From Manual to Digital: SAP HANA Cloud Finance

Products: Distribution of electrical installation materials

Employees: more than 700

Website: www.elektro-material.ch

The Path to SAP HANA Cloud Finance

In late 2019, Elektro Material AG faced the major decision of evaluating a new finance system. The previous system landscape had been growing and included a number of in-house developments. “Our finance solution was introduced in 1995, and some functions that are a matter of course today were thus not possible,” reports Armend Imeri, Head of Accounting, Elektro-Material AG. As a result, processes could not be set up optimally, and a lot of manual effort was involved in the work.” The finance department’s requirements for the new finance system were clearly defined. The finance processes were to be simplified, automated, accelerated and entirely digitalized in the future. Therefore, the system to be implemented should belong to the newest generation and involve current technologies like data mining, RPA and AI as well as open interfaces.

The Most Innovative SAP Product

Consulting with NTT DATA Business Solutions quickly made it clear that SAP HANA Cloud Finance meets these requirements. Elektro-Material thus relies on SAP’s most innovative product, a multi-tenant cloud ERP system that builds on standardized processes. This means that current as well as new future requirements are covered – the quarterly release changes make this possible.

Intensive: The Realization Phase

During implementation, the NTT DATA team relied on the SAP Activate implementation method with agile project cycles. For this, the SAP Cloud ALM documentation tool assigned all tasks to the relevant roles. Thus, four customer peripheral systems were connected, and processes based on the defined requirements were introduced. Thanks to this approach, the migration of master and transaction data was unproblematic. Within a few days, the new finance processes were placed into operation and now also connect the EPR processes in the surrounding systems.

From Manual to Digital within 9 Months

In accounts payable, Elektro-Material was able to go from manual processing of account statements, including posting, to a completely digitalized process. The employees now once again have time to concentrate on truly profitable tasks. And because customers’ credit limits are always up-to-date now, EM again gains an additional one to two days per month. In the old system, accounts payable accounting required four payment runs in order to pay all supplier invoices. Credit memos also had to be processed by hand before being settled. At 8,000 credit memos a year, this resulted in a lot of manual work. Now just one payment run is needed, and credit memos are processed automatically. Because oversights can be prevented, EM also improved its DPO (Days Payable Outstanding). EM sees the new reporting options as another essential improvement. Many reports are already routinely available by default. Data do not need to be compiled and analyzed in a time-consuming fashion, and figures are available ad hoc, which leads to savings on human resources in particular. “With this solution, we can now take each innovation step automatically, even with regard to technology,” explains Adrian Maegerle. Never again will there be a release change that involves months of work.