low, while staying compliance 24/7, with extending regulations growing beyond finance and tax, like sustainability?  This can become your reality by leveraging the business value SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition brings through its integrated record-to-report and financial planning & analysis approach.

By redefining the end-to-end financial closing process driven by the purpose of delivering insightful information that can help you to drive the right business decisions,

Reinforced by the injection of latest intelligent automation capabilities to make this really happen.

• The delivery of all financial data and insights through a single financial truth, delivering reconciliation by design, leading to fewer closing tasks
• Automated real-time closing task execution with built-in workflow providing better visibility during the period and reduced workload at month-end.
  One example is the goods and invoice receipt reconciliation capability leveraging embedded analytics, situation handling, machine learning and embedded collaboration capabilities 

  

• Integrated entity and group close
  Which I’ll show here through an example of the group financial statements being analysed using the predelivered review booklet

There’s a difference between theory and practice

So will this take 2 years of setup before you see the first benefits?  If that would be the case, you’d rather have me told you this at the very start of this blog.  Luckely that’s not reality anymore.

Just like the classic view on ERP and what it does, referred to above, has undergone a big evolution, the same applies to how it can become your reality.

First and foremost, we offer our built-in industry best practices which provides pre-configurations of business processes, documentation, test scripts and more for you to use. These best practices are displayed in our digital discovery dashboard to better define scope, related benefits and an implementation that is fit to standard. On top, our Packaged Activation Services & Tools guide you on your journey by producing predictable results and a landscape delivered as your base for future growth in the shortest time (from 4 weeks) all enabled by these integrated tools and methodologies.

What in case you grow as a business?

While the success of your business will be about much more than choosing the right approach and technology to support you in your endeavours, it is of utmost importance that, when adding products, markets, acquiring another business or expanding to another country or region, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition should rather stimulate rather than block you from growing.  And that’s exactly our promise.

• Through Built-in business model innovation SAP S/4HANA Cloud public edition offers capabilities that enable you to sell a range of products, subscriptions, usage and service-based delivery and revenue models, and even bundle these together into a single solution offer. Allowing you to move from a model where each order-to-cash stream was separated to one where they work together to allow optimization of pricing and investment. Delivering a single margin view.
• Thanks to a lean chart of accounts, an attribute-based reporting model and entitlements to Group Reporting it is simple to scale up your organization.
• By delivering the widest and deepest localizations in the business, including deep local country versions and extensive language support, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition enables you to expand globally as well.

Interested? 

Read up here

Or just get in touch!

Michel