Maximising SAP to Enable Finance Shared Services Process Excellence

 DAY TWO - Conference Day One Wednesday 21st October 2009

08.30 Registration and Morning Coffee

09.00 The Truth Behind SAP and Shared Services. Who is Doing What With SAP and to What Effect?
We all use SAP with the same intention – to enable seamless, elegant end to end processing, so that information within the system can drive powerful choices which ultimately fatten profit margins. Pretty simple. And Finance Shared Services need SAP to work at its optimum if the SSO is going to be true to its many promises to the business. This session gives you an overview of SAP users within Finance Shared Services, unveiling how many single instances actually exist in the shared services market, and whether having a single instance is actually a MUST.
Susie West
CEO
SHAREDSERVICESLINK.COM

10.00 How to Ensure Vanilla SAP is Set Up, Communicated, and Maintained Elegantly, Efficiently and Cost Effectively
EON went live with vanilla SAP, taken straight out of the box, in January 2008, across the workstreams of Finance, Procurement and HR (among others). The way in which SAP has been absorbed by the stakeholders and users at EON is very reflective of the attention to training and communication that they invested before the go live date. In this very detailed session, Mary Jackson will be touching on three key areas: firstly how they designed their comms strategy and executed it to ensure no one undermined the governance of the ERP; secondly how they have set up vanilla SAP to support very efficient reporting capabilities without the aids of workbenches or traffic light dashboards; and thirdly how they now no longer rely on the support of very expensive external SAP consultants and have instead trained users, and upskilled super users, and internal consultants to ensure that the future support of SAP is completely internally sustainable. For any company rolling out vanilla SAP, this session will prove very insightful.
Mary Jackson - Commercial Manager IS and Change Shared Services
EON

10.45 Break Out Optional
As the shoots of economic recovery begin to show, it is crucial for organisations to properly manage spend in order to be well placed for future growth. During each break, BizAps will run a Solutions Demonstration at their booth, each outlining a different methodology to reduce costs, better leverage cash assets and increase productivity.
Topics include:
• Achieving faster period end close for SAP organisations
• Reducing wasted effort in the SAP accounts payable process
• Automating purchase to pay using SAP-integrated procurement card solutions
• Streamlining the order to cash process
• SAP-integrated e-invoicing
• Reducing the SAP inter-company reconciliation burden

11.15 How To Maximise SAP to Support Accurate Cash Flow Forecasting in a 2 Million Invoice SSO
We all know that in the current climate cash has been promoted from king to emperor. Accurate cashflow forecasting is now, much more than usual, a vital deliverable of Finance. However, the key to this deliverable being met is the functionality within, ease of use provided by, and correct usage of, SAP. In this excellent session Jason McGovern will be examining how Marks & Spencer are using SAP to ensure an acutely accurate GR/IR process is in place, delivering measurable returns to the balance sheet. By ensuring efficient clearing is in place, the Marks & Spencer SSC is adding significant resources to the corporate bottom line through interest attained. With 2 million invoices to process, the SSC has to be confident that SAP is designed to support a very slick transacting operation. With Marks & Spencer boasting the largest SAP implementation in Retail in Europe, this session promises to be both very useful and interesting.
Jason McGovern - Head of Accounting Operations
MARKS & SPENCER

12.15 The Speaker Clinic
An opportunity to ask your questions face to face with this morning’s Speakers in small groups and really get the detail you are after.

12.45 Networking Lunch

INTERACTIVE SESSION

14.00 Successfully Automating KPIs from SAP in a Way That Keeps Up With Your Pace
Shared Services Organisations are constantly being asked to improve their performance. Shared Services Directors need to be able to pull KPI reporting out of SAP in a heartbeat, and the data needs to be reflective of ‘right now’. This means that running the data off SAP and then aggregating it is pretty ineffective. This session looks at what SAP shared services organisations are doing to automate their KPI reporting within SAP. This session is excellent for anyone trying to crack this issue.

14.45 Successfully Bridging the Functionality Gap – What We Did About Inter-Company Invoicing
This company has been using SAP within it’s shared services operation since 1997. It soon became apparent that there were limitations surrounding what SAP could support. One area was intercompany invoices. They soon realised that if they wanted to automate this process and eliminate touchpoints, they needed to have an interface which could provide automatching at line level. At the time SAP could not provide this, and there was no solution on the market ready to support such process requirements. This excellent session will address how the company developed their own platform to automate the receipt, matching (at line level) and flow of intercompany invoices, contributing to the cost reduction within shared services, and tighter controls over intercompany spend management and reporting. By attending this session you will also have insight into how this team set up the platform so that it can now handle EDI and OCR feeds from third party supplier and provide excellent automatching results.

15.30 Afternoon Tea

15.45 How To Achieve World Class Performance in a Multiple SAP Version Environment
Not all of us have the luxury of running off a single ERP instance. Often we will be feeding and supporting 5 or 6 versions of SAP (and other accounting solutions). One day we may look to move to a single regional or global instance, if our business model so desires, but in the time being, shared services organisations have to look at alternatives, like interfaces which can illustrate at the touch of a button the complete picture of your General Ledger. Heineken realised that keying into, and reporting from 5 versions of SAP was too inefficient and costly. Their solution was to install Basware technology to interface with each system and import and export data accordingly. This means that Basware sits across all 5 systems, simplifying reporting, training and accounts payable process management. In this excellent presentation Carolien van Vliet, who heads up an Accounts Payable operation of 440,000 invoices, (55% of which are electronic and touchless) and manages a team who are world class in terms of their productivity according to the Hackett Group, will be talking about the functionality gap such a solution plugs, and the KPI and MI reporting possibilities offered. If you are running off multiple SAP version, this session will serve you excellently.
Carolien van Vliet - Head of Accounts Payable
HEINEKEN

16:30 Intelligently Utilising Bolt on Applications to Enable Seamless Purchase to Pay in SAP
If SAP customers register that there maybe some functionality gap in their product suite, an alternative is of course implementing bolt on applications. However, one massive requirement for SAP users is that these bolt-ons sit neatly within the SAP environment, sharing similar ‘look and feel’ screens, menus and drop downs, and sit well within the walls of the system so the data exchange is fluid. In 2006 the Black & Decker shared services centre in Ireland looked to change the way they had been processing their 120,000 paper invoices in SAP. They decided for the Readsoft scanning and OCR solution, and also the INVOICE COCKPIT - an instrumental piece of technology for companies wanting to do 2 and 3 way matching at line level in a touchless manner, without the aid of the human eye. In addition to this they also implemented WEB CYCLE workflow. In this excellent presentation Patricia Harrington will examine the critical success factors behind implementing such a solution with SAP to ensure the purchase to pay process is seamless, elegant and rich in process excellence.
Patricia Harrington - Process Improvement Manager
BLACK & DECKER

17.15 Speaker Clinic

17.45 Close

Day Three – Conference Day Two Thursday 22nd October 2009

08.30 Morning Coffee

09.00 The Morning After the Day Before - The Key Take Aways
From Conference Day One
Susie West CEO
SHAREDSERVICESLINK.COM

09.30 SAP Business Implementations - Rough (and noisy) or Smooth (and expected). Let’s go for Smooth!
How many people in your organisation can set up a vendor? Does this answer correlate with how many vendor duplications you have on the system? Once SAP is ‘set up’ properly, it needs to be used properly, which means the right people using it, at the right time and in the right way. Key to this is a rigid business change approach - training, communications, process change, user support... The second SAP implementation at National Grid significantly differed from the first as the company learned from the successes and challenges of its experience the first time round. Keeping things clear, simple, and accessible for users was achieved much more successfully in the second implementation - here we find out how this was planned and executed. This unique and insightful session looks at how National Grid attained excellent control with a clearly defined multi-tier user approach and what this has resulted in for the smooth running of the business and an informed, well functioning, user base.
Mark Pickles - Shared Services Business Change Manager
NATIONAL GRID

10.15 Ensuring Your Vendor Data in SAP Empowers Procurement and Drives Business Intelligence
What you don’t want is to invest in a great system, but for the data that sits within it to be so poorly organised and patchy that you can’t drill down and get the complete picture. What’s the point of not being able to report on comparisons based on apples-for-apples data. This client made the strategic decision to move from non integrated “best of breed” business systems across the main back office functions to a fully integrated single solution. This would provide the platform for further business integration, with immediate business improvements and financial benefits justifying the project. This presentation outlines the key stages of the project, starting literally from a “blank sheet of paper” through to full implementation. Particular emphasis will be placed upon benefits identification and how the end result has aided Procurement significantly. This benefit is being realised in part through the excellent use of the data that now sits in SAP. Procurement is forecasted to attain savings in excess of £2 million utilising the intelligence that SAP is providing. Through the ability to analyse spend by item, vendor, and category, Procurement now have some serious tools with which to win significant negotiation battles. In addition, the use of vendor catalogues and authorisations are contributing significantly to the forecasted savings. For anyone looking to excel in the way they deploy SAP and modules like SRM, and how to benefit the business, finance and procurement, this session makes essential listening.
John Gorman - Project Manager
UNDISCLOSED COMPANY

11.00 Morning Coffee

11.30 Equipping Procurement with Significant Purchasing Power By Maximising the SRM Module
If your Procurement organisation is decentralised and an abundance of employees are empowered to raise purchase orders, then the SRM module in SAP makes for an excellent control tool. Surrey County Council have been operating a shared services operation since 2004. As part of their project they were set on bedding in the SRM module in order to have tight control over buying behaviour in order to channel spend. The policy within the organisation was to have listed suppliers with whom Procurement could develop relationships. If the council could use SAP in a way that supported Procurement and all the good work that had been done, and spend savings could be realised from bulk buying which was controlled, policed and reported within SAP, then surely this would be a fine example of synchronicity between business objectives and system functionality? In this excellent session Helen Gibson will be looking at the possibilities and limitations of SRM, how it differs from the core SAP MM functionality, what Surrey County Council’s business objectives were, how they ensured that these were met, and what they would definitely do again given the time.
Helen Gibson - E Procurement Specialist
SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL

12.30 Speaker Clinic

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Successfully Setting Up SAP to Auto Clear Payments With Suppliers and Reconcile
SAP is a system that reacts to, and transmits messages. In the purchase to pay process most shared services organisations have started to develop these messages, certainly around the receipt of invoices, through data transmissions. However, for SAP to be tightly linked to your European bank accounts so all payment instructions are issued via SAP, is rare. In this insightful presentation Steve Froelich, European Controller AP/AR for Sealed Air will be looking at how €4 billion of annual spend is instructed within, and triggered by SAP. This means that the day to day banking relationship is managed and controlled from within SAP. Furthermore for reconciliation purposes the bank(s) then send an electronic file to Sealed Air’s SAP to upload every 24 hours with the statements indicating the bank accounts’ daily movements which then reconciles with the invoice information within SAP. In this presentation Steve will be examining what the core control and cost benefits are, how they deployed such an initiative, what IS resource was actually needed, and what the key lessons learnt are.
Steve Froelich - European Controller AP/AR
SEALED AIR

INTERACTIVE SESSION

14.45 Effectively Upskilling Your Internal SAP Expert Pool to Ensure Sustainability
When you set up SAP, chances are you were looking at well over thousands of man days to get the thing off the ground. An army of consultants came in to your business and then when they finished, they walked off with the knowledge, leaving you dependent and needy. This session looks at what this company did to ensure that now their SAP expertise sits snuggly within their business leaving them brilliantly self-sufficient and ready for growth spurts or acquisitions.

15.30 Coffee

15.45 How to Ensure That SAP Fits Hand in Glove With Your Future Continuous Improvement Initiatives
SAP could be deemed as a weighty solution which limits some of your KPIs because of its perceived or real limitations. It can sometimes be seen as a system that you have to bend your process around, and telling you what to do, rather than you calling the shots. BBC implemented SAP in 1997. They have also outsourced financial transactional activity once to Medas and then more recently to Steria. They have gone through a finance transformation process of centralising the finance activities into an internal SSO. Along the way they have configured and bespoked SAP to an extent that it is actually relatively expensive to support and maintain. So what does the future look like for an SSO like the BBC? In this excellent session Owain Jones, Head of Continuous Improvement at BBC Finance will examine: how they have managed the governance of SAP with their BPO; how they have a single Chart of Accounts and have harmonised data, managed out of a central locations; what the future outlook is; and critically how SAP will support the shared services drive for improved effectiveness and efficiency to keep the cost of finance as streamlined as possible. This is an excellent session based on lessons learnt and is critical for virgin, or infant users of SAP.
Owain Jones - Head of Continuous Improvement
BBC FINANCE

16.30 How SAP Can Continue to Support Our Shared Services Goals in The Future – The Crystal Ball Session
This conference is absolutely designed to help you use SAP better, and, most likely, differently, in order to support your shared services goals. This closing session, led by SAP, will be looking at where the SAP Business Suite will be able to take you in the future. What does the outlook look like for the ‘early adopters’ of the most current, and soon-to-be-launched Shared Service Framework? In order to be a really world class shared services operation according to Hackett, how should you be using SAP differently moving forward? This closing keynote session will be looking in depth at trends surrounding process automation and standardisation, and multi-functional shared services. If you want to know what is possible in the next 12 to 24 months, this session will leave you highly informed.
Dr Franz Deitering
Global Head of Business Development Shared Services
SAP

17.15 Speaker Clinic

17.45 Conference Close

Day Four - 2 Site Visit Friday 23rd October 2009

This site visit is excellent for delegates who want to see SAP in action within a finance shared services operation. You will have access to the Accounts Payable department and see how they treat invoices, from receipt to posting. This will give you insight into how an SAP user has utilised the SAP platform, and bolt applications in order to attain a seamless AP operation, including e-invoicing, OCR and scanning, auto-matching at line level, workflowing, parking and posting. You will follow the journey of an invoice which requires data-capture in OCR and follow its movements through the AP process flow – all supported and enabled by SAP and bolt-ons. This will help you confirm all the tips you have acquired over the past few days, as ideas and concepts will now be seen here today, in the flesh.

09.00 The day begins with you joining the group in reception of the Millennium Knightsbridge in order to depart by coach to the SSO.

10.00 We then arrive at the SSO to be greeted by our host for the day – the Shared Services Director – who will open up the day with an overview of the SSO against which you can begin to benchmark. This opening session will address the SAP implementation and upgrades, and the key lessons learnt during the implementation, focusing on what the team would, and absolutely would not, do again given the chance.

10.45 Coffee Break

11.15 The Purchase to Pay Session
This session looks at the KPIs within P2P including POs raised, POs against spend, PO invoices, first time match rates, productivity per FTE and cost per invoice. It will talk about how finance and procurement worked together to own the P2P process and design, and implement the technology gateways through which a trading transaction travels during its life (from requisition to report).

12.00 Lunch

13.00 The Accounts Payable Tour
This will serve as a unique opportunity to follow the life-cycle of a purchase invoice from receipt to post. We will start this journey in the mail room where invoices will be scanned and data-captured via their OCR solution. We will then move to the AP team to see the screens where the invoices are validated and repaired (if needed) and how this is done within screens that have a similar ‘look and feel’ to the SAP screens. We will then get a better understanding of the automatching (at line level) solution and the post, parking or workflow options that then follow. AP clerks will talk to us about their experiences and how they find the AP solutions aid or hinder their performance and productivity.

14.30 Coffee

14.15 The Order to Cash Tour
This session will begin with looking at some KPIs within AR, around productivity, DSO, debt and analysis on good and bad payers. This will examine how SAP can support the extraction of these KPIs, and provide reporting, and analysis on ‘cash in’ metrics. We will then take a tour of the AR department to see how invoices are raised and what reporting screens and dashboards look like.

15.45 Close and departure by coach back to the Millennium Knightsbridge

17.00 Arrival back at the hotel
Please note places on this tour are limited to 20 and will prove very popular so it is highly recommended you book early to ensure your place.

Full Learning Lab Description from Day One

LEARNING LAB A

08.15 – 11.15 How to Ensure Your SSO Becomes A Champion in the Eyes of Procurement Through Excellent SRM Deployment
World class shared services operations have one thing in common – finance and procurement are so synchronised that the purchase to pay process is seamless and treated as a single process, rather than steps covered partly in purchasing and partly in accounts payables. This excellent Learning Lab will help you master the module within SAP which can help your finance shared services operation and P2P organisation seal the support and buy in from Procurement once and for all. This session will be looking at the critical success factors to implementing the Supplier Relationship Management module in SAP, ensuring that you leave knowing:
• How SRM can help you meet your Procurement, Shared Services and Purchase to Pay objectives
• How SRM can ensure that the efforts of Procurement to negotiate contract conditions cannot be undermined
• The power that comes from SRM through centralised sourcing, catalogue management, contract management and optimum use of the supplier portal
• How to maximise the reporting functionality in SRM so your spend patterns on Direct and Indirect Spend are visible to senior management
• How to utilise SRM to serve your continuous improvement initiatives in the purchase to pay process – ie how it:
- improves First Time Match rates and PO Compliancy
- reduces maverick spend
- increases in Payment on Time
- reduces Cost Per Invoice
• How SRM can be set up or developed to be the single source of truth regarding your company’s spending behaviour
• The significant business case benefits that are realised in process KPIs and procurement savings through correct SRM deployment

Learning Lab Facilitators:

LEARNING LAB B

11.30 – 14.30 (working Lunch included)- How to Successfully Implement and Develop SAP to Enable P2P and O2C Process Excellence
The key deliverables of a finance shared services organisation are to elegantly manage cash in and cash out. And the effectiveness of this lies in the capabilities and limitations of the system that the processes are supported by. In this excellent Learning Lab we will be examining how an SSO can set up SAP (if implementing) and adapt the use of SAP (if in continuous improvement) in order to support and attain the following:

In P2P:
• How to configure SAP so you can have a complete, timely and accurate view of your liabilities, placing you in a powerful position
• How to report on blocked, approved, and posted invoices and how to drill down to identify the root cause of blockages in order to know where change needs to happen
• How to automate the AP process through optimising SAP’s core functionality and avoid ‘layers’

In O2C:
• How to best use the Finance Supply Chain Management module and optimise its classic capabilities of credit management
• How to best use the ‘incident management’ feature customer by customer, in order to reduce your DSO

This session is excellent for all those who realise that in order to boost working capital, improve cash flow forecasting, and drive excellent transaction processing KPIs, SAP’s capabilities (and indeed its limitations) need to be fully understood and optimised.

Learning Lab Facilitator:

LEARNING LAB C

14.45 – 17.45 Key Steps to Becoming An ‘SAP for Shared Services Master’ – Understanding the Power of SAP and How it Can Take Your Shared Services to ‘State of the Art’
If the capabilities of SAP, and how it can really support your shared services business requirements, are still a bit of a mystery and clouded by darkness, see this session as a highly valuable tool which will shine a light on doubt and uncertainty and empower you to see where change needs to happen, and how. This Lab will be looking at how SAP is an engine which, if used properly, can enable your SSO to attain Ferrari-like performance, you just need to know what activities will get your there quicker. This excellent session, led by the most Senior Solutions SAP Architect in Europe who worked with Philip Morris Int and Deutsche Telekom, will absolutely help you:

• Affirm the 6 to 12 month shared services priorities
• Realise where and how you may not be utilising SAP’s real potential
• Focus on the few capabilities which need to be maximised in order to attain your shared services goals
• Draw massive benefit from the experience of the Senior Solutions Architect who can help you fine tune your SAP usage
• Design a plan for system optimisation tailored to suit your process needs

This session has as an underlying theme within three key areas of shared services development: 1) automation 2) globalisation and 3) extension of remit to multi-functional shared services. This three hour session will leave you with a clear plan on what system, process, or behavioural changes need to take place in order to attain performance excellence.

Learning Lab Facilitators: