PwC helps a tech company complete a mid-year SAP upgrade — cutting time and unlocking performance
40%
Faster implementation timeline reduced using PwC’s Finance Edge accelerator
10x
Fewer custom reports required, simplifying maintenance and reducing costs
75%
Less time needed for tax consolidation — freeing up teams for strategic work
PwC simplified complex systems — so the client can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.
SITUATION
To lead with data, finance needed to move faster
A global technology company, prides itself on increasing quality and lowering costs for its customers. But, internally, the company’s finance team needed better reporting capabilities. They wanted to save time, increase employee efficiency and make more strategic decisions.
In order to improve their reporting capabilities, the company planned to migrate from a soon-to-be-obsolete and unsupported SAP EC-CS financial consolidation system to the newer SAP S/4HANA Group Reporting. Many companies execute this type of migration go-live at year’s end, for a variety of reasons, including legal considerations, availability and conflicting projects. But key staff members had limited availability, as they were busy with other pressing projects. At the same time, the company wanted to complete the migration as soon as possible so they could start realizing the benefits of the upgrade. So the company had to act fast and migrate well before the end of the year — if completed successfully, it would be the first time any company had ever done this type of mid-cycle migration successfully.
SOLUTION
The first mid-year migration — simpler, smarter and ahead of schedule
PwC drew on its experience with SAP for the project. It was an off-cycle upgrade, but the team cut 40% of the migration timeline using PwC’s Finance Edge, a solution that maps out a blueprint for success, streamlines migrations and supports everything from consolidations to analytics.
The global technology company leaned on PwC’s accounting capabilities and tech perspectives in their alliance with SAP to execute the upgrade.
In designing the system, PwC helped determine what functionality ideally suited the company’s needs. PwC leveraged SAP’s pre-configured Group Reporting solution to demonstrate its out-of-the-box functionality, helping confirm the system would align with the client’s needs. The client confirmed that the environment had the core functionality it needed, including finance and legal consolidation and intercompany currency consolidations. The demonstration took less than a week and revealed that the new software didn’t call for any add-ons. The out-of-the-box version proved to be quicker to implement, more cost effective and easier to maintain. Win-win-win.
RESULTS
A record-setting migration with measurable impact
The technology company was the first ever to successfully transition mid-year to SAP’s S/4HANA Group Reporting module.
The new system empowered a more efficient and forward-looking finance team, one that can consolidate taxes and close its books faster. They’ve decreased manual, time-consuming data entry and reporting, and thanks to automations, the tax team no longer relies on others to generate reports. The finance group has the tools and time to use financial data to answer questions: What trends are driving particular products? How are the different business units driving outcomes? And the entire team can easily see in real time how a financial result, such as sales and/or profits, ties back to business activities in specific units.