2016 Hot Topics Research Report
Transcript of 2016 Hot Topics Research Report
February 20-21 2017, Hyatt Regency Dallas, Texas
Research Report
Table of Contents
Moving to S/4HANA Finance
Perfecting Master Data Management to Drive Decision Support
Financial Reporting & Analysis
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Treasury Management
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)
Efficient Travel & Expense Management
Training, Skills Development & Change Management
Achieving Integrated Business Services
Maximizing Value from Your Financials System
The History of the Eventful SAP Financials Conference
Other than the 6 SAP Industry conferences that Eventful have run over the last 12 years here in the US –
including Best Practices for Utilities, Oil & Gas, Chemicals, CP, Automotive and SAP-Centric EAM - we
have also build and delivered an SAP-Centric Finance conference in Australia for 11 years and South
Africa for the past 4. In these markets the event is called “Mastering SAP Financials.” These events have
been famously successful and have been able to bring together a majority of finance people from the
business side of the equation, along with technology folks who support them. Customers sharing theirs
stories warts and all make up 75% of the content delivered.
The conference focusses on:
Business process improvement
Existing finance technologies that customers are trying to get more out of
New technology that is emerging from SAP
With Eventful and ASUG now coming together, we will be launching the equivalent US event entitled the
SAP-Centric Financials conference that will be run in Dallas, Texas on February 20-21 2017.
This Research Body
The SAP Centric Financials conference is presented by customers on the most pertinent issues faced in
the financials department. Having done research across the USA we have identified 10 of the key topics
that continue to present challenges and shortcomings in many Organizations. The following topics are
used as the blue print for the conference agenda.
Moving to S/4HANA Finance
Launched as “Simple Finance”, S/4HANA Finance is the future of finance. Organizations need to embrace
the digital age and harness the power of technology to maximize operational performance. S/4HANA
Finance will revolutionize the way business’s run, are able to make decisions and ultimately drive the
Finance function as a strategic leader in the business.
Every CFO running knows the move to S/4HANA Finance is approaching. The questions, considerations
and points of interest as they move to simpler technology encompasses the following:
Business drivers for migrating to S/4HANA Finance.
Cloud-Based S/4HANA Finance Vs. On-Premise Vs. Hybrid.
SAP’s Roadmap for Maturing S/4HANA Finance.
How S/4HANA Finance Actually Works and What It Looks Like. Is The User Interface Intuitive?
Customer Journey of Migrating.
How to Develop a Business Case for the Migration Process to Begin.
Possible Hurdles with Integration and How to Overcome Them, Including Integration to The Cloud.
Perfecting Master Data Management to Drive Decision Support
Understanding what data is important for business decision making allows you to implement procedures
and policies to maximize clean data inputs. When asked what data organizations viewed as valuable,
many were unable to answer succinctly. It is therefore important for an organization to identify what
data drives business decision making.
Clean trustworthy data allows companies to make informed decisions and fine tune existing business
processes. The most common issues related to;
Establishing a Master Data strategy
Understanding the implications of bad data
Getting those who input data to understand the downstream effects of their data quality
Governing your Master Data – How to develop processes that enhance data governance
How to effectively use data to make business decisions
Creating an ongoing control structure across all departments.
Using logic in data structure for the long term
Who should own the data? Should it be centralized?
Financial Reporting & Analysis
It goes without saying that the financial position of an organization is something that needs to be able to
be accessed on demand. Strong reporting and business intelligence capabilities allow the organization to
view the current financial position of the business and in turn drive informed decisions.
Reporting is the key input for forecasting - leveraging the data to make assumptions about potential
future outcomes. Ensuring the reports are run in a consistent and accurate manner is a not negotiable.
Developing a reporting strategy that maximizes value for decision making
Cost effective reporting strategies.
From reporting to forecasting- moving your function to a decision support role.
Real time reporting possibilities.
S/4HANA Finance reporting capabilities.
SAP standard reporting, best methods to achieve the best results.
Integrated reporting capabilities using S/4HANA Finance.
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
The speed of change is getting faster. Agility and quality data is the primary tool a CFO needs to budget
and forecast effectively. EPM is all about having visibility of operations in a closed-loop model across all
facets of the enterprise. Specific to financial activities it supports financial planning and analysis. This is
an area of great interest to customers. Strategy formulation, business planning and forecasting and
financial management all fall into this bucket for finance teams to consider.
Getting your process right before you leap to a technology solution
What tools are offered by SAP to assist with this? and how do they compare to each other?
BPC Embedded – What Is the benefit of a fully embedded solution?
What Is SAP’s Roadmap for BPC? How Does It Fit in with IBP, SAP Planning and Cloud Planning?
Improving The scalability of your planning capability – operational vs. executive
What are the features of the latest version of BPC? What can BPC 10 do?
Is scenario Planning Value Adding or is it Just Adding Complexity
“Creating a budget is hard enough, is scenario planning better or just multiple budgets?”
Treasury Management
The recent economic global meltdown has driven company executives to really focus on the treasury
function. Treasury departments are challenged with proactively identifying sources of cash flow
optimization, while pinpointing risks and shortfalls.
Understanding regulatory and compliance requirements is strongly underlined in the role of treasury.
The mandate to reduce finance costs and mitigate the risk associated with ongoing economic and
financial uncertainties means that Treasury need complete transparency to formulate best practice
solutions. To meet these challenges and still perform at optimal levels, treasury decision makers want
greater clarity and control over complex processes associated with managing payments, cash, liquidity,
and risk. At all times, they must know where their cash is, where it’s originating, and where it’s needed.
Customers are interested in learning:
How to create financial transparency in the business
Understanding treasury management solutions from SAP
Accounts Payable automation of repetitive transactions
Financial Risk Management solutions
How to maximize treasury functionality to improve cash flow capabilities
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)
Governance is the approach through which senior executives direct and control the entire organization.
Part of the task revolves around critical sufficiently complete, accurate and timely management
information reaching the executive team to enable appropriate management decision making. Risk
management is the set of processes through which management identifies, analyzes, and responds to
risks. Compliance is achieved through adherence to laws, regulations, contracts, strategies and policies.
GRC and GRC technologies help synchronize these activities and enables information to flow in order to
allow the business to run efficiently. Customers are keen to learn:
How to develop a risk strategy that aligns with corporate risk appetite
Can technology help in managing role identification and its implications
Compliance monitoring, assessment and effectiveness
Aligning governance policies with regulatory demands
Processes and technology for identifying and reporting risk
Integrate activities to effectively manage risk and compliance-related activities
Efficient Travel & Expense Management
With SAP’s recent acquisition of Concur, customers are intrigued by whether it can assist them with
their travel and expense function. As well as obtaining an understanding of what the tool looks like and
how it works, companies are also looking to hear the perspectives from those who have already
implemented Concur and integrated it with SAP.
Designing a simple process for expense reimbursement.
Tips and tricks to overcome the human challenges relating to expense management.
What can Concur do? How does it work? Demo of a live system
Is the integration from Concur to SAP good? What have those who have already implemented
experienced?
Training, Skills Development & Change Management
Changing your systems is easy. Changing your people, not so much. The enthusiasm and hype around
project milestones can excite, the real issues begin when your project is over, your SAP partner leaves
and you are now tasked with harnessing the technology and using it to its maximum capability in an
ongoing way. Finance departments need to harness the following initiatives to truly drive change in the
business:
Training in cost effective ways
End-User training to understand the importance of the systems capabilities.
Engaging The End-User to improve operations to what is best practice.
Moving training to role based.
Accepting the new tools.
Recognizing and accommodating tech advances like Hana and restructuring accordingly
Changing Policies to incorporate SAP standard as opposed to constant customization to suite the
status quo.
Achieving Integrated Business Services
Shared Services can help combat silo’d business processes and functions. In addition, they help improve
efficiency, transparency and reduction of costs. Integrated business services allow organizations to make
decisions based on the viewpoint of the entire organization and ideally from a single source of truth.
Enterprise-wide business challenges can be addressed in a consistent, high quality and cost competitive
manner. The co-ownership of technology and process between IT and the business is massively
beneficial and hard to orchestrate.
What has been the path for organizations that have successfully broken down silos to create an
integrated business system
Managing the change that goes along with this new approach
Data – across departments to drive integrated reporting
What is best practice for creating such a group?
Maximizing Value from Your Financials System
There is basic functionality within the SAP’s ERP Financials modules that have yet to be uncovered by
many organizations. Organizations are looking to their peers to help them sweat their existing assets
and uncover simple technology that they never knew they had access to:
Financial close – how do you reduce processing time for a faster month end close
Best practice solutions for AP automation
Creating seamless reports for the business
Maximizing FICO – What functionality are the best performers using that others aren’t.
Conclusion The way the finance department thinks and operates has evolved significantly in the last few years. An
indicator is the seniority of finance professionals taking an interest and showing up at our events – as
the speed of technology change gathers velocity.
The Finance Department understands the importance of becoming a strategic business partner and from
their unique vantage point, this offering that they bring to the table is massively beneficial. SAP-Centric
Financials must facilitate a brave conversation and enable the finance function to truly deliver value as
they understand and unpack what technology can enable them to do.