So what is SAP Simple Finance

 

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SAP Simple Finance: the new ERP Financial Solutions portfolio built for SAP HANA, allowing “real-real-time” analytics at “most granular level” across all financial dimensions.

Companies today live in a cross road between how to adapt quickly to the growing complexity of the external conditions, and how to adopt to the new technologies in order to stay competitive on that front.

 

 

 

 

Fig. Trends shaping Finance today.

According to surveys from CFO.com, 76% of CFOs see a growing need to be more involved with operational business units, and 73% of CFOs say that finance executives say that long term strategic planning is the largest area of new demand. As well, 58% of the CFOs say that their company’s line-of-business managers have difficulty using finance information systems to identify and understand the data they need to make effective decisions.

Effectively, ERPs have become complex and not dynamic enough to satisfy the real-time information needs that CFOs currently need. There are still challenges with processes like real-time financial analysis, Financial Consolidation with subsidiaries, real-time treasury and financial risk management, month-end closing, and a response to those is already overdue.

 

SAP has come to the rescue again

SAP has come to the rescue again with an innovative approach to solve the current problems of Financial departments and CFOs by attacking the complexity in finance by re-building its global, comprehensive solution to take advantage of SAP HANA. With the resultingsimplicity, IT enables finance to operate more strategically. SAP Simple Finance was born.

Fig. Simple Finance attacks complexity by bringing simplicity.

 

What is SAP Simple Finance?

SAP Simple Finance is a comprehensive finance solution based on SAP HANA, which can be deployed in the cloud or on premise. Designed to be easy to use, it can deliver instant insight for finance professionals. It enhances the current finance solution portfolio from SAP, preserving its functional strength while enabling non-disruptive migration.

 

” SAP Simple Finance is one of the base-components of SAP S4HANA”.

Fig. SAP Simple Finance in a nutshell

 

SAP Simple Finance covers the following areas of finance:

• Financial planning and analysis
• Accounting and financial close
• Treasury and financial risk management
• Collaborative finance operations
• Enterprise risk and compliance management

 

Current situation of SAP Simple Finance

• The technical software components of SAP Simple Finance have successfully passed ramp-up and are general available since August, 1st.
• The software has been released for all Industries with the exception of Joint Venture Accounting for Oil & Gas and Mining.
• It is localized for all 62 country versions.
• Released Fiori User Interfaces for GL-, AP- and AR-Accountants plus Cash Managers are localized for 39 of the 62 countries (incl. US, Canada, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Brazil and Mexico).

 

How has it been built?

SAP Simple Finance is a new version of SAP ERP Financial & Controlling, which has been rebuilt based on the SAP HANA paradigms in order to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by SAP HANA, and to get rid of any limitations of constrains coming from the disk based database paradigms, which no longer apply.

In this terms SAP Simple Finance has built a complete new data model for the SAP Financial modules, where all aggregates, sub-totals and consolidation tables have been eliminated. The new financial data model will contain the information relevant for Finance, Controlling and Profitability Analysis (CO-PA) modules.

The SAP Simple Finance user interface will be SAP Fiori, allowing personalized, modern and consistent user experience across the applications, and for any device (desktop, tablet, mobile).

Fig. SAP-Simple-Finance-Accounting-Dashboard-Fiori

 

What is the SAP Simple Finance offering?

• Enable high-speed “real-real-time” analytics at “most granular level” across all financial dimensions without any constrains.
• One common view of real-time ‘harmonized’ financial and management accounting data for all subsidiaries, to help ensure enterprise-wide consistency and reduce reconciliation time and errors.
• Built-in ability to use prediction, simulation, and analysis to evaluate the financial implications of strategic business options.
• Optimization of Business Processes – Event-driven processes with real-time execution.
• A beautiful HTML5 based user experience with SAP Fiori, offering personalized, modern and consistent user experience on any application and on any device.
• On-premise, hybrid, and cloud deployment options, and a non-disruptive migration path.

With SAP Simple Finance, the FI, CO and CO-PA line items are stored at the same level of granularity and are linked 1:1. This facilitates an easy reconciliation and an harmonized internal and external reporting with drill-down to full detail across all dimensions.Reporting is not longer limited by application boundaries.

 

Value Proposition – How it adds value to the organizations?

• Better business advice due to more relevant and timely insight
• Better corporate alignment and agility due to direct end user access to insight
• More effective management of working capital and financial risks
• Lower IT complexity
• Lower cost for manual report generation and data reconciliation
• Lower operational risks from fraud and other noncompliance activities

Fig. SAP Simple Finance – Value-Proposition

 

Business Scenarios covered by Simple Finance

SAP Simple Finance helps simplify major real-time finance scenarios and solve typical customer pain points.

Fig. SAP Simple Finance delivers functionality accross all financial roles

 

SAP Simple Finance addresses Customer Pain-Points

 

SAP Simple Finance addresses CFO’s pain-points

 

 

 

 

SAP Simple Finance deployment models

SAP Simple Finance offers deployment flexibility:

• CLOUD
• ON-PREMISE
• HYBRID

Fig. SAP Simple Finance deployment options

SAP Simple Finance is however an application with a vocation of Cloud deployment, and most of the packages are only available on the cloud. However, hybrid models, mixing on-premise features and Cloud features are also possible.

 

On-Premise offering

CORE PACKAGE:

• SAP ERP Foundation Starter
• SAP HANA in one of the following forms: platform edition, enterprise edition, limited runtime edition for applications, limited runtime edition for applications, and the SAP Business Warehouse application
• SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA

NEW CAPABILITIES:

• SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA
• SAP Fraud Management powered by SAP HANA
• SAP Integrated Business Planning for finance

 

Cloud offering

• Credit, Disputes, and Collections
• Planning, Consolidation, and Analysis
• Cash Management
• In-House Cash
• Treasury and Risk Management
• Disclosure and Strategy – (Coming soon)
• Shared Services Framework – (Coming soon)
• Invoice Management – (Coming soon)
• Risk, Process, and Audit – (Coming soon)
• Fraud Management – (Coming soon)

Fig. SAP Simple Finance deployed on Hana Enterprise Cloud

 

Who could consider moving to SAP Simple Finance?

1. Net-New ERP Customers

Non-SAP Customers who want to replace their current ERP system or make a first-time commercial ERP implementation, preferably in the cloud.

Key scenarios:

• Accounting and financial close
• Treasury and cash management
• Integrated business planning
• Central journal
• Collaborative financial operations
• Enterprise risk management

2. Installed-base customers – ERP upgrade

Customers who want to upgrade their existing SAP ERP application, running on any database or on the SAP HANA platform

Key scenarios:

• Accounting and financial close
• Treasury and cash management
• Integrated business planning
• Central journal

Deployment Type:

• HANA Enterprise Cloud
• On-Premise (partial)
• Hybrid

3. Installed-base customers

Customers with complex, multi-ERP system landscapes or a lot of M&A activities, or customers unable or unwilling to upgrade.

Key Scenarios:

• Central journal
• Integrated business planning

Deployment Type:

• HANA Enterprise Cloud
• Hybrid

 

1.   Subsidiaries

Customers who want a next-generation cloud ERP system for a subsidiary.

Key scenarios:

• Accounting and financial close
• Integrated business planning
• Collaborative financial operations

Deployment Type:

• HANA Enterprise Cloud
• Hybrid

SAP Simple Finance possible adoption steps

Fig. Possible adoption steps for SAP Simple Finance

 

Immediate Benefits for Finance by Early Adopters

“Already more than 100 SAP Simple Finance customers”.

Immediate Benefit for Finance by Early Adopters