Cut the Clutter: Transform Financial Workflows with SAP BTP

⇨ Finance transformation is evolving beyond mere modernization and optimization; it focuses on building autonomous finance functions that enhance operations through data-driven decision-making and agility.

⇨ SAP BTP enables organizations to automate key financial processes using AI, streamlining operations like invoice processing and expense management, thus allowing finance teams to concentrate on higher-value strategic activities.

⇨ Cross-functional alignment facilitated by SAP BTP provides a unified source of truth, enhancing financial planning and reporting accuracy, while fostering transparency and better decision-making across the organization.

Finance transformation is not about modernizing or optimizing finance operations anymore. It is about building an autonomous finance function – one that can automate and enhance finance operations, processes, and strategies with minimal human involvement. But it is more than just automation. It is about rethinking how the finance function works — with a renewed focus on data-driven decision making, agility, and strategy. Imagine a finance function that could take the work beyond automation and tapped into data to connect business challenges, provided actual, real-time, valuable insights that enabled organizations to support more informed decision-making, giving them more agility to respond to changes in the business or capitalize on new opportunities quickly.

According to a SAPinsider research report on AI and Automation in Finance, most organizations expect that AI and automation capabilities will increase the efficiency of the financial close, reduce overhead for financial activities, and make more time for finance and accounting professionals to focus on higher-value tasks. While many organizations are evaluating AI-based financial applications and automated financial close solutions, finance and technology executives are realizing that these technologies are fast maturing and can be used to address specific business needs when deployed in the correct context. But how can organizations use such technologies or realize AI-driven outcomes for financial reporting, planning, and accuracy?

SAP BTP can help organizations drive digital transformation by providing a robust foundation of cloud services and intelligent technologies for finance and accounting applications. While SAP Finance serves a central platform for all financial operations and enables a unified view of financial data across the organization, with SAP BTP, organizations can access the platform for finance innovation and growth with secure, connected, and automated processes. But where might organizations find the potential for such transformative change? One way to answer this question is to look at where some SAP BTP customers are finding success, and In this regard SAP BTP is enabling organizations to achieve long-term success in the below impactful ways:

Real–time insights for accurate financial planning: SAP BTP, integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud, provides predictive models that do not require deep data knowledge and can be developed and trained for easy cash flow management, predicting finance needs and optimizing investments. With simplified analysis and analytic application building with integrated data from both SAP and non-SAP applications, SAP BTP brings real-time insights that allows organizations to understand patterns and support better financial decision-making. Case in point, Watco optimized its planning and reporting process of 200 profit centers with SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning and cut out 30 days from their planning process. With SAP Analytics Cloud, the company not only accelerated the process but also reduced errors and gained flexibility and scalability with simplified integration across SAP and external systems.

Automating financial processes with AI: With embedded AI, SAP BTP enables automation of key financial processes such as in invoice processing, expense management and reconciliation. This allows organizations to streamline processes, eliminate manual tasks and reduce errors for the finance team. For example, with SAP Build Process Automation pre-built bots, organizations can automate sales order creation from Excel or complete mass updates to master data which enables finance team to focus on mor strategic activities. Additionally, in invoice processing SAP BTP allows automated extraction of data from invoices, validation against purchase orders, and payment processing. This results in more efficient invoice processing leads and faster payments. Case in point is Thames Water, who sought to unify its diverse enterprise automation landscape and adopt a solution that did not require its staff to write any code. The company decided to use SAP BTP as its automation platform and used SAP Build Process Automation to automate repetitive tasks, keep its core clean, and also improve customer communications.

Cross-functional alignment: SAP BTP allows organizations to integrate data across business and create a single source of truth that enables accurate and efficient financial planning and reporting so that organizations can proactively carry out financial management. Case in point, STIHL, integrated company-wide data for a single source of truth, supporting advanced analytics and eliminating data disputes. This has enhanced planning and forecasting with greater transparency, allowing STIHL to better understand the impact of variables like price and supply chain factors on profitability.

Finance departments are often overwhelmed with competing demands, repeatable tasks, and the challenges of managing increasing data volumes. Many of such challenges can be addressed by automation and through building workflows that provide visibility into processes. SAP BTP is a platform that empowers finance professionals to not only streamline finance processes but also scale, reduce errors, save costs, and also improve collaboration.

Discover how SAP BTP can help optimize and streamline finance processes here.