How
SAP S/4 HANA Finance improves your Profitability Management?
And what does it take?
Providing profitability information to the
organisation is a top priority for all finance leaders. Based on industry, it
comes in many forms and shapes – what we are discussing here is
profitability of products, customers, distribution channels, etc. that again
can be expressed at various margin and detail levels.
Due to the fact that profitability information
needs to ‘sum it all up’, be trustworthy, timely and relevant, this has been an area of hard work
and often led to frustration for finance people. But profitability analysis
will not go away – it is a vital area for fulfilling the role as a
true business partner. The good news is that now technology can support us
better.
Below are some examples of how new innovations – in this case SAP S/4 HANA Finance – support us:
(Note: Discussions around Account Based COPA vs.
Controlling based COPA are not included in this paper)
The overall set of Finance and Profitability data
are now aligned and stored in one table through new database
architecture. This allows us to:
Release valuable time from reconciling FI, CO
and CO-PA that is a prerequisite for trust in detailed profitability
data.
Having all dimensions on for instance products
and customers inherent available – not spending time on combining data from
various sources. This also sheds lights on poor master data quality
immediately.
Improved transparency through better access to
data, e.g.:
Gaining real-time understanding of actual
profitability due to reading directly on transaction data, allowing for
more details and supporting timely margin analysis.
Drill-down functionality to cost elements, e.g.
material cost, labour cost and overheads understanding the composition of
costs and thus profitability.
Real-time consolidation of profitability data. This allows us to:
Real-time reconciled P&L reporting at
detailed level due to extension of account based CO-PA.
Reduce time during closing due to daily
allocation and product calculation cycles and thus being continuously on
top – not just at month end.
Valuate to actual cost (through Material
Ledger), typically run at period end can now be executed on a more
frequent basis.
What does it take?
Are you on the SAP platform, engage with your IT
department and ask for the plans on moving to the S/4 HANA database and. By
now, organisations should already be establishing the business case for S/4
HANA.
As finance people, we need to understand the new
opportunities that the technology brings – the above gave a first glance – and then decide on how
profitability analysis and management can change for the organisation as a
whole and then design the processes accordingly and finally supported by IT.
If we execute on a thorough plan, we will
experience significantly more satisfied stakeholders better empowered to do
their job.