SAP S/4HANA Finance

The global 2008 financial crisis presented a multitude of challenges for companies in the insurance industry, including higher pressure on margins and strict regulatory reporting requirements. Swiss Re, a global provider of leading wholesale resinsurance and insurance, was not immune to these challenges. To help overcome these hurdles, Swiss Re undertook a multi-year finance transformation journey called the ATLAS Project. Read how Swiss Re’s Reinsurance Finance division uses SAP S/4HANA Finance as the centerpiece of a transformation defined by simplification, integration, and automation of finance processes, and reach its target of a five-day close.

New York Life Insurance Company, one of the largest life insurers in the world, is responding to the dramatic changes sweeping through the business world by accelerating its evolution into a more agile enterprise. In particular, the organization is speeding up analytics for real-time insight and improving process efficiencies around data access and management. Discover how New York Life implemented SAP S/4HANA Finance in a managed SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud environment to enable instant financial insights, faster processes, and more strategic use of its financial data.

Cliff Eng, Partner at PwC, and Birgit Starmanns, Senior Director of Product Marketing for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori at SAP, discuss how SAP S/4HANA Finance addresses today’s most pressing business challenges, touching on compliance, analytics, planning, and the need to become more strategic.

Companies understand the critical importance of having full and central control over their finance processes. Yet this is an increasingly challenging proposition, especially for treasurers of large corporations that have many subsidiaries. This article examines five key areas that CFOs can leverage to future-proof corporate finance in the age of big data and fast access to information.

The finance function has evolved into an organization that incorporates real-time, live, dynamic planning cycles and analytics into its processes in a shift toward becoming a strategic, value-added partner to the business. Thack Brown and Henner Schliebs of SAP examine in greater detail how a need for flexibility and speed is being met by advances in technology that enable profound process transformations.

In this Q&A, Martin Naraschewski, Vice President of Finance Solutions at SAP, provides insights as to what the digital economy really means for the finance organization and addresses what finance needs to do in order to prepare for a digital platform. He also lays out his vision for the finance function of the future, and discusses how technology will help make this vision a reality.

What can a business accomplish if there are no wait cycles, all of the information you need is at your fingertips, and everything is instantly connected? Chris Horak, SAP Global Vice President, Finance Line-of-Business Solution Marketing, introduces the Achieving Financial Excellence Special Report with an article on why the finance function is embracing digitization and why instant insight is so important in a world where advancements in cloud, mobile, social, and analytics are quickly making many long-standing financial processes obsolete.