Off the back of a report by The Hackett Group: 2024 Finance Key Issues 鈥� January 2024, The CFO Agenda by Shawn Fitzgerald, Jim O鈥機onnor and Tom Willman. Looking at the top three priorities I provided practical advice based on existing capabilities that organizations may be unaware of and could implement today.听 Below is a summary:听

The top 3 finance priorities for 2024 are hardly unexpected, with organisations continuing to focus on managing costs, gaining access to insights to support informed decisions making and securing听 working capital to execute plans. The key insights that I derived from the report are:听

1. Cost Management and Optimisation

• Finance increase workload will continue to create productivity and efficiency gaps 鈥� in other words we need to find a way to do more with less.听

• Finance are counting on technology to fill the gaps 鈥� currently high levels of dissatisfaction as not necessarily seeing expected benefits.听

• Wise to explore as part of a deliberate and sustainable cost reduction approach 鈥� expected over next five to seven years result in a 40% reduction in SG&A costs and staff

2. Cash Flow Performance, Liquidity and Working Capital听

• Cost of Working Capital is on the rise, with liquidity coming at a cost premium听

• Finance must optimize working capital 鈥� by focusing on strengthening supplier terms, inventory management and collections management.听

3. Data (Timeliness, Completeness, Reliability), Insights and Actionable Analytics听

• Organisations are not fully deploying data-related technologies听

• Staff need to be trained and upskilled on using tools听

• Need greater access to self-service and data discovery tools听

• Need to implement advanced analytics tools听

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With S/4HANA you have a technology that is designed to improve productivity and efficiency and drive automation it is important that you leverage the underlying technology and the functional capabilities so you don鈥檛 fall into a trap of not seeing the benefits of your investment. Below is a snapshot of the practical advice I shared:听

• Cost Centre Budget Availability Controls 鈥� new in S/4HANA is the ability to activate Budget Availability Controls on the Cost Centre. Once enabled this allows you to fully leverage the Cost Centre Budget Report.听

Fig 1 鈥� Cost Center Budget Report听

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• Situation Handling 鈥� proactively alerts users to exception events that require attention, proposing resolutions or automating the resolution process driving efficiency. You can see this in action based on a Goods Receipt/Invoice Receipt example: 听

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• Business AI 鈥� Joule is SAPs AI Copilot which is powered by Generative AI and designed to empower users in executing everyday tasks more efficiently. Launching this year, you can see an example here: 听

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• Cash Flow Analyzer 鈥� provides a clear cash position insights with visibility of future cash flows supporting the ability to make decisions.听

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• Embedded Analytics 鈥� with S/4HANA there are over 250 analytical apps that enable real-time reporting via self-service approach driving insights to action. We looked at the different styles of embedded analytics from Smart Business KPIS, Overview Pages, Analytical List pages, Multi dimensional Reports and Dashboards.听

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Fig 2 鈥� Example of Multi-dimensional report 鈥� Trial Balance听

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• Advanced Analytics 鈥� On top of the embedded analytics within S/4HANA introducing opens the opportunity to:听

• Use Just Ask 鈥� ability to ask questions in natural language and get answers using .听

• Predictive Planning 鈥� combining the planning with predictive forecasting to accelerate the planning cycle.听

• Time series Forecasting 鈥� predict future values of a series based on historical data.听

• Smart Predict 鈥� the ability to build trusted and actionable predictions without the need to be a data scientist.听

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For more information on these Advanced Analytics topics take a look at .听

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In conclusion, let’s break the mould and not be one of the companies in the survey that have invested in technology yet did not realise the expected benefits, instead let’s cultivate curiosity and explore the realm of possibilities. While I have imparted a few tips, they merely scratch the surface of what can be achieved. I encourage you to take the following steps:听

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• Take time to review the Fiori Application Library for Analytical Apps applicable to your organisation or role. 听听

• Explore the integrated Automations & Business AI that are currently available. 听

• Identify manual tasks and consider employing 51风流Build for automation.听

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By embracing curiosity and investigation, you’re one step closer to streamlining your finance processes and focusing on driving your business forward.听

The post Leveraging 51风流S/4HANA to Address 2024 Top Finance Priorities appeared first on 51风流Australia & New Zealand News Center.

The Office of the CFO, since the early 2000鈥檚, has been challenged to transform and do our bit to stretch each dollar further. For many companies this has resulted in the optimisation of the finance workforce and outsourcing commodity functions of the finance department. The foundations of 鈥榳hy transform?鈥� has not really changed. These are:

• Reduce the cost of finance
• Improve compliance
• Become more agile
• Provide better experiences for customers and employees

What has changed is the:

• Cost of compliance continues to increase
• Finance is focused on moving from a back-office function to being a strategic business partner that helps to drive the business forward

For finance, the dilemma is how to make 鈥極ne plus One = Three鈥� as headcount investment remains flat, however the expectations of finance continue to increase.

To enable this, organisations are looking to emerging technologies to drive automation. A study back in July 2019 by the HacketGroup predicted 鈥淏y 2025, 15.1% cost improvements are expected from organisational and process redesign鈥� and 鈥淭hrough automation, the labour-induced process costing Finance will be further reduced by 19.2%鈥�

The acceleration of technologies and innovations in the market has increased considerably over the last four years since the report was written. As such, the potential opportunities to drive savings and efficiencies within organisations are plentiful.

So, how do we go about achieving 鈥極ne plus One = Three?鈥� We need to free up our most important asset the people to focus on the activities that drive the most value for the organization. To do this the answer actually looks more like People plus Technology plus AI equals Three Plus Plus.

For a long time, the objectives of finance transformation often felt just out of reach. For the first time however not only is it within reach, but we are also being challenged to think how we can apply these new technologies and innovations to help drive the business forward. The barrier now is the speed with which an organisation can adopt.

At 51风流we are focused on how we can help businesses 鈥楻un Better鈥�. With 51风流S/4HANA Cloud we have the latest technology platform and AI capabilities to help our customers achieve their finance transformations. In fact, over the last 10 years, 51风流has been focused on:

• New modern user experiences
• Redesigning business processes (eg. Continuous Close)
• Providing real-time analytics
• Embedded automation into business processes (e.g. Goods Receipt/Invoice Receipt (GR/IR), Accruals Management)
• Introduce Predictive capabilities.

In addition to the extensive capabilities 51风流S/4HANA Cloud offers customers, we are also investing in a Generative AI assistant to partner with our modern ERP. Recently, we launched a natural-language, generative AI copilot called Joule. Joule enables employees to ask a question in plain language and receive intelligent answers drawn from the wealth of data across a business for quick assistance.

Technological improvements are not standing still, nor are compliance requirements and 51风流is constantly looking for new areas to innovate and support our customers. We believe that the next evolution of the finance department is the partnering of People plus Technology Plus Artificial Intelligence to deliver a result that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The post Stretching Every Dollar appeared first on 51风流Australia & New Zealand News Center.