3 Ways to Transform Your SAP Finance Strategy

Finance professionals often stick to proven methods, understanding that disrupting established systems can jeopardize time-sensitive financial processes. However, with the blinding pace of technological change, it becomes nearly impossible to keep up even with the advantages of advanced ERP systems like SAP ECC and S/4 HANA. For organizations entrenched in legacy SAP systems, stalled financial transformation can be a major roadblock to success.

How do you embrace finance transformation without downtime or a steep learning curve? Here, we discuss three ways to smoothly transform your finance strategy.

1. Streamline SAP Workflows with Automation

SAP, while a powerful ERP system, can be complicated to use, leaving finance teams relying on manual processes to complete critical tasks. These processes, ranging from data entry to report generation, consume valuable time and resources, hindering productivity and accuracy. As finance teams grapple with these inefficiencies, they find it challenging to keep pace with the demands of a rapidly changing business environment.

The numbers don’t lie. According to insightsoftware and Hanover Research’s recent Finance Team Trends Report, there are still many finance teams tacking recurring reports with manual efforts. These include account reconciliation (32%), ad-hoc custom reports (32%), and audit preparation/support (32%). The lack of automation not only eats away at the time your team could be spending on analysis, but it also widens the margin of error.

According to our data, at least three-quarters (75%) of finance teams dedicate a minimum of five to six hours each week to recreating financial reports, equating to up to 24 hours a month or 300 hours per year. That’s a massive amount of time that can be streamlined with automation.

But where do you start? Seek out a tool that puts reporting into the hands of the members of your team with the right business context and doesn’t require advanced knowledge of your SAP system. Navigating your SAP system can be complex, but the right tools can enable reporting and analysis without a steep learning curve. These solutions empower finance teams to leverage finance transformation with the help of technology, shifting focus from manual work to high-value activities like analyzing your SAP data in detail and performing risk analysis, all while answering questions from leadership more quickly and efficiently.

2. Unify Fragmented SAP Data

Your SAP ERP equips you with a unified view of your financial data. However, the majority of organizations—an overwhelming 98% based on our research—rely on a combination of ERP and non-ERP systems, including Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Evaluating your financial data alone isn’t enough to gauge the health of your entire organization. Further complicating data management, 93% of finance teams use multiple software tools and 94% use software from different software vendors.

This fragmented software landscape creates significant data integration challenges due to incompatible data formats, structures, and systems, making it difficult to consolidate and analyze data effectively. Our findings echo this insight, with the overwhelming majority of finance teams (98%) experiencing data integration challenges.

When your data is siloed between departments or business functions, the view of your organization grows muddled. Analyzing from a single system or department is like guessing what an entire picture will look like from looking at scattered puzzle pieces. Data silos can create frustrating blind spots that hinder organizational decision-making while limiting your ability to optimize financial outcomes. How do you unify data silos for a better picture of your organizational health?

Finance transformation can unify data silos for more clarity to power your decision-making. Look for a robust reporting tool that can seamlessly connect and harmonize data from various sources. By leveraging technology to eliminate siloing between SAP and other systems, your team can make better business decisions.

3. Optimize Your Cloud and On-Premises Data

Despite SAP pushing users towards cloud deployments like S/4HANA, many finance teams remain hesitant to commit to such a significant transition. Current economic uncertainty and ongoing market instability have created a cautious environment, making it difficult for organizations to justify the substantial investment required for a complete migration away from their legacy systems.

As a result, most organizations still operate at least partially on-prem. According to our Finance Team Trends Report, only 27% of finance teams are fully cloud-based, while 62% are in a hybrid environment, and 11% are still fully on-premises.

Cloud migrations can be complicated and time-consuming, running the risk of operational slowdown. If you’re still in ECC and planning a migration, ensure your data appears in a consistent format. For example, in your Excel reports, make sure your columns appear in the same order across the board, as in “name, address, city, state.” When you make your move to S/4HANA, this allows you to search for and access critical information more easily.

4. Financial Optimization for SAP

While traditional financial management offers a familiar framework, it can inadvertently limit growth. Fragmented data, manual processes, and outdated systems create obstacles to clear visibility and strategic decision-making. insightsoftware’s Financial Optimization for SAP empowers you to overcome these challenges while embracing finance transformation.

Our solutions eliminate data silos, automate workflows, and leverage modern technology to transform your financial operations. Streamline reporting for improved accuracy, gain real-time insights you can trust, and optimize resource allocation based on data-driven analysis. And if you’re looking to migrate soon, use our software as you perfect your S/4HANA installation from ECC so that the cutover between systems is quick and painless.

insightsoftware’s Financial Optimization for SAP allows you to uncover hidden opportunities for growth and build a future-proof financial foundation no matter where you are on your cloud migration journey. For companies that still make use of legacy SAP systems, insightsoftware's SAP solutions can help you streamline processes, automate tasks, and gain deeper insights from your data. This allows you to extract maximum value from your existing SAP investment while paving the way for a successful financial transformation.

Ready to learn more? Check out our infographic on the top five hidden costs of manual finance processes.