We ran our fantastic 'Maximising SAP to Enhance Finance Shared Services Excellence' conference on 18th - 20th October. There were so many ideas shared in the case studies and interactive discussions at the event, but I thought I would share with you some top tips from the first main day of the conference:
- Train users on their finance tools, not SAP to minimise training costs. Srini Krishna, Director of Finance Operations at Microsoft, talked about how many companies spend endless hours training their finance staff on how to use SAP. Your staff can pick up learning how to use tools along the way, thus minimising training costs.
- Keep finance focused on finance by having a specialist team who understands business needs and converts them into process. Don't train people on tools not built for their job. Microsoft set up a 'Finance Solution Delivery & Platforms Group', a dedicated team of SAP experts who understand their finance staff's needs and convert them into a process. In Srini's words "Keep finance focused on finance".
- How to gain customer faith? Have a single version of the truth and standard styles to improve reporting understanding. James Bull, Head of BFP Integration at Marks & Spencer Business Services ran an interactive discussion trying to get to the roots of our reporting challenges. What particularly challenged the audience was how to establish faith that the reports you are creating are suitable, accurate and timely for your customers. Discussions concluded that if you standardise the way you report globally, have a single point of tools which are directed at the right audience (i.e. director or other level), and communicate how often your data is refreshed (e.g. BW is refreshed every 24 hours or 6 hours), trust will come.
- Spend more time on what reports you need rather than want. Your reports need to be only fit for purpose, so spend time at the start making choices about gathering only the data you need. Some reports will always be done on an ad-hoc basis, but to minimise this, be clear about needs first and foremost.
- Improve accuracy of reporting by getting senior management to completely own the use of reports. Make sure your management team take ownership of how reports are used, and discuss with them value checks, coding, guidelines, etc. so that they are aware of how reports are built and can make more informed decisions as a result.
- Don't rely on your vendor, really know your scanning software, dedicate a resource for it and allocate resources for change management to avoid fire-fighting. Mary McNeish from RS Components revealed how they are operating at world class productivity, with 75,000 invoices being processed per FTE each year (world class is around 42,000). The scanning solution they are using has played a huge part in the success, but Mary warned that companies can't just sit back and rely on solution providers to do all the work. You must dedicate a resource to scanning and that this ownership will bring real results.
- Elements of good change management: clarity and purpose, with a clear and compelling need; aligned leadership; focus on achievement not activity; good communications and the ability to see the whole picture.
- Business projects need both project management AND change management. Many companies think that if a project management approach is used, this is sufficient to mitigate risks and prepare for success. But managing resistance of your staff and stakeholders is equally as key to realise your targets, particularly with SAP projects. Combining both will reap rewards exponentially.
- SAP HANA is the future. New in-memory technology provides reports in seconds not hours or days and eliminates huge legacy investments.
- How to improve the financial close process? Put in a close tracker tool, harmonise all close schedules, have a single chart of accounts and perform a lean analysis of the close cycle
- (11th tip!) Automate transactions and don't look for perfection. Most of us are tasked, to some extent, to do things at lower cost if at all possible. Robert Watson, Global Process Owner at AstraZeneca facilitated an interactive discussion asking how to identify and root out backlogs and inefficiencies in your financial close process, one which he is responsible for. One tip particularly resonated and applies to all finance processes. Those striving to perfect handling transactions manually are going to lose out. Where automation is possible, do it, and adapt your process accordingly if it frees up your staff's time.
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