Visit to SAP Shared Services in Prague


Posted by Cathrine Kjær on 21/08/2019 09:54

14 members/non-members including head of Innoteam finance from SBN took part in the SBN-visit to SAP Services in Prague in June this year.

We believe the visit was successful and worthwhile for the participants in a welcoming atmosphere and with great networking as well as some interesting learning points and take aways.

Finance Run Better Together was the name for the huge internal project in SAP where Finance was insourced to SAP Services and for Europe the SAP Services in Prague. Migration, standardization and Automation have been the name of the game and by being very early adopters of S/4 Hana Finance, SAP has taken their own medicine. SAP is actually ginny pigs of their own software.

Among the pillars of their success are how they have organized themselves with global process owners and what responsibilities and accountabilities the GPO have; one global process map and continuous standardization and automation. This particular part is food for thought for many huge companies struggling with their business processes not being harmonized.

How SAP is using and has organized their use of Ariba is also very interesting to note. All catalogue times are being purchased through Ariba. 62% use of PO, 38% through FI, 39% av all invoices from vendors are touchless, 27% low touch and the rest high touch.

Among examples of digitization was the automatic creation of assets in SAP from a PO.

SAP was especially proud of a new contract comparison tool, which undoubtedly would be of great help for a company with a lot of contracts and changes to contracts all the time. Integrating machine learning into the tool was also part of the set up and typical of the times that we are in.

With more than 17000 tasks in the record-2-report process, no wonder why SAP has adopted their own Financial Closing Cockpit.

Some interesting take aways in the attached material from the visit, also for non-participants.


Demonstrating use of Ariba in SAP Services


Tour of the premises in SAP Services - visiting the Ariba-team


SAP presenting Ariba in SAP Services

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Tags: finance, analytics, sap knowledge