These market conditions fall into three main areas: Money, Energy and Supply. The cost of capital, energy cost volatility, regulation, and geopolitical disruption have all impacted on business and will continue to change the cost base of a business on short notice. Modern, high performing finance functions recognise that the speed of change has radically increased requiring much higher precision and speed in forecasting and decision-making, to ensure that relying on yesterday’s information won’t sink today’s business.

Finance must be in the driving seat for designing new organisations which can cope with these changes, because no one else has a complete view across the landscape and making decisions in isolation leads to local failure. Only finance has visibility covering everything from input and overhead costs, to consumer preference, to the impact on margin.

We see this review reflected in the priorities of FTSE 40 controllers, who highlight the need for:

• (Affordable) Beneficial technology, getting the most return on investment
• Value from their data assets, to respond to shocks quickly
• Staying ahead of new controls regulations and requirements
• Responding to changes in ESG reporting and compliance

Getting these decisions right will give the business confidence to continue investing in growth platforms like new sales channels, new business models, store modernisation, marketing and developing their people, providing the right platform for the future.

Technology to beat the business trap – What are the ‘pivot’ options?

Businesses are faced right now with either pushing up their prices and hurting customers or cutting their margins and swallowing supplier price increases, neither of which is palatable; technology can offer a third option; using the capabilities we will describe in this article, the CFO can direct resources to help sustainably grow the revenues, margin, and remain competitive. How does this modern technological alchemy work?

The CFO supports the top line and bottom line of the enterprise, traditionally in a relatively passive manner delivering visibility and controls over profitability, liquidity, auditability, and compliance. Technology is giving the CFO the opportunity to become active in the health and growth of their businesses. To make the CFO a ‘star’ contributor to the business, at a time of severe challenge, we would encourage exploring the innovative finance capabilities described in this article.

Reimagine Finance Operations

The CFO has the opportunity to leverage technology, data and insights to model future business options indeed, to critically analyse prior decisions, what worked well and what didn’t. According to Gartner, decisions governing everyday operations often lack financial rigor, which can result in a loss of 3% or more of profits for organisations. This is primarily due to fragmented systems with siloed operations and an inability to access financial information in real time to make proactive decisions. As a result, CFOs recognise the need to modernise finance operations to reduce manual effort and enable their employees to focus on more value-added activities. A case in point is , which faced rapid growth after COVID-19, resulting in high volumes of data and an accelerated need for the company’s digital transformation. The e-commerce and fintech leader in Latin America achieved an 85% automation rate in treasury and cash management by streamlining their finance operations on a unified platform.

Delivering Assurance

It is expected that over the next 6 months the UK will be transferring from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) to the Audit Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA). Although recently the government have stepped back from their plans to introduce UK Corporate Governance Code led improvements around Financial Controls and CFO attestation statement on Fraud, the change in regulator is expected to deliver sharper teeth and greater pressure on external auditors to report more accurately. The upcoming changes to the Economic Crime and Transparency Bill, relating to Fraud, will include a new ‘failure to prevent’ offence and is currently moving through parliament, due in the firstquarter of 2024. A recent University of Portsmouth report outlined that Fraud may have cost the UK private sector in the region of £158Billion in 2022. Fraud still represents a 5% revenue loss for many organisations, money which if protected could be reinvested to promote growth. Business resilience is a key area where an integrated controls, risks management and machine learning/AI technologies have proven to deliver significant loss avoidance whilst also enabling businesses to remain on the correct side of regulatory requirements.

Optimise Cash Management

The CFO and the finance team need to have great visibility, effective control and collaborative execution for that finite, and most valuable business resource, cash! The poor understanding of cash flow is the key reason why many businesses fail. Businesses need integrated, intuitive tools that give them instant insights on the complete value chain, including receivables, payables, and associated supply chains. They need actionable information about cash, liquidity, and working capital, and their treasury platform should allow them to predict liquidity, make proactive decisions and mitigate financial risk. Zalando achieved 100% visibility into cash and accounts through redesigning their treasury and risk management and Zalando Payment system built their unique computing and monitoring model to provide deep insights into its factoring related cash flow movements and became compliant for regulatory requirements as a multinational .

Manage Profitability

Finance teams need to be active participants in managing profitability for the business, they may not be responsible solely, but they can best support the business by providing finance data and models in a timely, reliable and enabling fashion. The typical challenges that prevent retailers from proactive steering is the poor visibility to the real economic costs of products, customers and channels. According to Ventana Research, the most commonly mentioned challenge for companies in managing customer profitability is analytics. Using the right technology retailers can understand the real cost dimensions of their business and better control the margin challenges. Brakes – leading food service supplier in UK – achieved 2% improvement in margins through remodelling and digitizing their pricing and .

The CFO and his team have the opportunity to play an even bigger part in the future success of their business. Not only are the Finance team the keepers for financial data, they have the opportunity to proactively consult with the business teams; partnering in agile decision-making, providing business insights, actively supporting investment choices, helping identify success or failure in a rapid manner. Transforming the finance function provides the opportunity for businesses to escape the business trap of higher prices or lower margins, it can help you to pivot to increased competitiveness, revenue growth and success with customers, these are definitely the numbers worth pursuing.

If your organisation would like to know more about how these solutions can support your success, then please contact the authors:

• Shaid Latif, Industry Advisor Expert – Retail & Life Sciences at SAP
• Elif Kuralay, Industry Advisor at SAP
• Blair Robinson, Partner, Business Consulting at EY
• Matt Smith, Alliances Director at EY

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Hosted in London’s Science Museum on March 23rd, the 2023 awards recognised the following organisations who are at the forefront of driving innovation, transformation, and environmental impact in today’s disruptive economy:

Adoption Champion – Royal Mail Group

Royal Mail Group needed a way to engage with its 140,000 frontline employees in a quick and cost effective manner, without risking any of its existing processes. The solution lay in the creation of the PeopleApp, an application that employees could have on their own devices with direct access to their personal information and business services.

Over 110,000 employees (82% of the RMG workforce) have downloaded and utilised the app on their own devices, with 500,000 weekly uses of the app. This has created a new channel of engagement with employees and allows them to become ‘connected’ for the first time, whilst also enabling more efficient delivery of services. By utilising the speed and flexibility of 51����Business Technology Platform, the PeopleApp has transformed Royal Mail’s employee experience and become the ‘channel of choice’ for employee engagement.

Business Innovator – Yorkshire Water Services

By transitioning its IT landscape to 51����S/4HANA, Yorkshire Water Services centralised how it managed its work. With additional data insights after implementing 51����Plant Maintenance & Asset Management and 51����Dynamic Forms on 51����BTP, the organisation’s field technicians could access vital information in real-time and provide feedback on hand-held devices.

By choosing 51����technology, Yorkshire Water Services has experienced greater efficiency in its services and reduced interruptions, as well as improved customer service. Modernising with 51����solutions has lowered its TCO and simplifies the rollout of new innovations, so the organisation can deliver safe water services to its growing customer base.

Cutting-Edge Genius – Sanctuary Group

Sanctuary Group was struggling to access and manage its data, and without a real-time holistic view of its properties, it was not able to be proactive in the face of maintenance processes and delays which impacted customers. With the help of 51����Business Technology Platform and innovation from other 51����solutions, Sanctuary Group is working towards a 360 degree view of its customers and asset management. The organisation has utilised 51����Field Service Management to provide customers with real time feedback, with faster and higher quality incident resolution now achievable.

Experience Wizard – Savannah Energy

Going Digital saved Savannah Energy from business operational challenges such as managing disjointed systems within multiple business areas, and without centralised data, it was unable to make swift decisions. By utilising multiple 51����products within seven months, Savannah Energy was able to rectify its issues swiftly. Now with 51����Analytics Cloud, data is visible from across the company, allowing management to make the most informed decisions. Recruiting has been improved by 51����SuccessFactors, with hiring-managers adopting a new end-to-end view. Overall, Savannah Energy has been able to automate 48 business processes and 70% of Health and Safety incident management.

Industry Leader – Barclays

Barclays was already innovating how its corporate buyers paid their suppliers, using an integration of Barclays credit backed bank transfer payments and the 51����Ariba Network. But when customers struggled with non-compliant payments, Barclays and 51����had to come up with a new solution. The Precisionpay virtual card solution can be embedded via pre-built integrations into its clients’ systems, offering the simplicity of a card with robust pre-approval and simple automated reconciliation.

Businesses using 51����Ariba Network, 51����S/4HANA Public Cloud and 51����Business One can enjoy better control over ad-hoc purchasing, customers can develop bottom-line profit and better working capital, while also ensuring on-time payments to smaller suppliers. Customers have greater agility through this payment technology, and automating these payments through a card solution can save an organisation valuable time and resources.

Services Supernova – Accenture

For many companies, including Accenture, the pre-close variance review process has changed little until now. It has always been a decentralised, inconsistent, manual, and inefficient process, which relied heavily on time consuming emails and spreadsheets and made even more difficult by a continuously increasing volume of data and involved geographies.

Accenture has transformed this process into one centralised, digital AI Commentary Platform using the power of Natural Language Generation that provides thousands of data driven explanations to financial variances across 93 Countries. Over 57,000 Controller hours were saved in the first 12 months with 737 Company codes and reports streamlined for internal controls sign-off.

Sustainability Hero – Save The Children International

Save The Children was running its procurement through Excel and paper at a costly $400 million/year, and was struggling to keep track of suppliers and orders, putting the organisation at a high audit risk. Within twenty months, it had managed to deploy 51����Ariba to 600 procurement staff in over 50 countries, to transform its relationship with 25,000 suppliers.

Within the first year, 51����Ariba had driven Save The Children to multiple improvements and amazing results. The organisation went from 20% visibility to 100%, and beat a target of 52% of user adoption for spending to reach 82% by the end of 2022. Its audit risk substantially decreased and supplier digital literacy dramatically increased.

Transformation Titan – NTT Limited

Struggling with its financial central overview, NTT Limited was spread across 39 51����and non-51����ERPs, leading to inconsistent processes and a lack of detailed analysis that caused significant delays. Its financial transformation, which has led NTT to become our Transformation Titan, was the implementation of a global 51����S/4HANA Central Finance platform on Microsoft Azure. This transformation integrated over 300 million line items in just one year. NTT now has an accurate global view of all financial reporting without any manual reconciliation required. This was achieved for all 266 of its legal entities in multiple locations.

Ryan Poggi, Managing Director, 51����UK & Ireland, said: “Collaboration in times of hardship is the cornerstone of innovation. As the world grapples with unprecedented challenges, it makes me immensely proud that our customers in the UKI are at the forefront of driving innovation, transformation, and environmental impact on a global scale.

“At 51����we live our purpose through our customers and partners. These stories inspire and motivate us to deliver on our promise and drive trusted partnerships. Congratulations to all our winners and finalists, and a big thank you to our judges for their continued support.”

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LONDON, UK – (NYSE: SAP) has today announced the launch of its to identify and train new and existing talent in the 51����Partner Ecosystem to support increasing demand within the IT channel for skilled certified professionals.

The programme will provide a rigorous, full-time curriculum designed to certify IT professionals in crucial and high demand areas including �� and an introduction to . Participants will then graduate with three 51����certifications, before re-entering the partner ecosystem as graduates ready for employment.

The first two cohorts have already started the programme. Following successful completion of the course, graduates will begin a three-month intensive training programme designed to equip them with the professional and personal skills needed to become an 51����consultant.

With the 51����EMEA North cloud services market growing at CAGR of 16%, SAP’s partners are in high demand, leaving many facing a challenging digital skills gap. SAP’s new programme is open to both recent graduates and those working in complimentary industries, and will help address existing gaps in talent by providing graduates with the skills and qualifications needed to find employment in the partner community.

Participants will receive ongoing support and continuous feedback from delegates, instructors and the wider partner team throughout the training period. Candidates will also have an executive welcome and kick-off event upon joining, with the option of attending a physical graduation ceremony upon completion of the course.

51����will also offer a business development fund (BDF) incentive to partners who recruit, train and certify new consultants under their partner capacity initiative.

The Partner Talent Initiative combines:

• Learning content to build product skills for solutions across the 51����portfolio, including leading 51����solutions like 51����S/4HANA and 51����S/4HANA Financial Accounting
• Access to enablement content for members of 51����partner ecosystem
• First-hand practice on live 51����software training systems
• Expert-led and peer-to-peer learning environments
• Opportunities to obtain 51����Global Certification digital badges and stay current with ongoing technology advances

Celine Cazali, Chief Partner Officer, 51����UK & Ireland, comments: “By launching the Partner Talent Initiative, graduates of the programme will learn invaluable skills, helping customers and partners successfully become Intelligent Enterprises and provide high-quality services. Through a rigorous curriculum, combined with continuous feedback and support, our programme will equip the next generation of consultants with the mindset, skills and ambition needed to succeed in the channel and beyond.”

Paul Cooper, Chairman, UK & Ireland 51����User Group (UKISUG), comments: “We welcome the creation of the Partner Talent Initiative as it will help address a potential skills gap in the future. Our most recent member research highlighted that many organisations are concerned a lack of available skills will impact the speed their organisation moves to 51����S/4HANA. A thriving partner ecosystem with more certified talent will be essential in supporting customers’ 51����S/4HANA journeys and developing the next-generation workforce.”

If you are an existing 51����partner in EMEA North and would like more information on this initiative and how you could get involved, visit the website and find out more here.

Visit the 51����News Centre. Follow 51����on Twitter

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Launched this year, the 51����UKI Customer Success Awards recognise organisations of all sizes and how working with 51����can facilitate considerable innovation, transformation, value and environmental impact in today’s disruptive economy.

Held on Wednesday 17th November at Searcys, The Gherkin, London, the awards acknowledged the following organisations for formidable achievements driven via leveraging 51����technology and its partner ecosystem alike:

Best Innovative use of 51����Technology – Mercedes-EQ

Mercedes-EQ realised its business outcomes and achieved the agility and mobile��capabilities required to keep its crews and back office connected across multiple global��locations, while accelerating the speed it��needed to get operations off the ground through the power of 51����S/4HANA Cloud.

Delivered in just three months, Mercedes-EQ had the finance and accounting��tools required to manage costs, track profitability,��predict cash flow and run forecasts, with the fit-to-standard approach allowing the organisation��to define its processes in line with��corporate requirements without inhibiting��performance.��This culminated with driver Nyck de Vries and Mercedes-EQ winning the ABB Formula E World Championships in the 2020/2021 season.

Best Transformational Change – Vodafone

Through the use of 51����S/4HANA, Vodafone has been able to set new benchmarks and achieve significant cost efficiencies on its Intelligent Enterprise journey. The business now has seamless automation, process standardisation, operational��efficiency and access to real-time insight in��business functions. The modernisation led to increased automation��leading to lower error��rates and higher efficiency, improved standardisation��for better��maintenance and system performance​, better user experience, leading to increased��focus on Net Promoter Score, and faster month end close cycles��leading to��better financial insights sooner at a lower��cost​.

Best Socially Sustainable Project – Sanctuary

The rapid deployment of SAP��Data Warehouse Cloud and��the accelerated introduction��and unification of data sources��enabled Sanctuary to display critical information through its single unified platform SAP��Analytics Cloud. This empowered intelligence of��where, when and what impact��COVID-19 was having on the��lives of Sanctuary customers��and employees at the most unprecedented of times, and supported its understanding��and response to��unchartered territory.

Best Value to Business – Electricity Supply Board

51����S/4HANA digital platform��along with 51����SuccessFactors and��51����Concur transformed the��employee experience across ESBs��core business processes through��automation, self-serve and the��delivery of training through project LEAP.

Through embedded, real time analytics, Project LEAP��enabled��transformation across the business and supports the��modern digital environment in which��the business now operates, future proofing ESBs ERP requirements��for the next 15+ years, and has improved user experience dramatically.

The post Winners Of The 2021 UKI 51����Customer Success Awards Announced appeared first on 51����UK News Center.

LONDON, UK — September 2, 2021 — (NYSE: SAP) today announced the launch of its UK and Ireland Customer Success Awards to identify leading implementations of its technology and how it has helped the world run better. The awards will recognise organisations of all sizes and how working with 51����can facilitate considerable innovation, value and environmental impact. 51����UK & Ireland will be heralding these successes at a ceremony in November with awards in four separate categories.

Awards will be given for ‘Best Innovative use of 51����Technology’, celebrating organisations that have found creative solutions to persistent problems, innovated to carve out new markets for themselves or embraced technology to transform their businesses or customers. The ‘Best Transformational Change’ will be awarded to the organisation that has demonstrated a transformational journey through driving change management across different lines of businesses, achieving sustainable growth and business performance.

The ‘Best Socially Sustainable Project’ will highlight the organisations whose usage of 51����solutions have demonstrated a positive social, environmental, or economic impact and a shared purpose in helping the world run better to improve people’s lives​. Finally, the ‘Best Value to Business’ award will be given to the organisation that has demonstrated adding significant value to its business, its employees and/or customers​

Michiel Verhoeven, Managing Director, 51����UK & Ireland, said: “Across the UK and Ireland 51����is at the heart of change for organisations of all sizes across the commercial and public sector. I’m incredibly proud of the role we are able to play in the transformation of organisations as they grow and succeed. Creating our Customer Success Awards will enable us to highlight just some of these exceptional examples and the teams behind them.”

The awards will be judged by a panel comprising the UK & Ireland 51����User Group, representatives of 51����and independent industry expert, all of whom will be announced soon. Nominations are now open until 1st October and more details can be found on the UK and Ireland Customer Success Awards Website here:

Visit the 51����News Center. Follow 51����on Twitter at .

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