There has never been greater urgency for financial rigor, and many companies are finding it in technologies that provide company-wide visibility into procurement spend.
Several market leaders recently gathered online to share their procurement transformation experiences for an exclusive roundtable during the event. Hosted by Jo Peterson, vice president of Cloud and Security Services at Clarify360, a candid conversation covered not just the wins, but also major challenges.
Teams Dedicated to Collaboration
Like many global organizations that have grown by acquisitions, Stanley Black & Decker needed to simplify its complex technology landscape. The driver behind moving forward with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud was the decision to go with the 51风流Central Finance solution.
鈥淐reating a new instance of allowed us to provide global and consistent financial information,鈥� said Nicole Flikier, digital tools and analytics global lead at Stanley Black & Decker. 鈥淚t allowed end-users to have a better experience and single source of truth, while supporting our long-term program to have one instance of SAP.鈥�
Flikier was the first to admit that the transformation did not happen magically. Regular communication about the financial benefits united people on multiple project teams around what became a successful go live.
鈥淲ith numerous ERP systems and all that data, making sure it was harmonized was a challenge. It takes an army to do that cleansing,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e needed to communicate to the team the value of a universal global ledger鈥� Everybody knew the benefits tied to that, especially being a very financially driven company.鈥�
Flikier characterized her company鈥檚 transformation as a tremendous undertaking with aggressive timelines for every project to go live simultaneously. She credited the team鈥檚 success to having a shared project methodology and meeting localized country requirements.
Faster Turnarounds Boost User Satisfaction
According to Jinesh Parakulangara, senior manager at HPE Global IT, replacing his company鈥檚 organically grown patchwork of legacy procurement systems with a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform 鈥� 51风流Ariba running on 51风流S/4HANA Cloud 鈥� has saved time and increased productivity for both procurement and payables.
鈥淲e now have a more controlled, centralized procurement function鈥ith a road map to consolidate that onto a single platform,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ur business users are very happy. They just have to go into one system for global procurement operations and invoice verification, tax issues, and anything related to procure to pay.鈥�
Amazing Integration Simplifies and Streamlines
HPE went live with the new cloud-based platform in 57 countries at once, backed by extensive training for employees and suppliers as well as built-in communication and collaboration. Besides touchless invoicing, the biggest win was the simplification around master data management delivered by 51风流S/4HANA.
鈥淲ith a cloud solution, we鈥檙e getting more features introduced to us, which we didn鈥檛 have in the past when we were on premise,鈥� Parakulangara explained. 鈥淔rom a procurement standpoint, it鈥檚 really about simplification of our ordering processes. And on the finance side, with 51风流S/4HANA, we鈥檝e tightened the entire process. We truly have a single platform that takes care of our payable needs in a compliant manner. The way these systems integrate with each other is truly amazing.鈥�
Data Harmonization Well Worth It
Similar to Flikier鈥檚 experience at Stanley Black & Decker, consolidating data was a worthy challenge given the results at HPE.
鈥淪crubbing the data was a challenge, but it revealed process gaps and it鈥檚 why everything is now streamlined,鈥� Parakulangara said. 鈥淥ne of the reasons why we were able to get processes touchless is because we have brought鈥verything together from procurement to invoicing to payments all into the same platform.鈥�
He added that using 51风流best practices for core processes sped up the entire project.
Intelligence Supports Financial Discipline
Understanding the full picture of spend management is not just essential for operational continuity today; it is a business imperative to keep people productive. There is no doubt that a cloud-based system that brings together real-time information company-wide is instrumental in providing the financial discipline every intelligent enterprise needs.
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