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We help enterprises to avoid or to eliminate difficulties that typically occur in the wake of SAP implementations and roll outs. Ultimately, these issues manifest themselves by affecting finance and accounting.
Our approach may look radical at first glance: We help you to align your organization with the system. In reality, this requires less re-thinking, change management, or even money investment than trying to further customize your ERP system.
We have programs readily available for various scenarios:
- Post Go Live Support
- Migration Support
- Fast Close / Virtual Close
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Post Go Live Support
Problems arising subsequent to an overall successful migration are rarely anticipated. The technology is mature, and the users have been trained to deal with the application – so what could go wrong? Simply transferring legacy business practice into the new environment can fail, and it will! A common response is trying to customize the new system to old processes. However, the very idea of an ERP system is the integration of business processes, which requires shedding old habits. Here is what we did for a European company in 2011:
The enterprise, comprised of four legal entities and dispersed over 7 locations, had implemented SAP. At the same time, a Shared Service Centre to centralize the finance function across the group had gone live. A few months later, the audit firm refused to sign the accounts due to unprocessed suppliers’ invoices, unreconciled balances, intercompany reconciliation differences, close delays, and other issues. The problems were blamed on the system’s non functionality…
Our three months’ involvement included:
- Training of all individuals involved in a revised purchase process.
- Significant reduction of advance payments to suppliers.
- Permanent 80 % reduction of open items on GRIR accounts.
- Elimination of more than 10 Mill USD in intercompany differences.
- Reinforcing and implementing schedules and check lists.
As a result, the companies were able to the closing times to 7 workdays and the audit certificate was received.
Migration Support
Early support, which means accompanying the cut over part of a migration project, is the best. This way we can merge our process oriented view with the technical setup, ensuring the integration of human factors with technology. In a very successful project in 2012, we were assisting a group of companies in North America with their migration:
With the implementation of SAP, the 20 company codes in the legacy system (a set up by responsibility) were merged into 9 company codes, structured by legal entity. At the same time, the group outsourced the finance activities to a Shared Service Centre…
Key factors of our involvement were:
- With real-time monitoring we identified typical and untypical issues which are usually detected at the first reporting period. Due to tour involvement, these problems were addressed and corrected within the first days after go live.
- The data migration in finance was scheduled in a way that the new operation in SAP was not impeded although the close in the legacy system was still to be performed.
- Wherever necessary, individual employees were trained on the new processes.
As a result, smooth operation was achieved within two months.
Fast Close / Virtual Close
To Finance, a key benefit of an integrated ERP system is to facilitate and accelerate period end related closing activity. In a six month’s project, we curtailed the closing time by 60% for an international client:
The group was comprised of more than 100 entities around the globe, half of them using SAP while the rest was on a widely dispersed variety of other legacy systems. During the project, another 20 entities were moved to SAP. The individual entities were closing in 8 working days, consolidated results were typically available after 15 days. The justification of the timing was that it would be impossible to carry out the required closing related work faster...
For the project, we did the following:
- We designed, trained, and installed a new closing process.
- Activities traditionally understood as close related were replaced by transaction based processing. As support, a concept of housekeeping and monitoring was implemented.
As a result, the company has a consolidated close available within 5 calendar days. The new process does not require any additional personnel. |
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