Better go for SAP Central Finance right away

Why SAP Central Finance makes sense for you

Whether DAX group, SMI company or globally active medium-sized company - globalized companies organize and control their processes across numerous regional and corporate law boundaries.

In order to professionally manage such complex organizations, a basic requirement is needed: the commercial transparency of value flows.

The problem: this transparency is often not given.

There are countless system boundaries that interrupt the value flows in heterogeneous IT landscapes. Data is often exchanged between several SAP or non-SAP systems - across the system boundaries of subsidiaries, business units or even country borders.

Financial data therefore occurs in varying quality with many variants and definitions. A "single point of truth" is not guaranteed.

• The value flows are often interrupted.
• The processes in finance and reporting are often prone to errors.
• The exchange of data proves to be too slow; the required data must first be determined and then laboriously aggregated.
• A high level of data quality is also not always guaranteed.

All this makes consolidation, financial reporting and timely accounting difficult - and thus ultimately the management of companies.

What is it like for you?

• Do you also have to deal with a fragmented system landscape in your company that only providesreporting data for legal consolidation?
• Your global financial processes at corporate level are difficult or impossible to map?
• Your financial key figures are not available in the required quality?
• In addition, do you fear increasing risks in the financial and tax area?

In such cases we recommend a solution: SAP Central Finance.

SAP Central Finance is the perfect solution for these challenges - the cross-system financial management of the future, available today.

With the introduction of SAP S/4HANA Central Finance, SAP has provided an extension of the classic SAP Finance component.

What is Central Finance?

SAP Central Finance enables companies to centralize their heterogeneous and distributed IT and SAP system landscape and link it to an SAP S/4HANA system.

A company's existing system landscape can consist of various SAP or non-SAP systems. In addition, the SAP systems can have different release levels.

Financial and controlling postings are replicated from the various systems to the central finance system via simple mapping. This enables fast and transparent financial management.

The advantages at a glance

Central Finance is more than just a tool. Central Finance is an operational finance, reporting, controlling and consolidation platform - the one place where all data from the distributed finance landscape converge.

• SAP Central Finance enables companies to harmonize and centralize their financial data ("single source of truth").
• The platform ensures maximum quality of financial key figures.
• Central Finance is a modern consolidation solution (Central Consolidation).
• The platform makes all financial and controlling data available in real time.
• SAP Central Finance makes it easier to comply with the increasing requirements of compliance regulations and even to map them automatically.
• No complex re-design of the existing IT and SAP system landscape is required.
• To harmonize the financial master data, no changes need to be made in the source systems.
• Last but not least, SAP Central Finance minimizes the risks for companies - even if the system landscape is very heterogeneous and a company uses different non-SAP or SAP systems.

Differentiation between SAP Central Finance and SAP S/4HANA Finance

What exactly is the difference between SAP S/4HANA Finance and Central Finance?

SAP S/4HANA Finance is an ERP financial software and one of the central components of SAP S/4HANA. The application enables companies to control their entire financial system. The functions of SAP S/4HANA Finance range from bookkeeping, financial statements, accounting, cash management and risk management.

SAP Central Finance is primarily concerned with standardizing different ERP systems in order to achieve company-wide harmonized and up-to-date financial data, as well as connecting the various systems to SAP S/4HANA.

If, for example, SAP S/4HANA is initially implemented in a company only in parts of a group - for example, at the parent company - SAP Central Finance serves as a link to all other existing systems and as a supplier of current and harmonized data for SAP S/4HANA Finance.

How does SAP Central Finance work?

Our customers often use Central Finance in parallel with existing SAP ERP or non-SAP ERP systems.
When we implement SAP Central Finance for you, we connect all existing source systems to Central Finance.

• SAP source systems with a higher release status are connected to Central Finance via standard connections.
• Both SAP source systems with an older release status and non-SAP source systems are connected to Central Finance via middleware solutions.

The data is transferred uniformly to Central Finance via the SAP LT Replication Server. There it is transferred to the harmonized target objects in SAP Central Finance using standard mapping technologies. To monitor and ensure correct processing in Central Finance, the AIF (Application Interface Framework) is available as a powerful "interaction center".

An MDM (Master Data Management) layer ensures the replication of required master data between the source and target systems - with a simultaneous option for harmonization. In principle, there are no restrictions when choosing the most suitable MDM technology.

Once the systems are connected, you can replicate all finance and controlling documents in the SAP Central Finance System in real time.

The documents are transformed via simple mapping into a "perfect" financial world - a world with a common chart of accounts and harmonized and unique master data. The link between source and target document is of course always maintained.

In addition to the replication of financial and controlling documents, a wide range of logistical information can also be replicated in the standard system. This includes, for example, orders and customer orders. This makes central reporting even more comprehensive and powerful.

SAP S/4HANA Central Finance - Proven solutions for implementing Central Finance

You have already informed yourself about Central Finance, maybe even decided to use the solution and are now looking for a way and a partner to implement SAP Central Finance?

GAMBIT Consulting can support you holistically around Central Finance in every respect - from the preliminary study to the implementation and application management.

We have the necessary experience, the know-how and, above all, also the tried and tested models for implementation. Of these models, one is guaranteed to fit your company in terms of technology and organization.

In cooperation with leading global corporations GAMBIT has developed a total of six Central and Corporate Finance models. With the help of these models, state-of-the-art requirements for high-performance financial processes can be met.

Your advantages in cooperation with GAMBIT

• Finance specialists with high expertise and many years of experience from national and international projects
• Use of practice-proven and technically feasible Central Finance best practice models
• Use of the most modern and digital SAP components of the SAP Intelligent Enterprise generation
• No costly re-design of existing ERP landscapes

What do our Central Finance best practice models achieve?

All models are based on the latest SAP S/4HANA technology. They enable the integration of further components of the SAP Intelligent Enterprise Suite. This also applies to the use of high-performance non-SAP products.

The models differ in the type and scope of financial processes and at the same time reflect the different system-related starting situations in practice: These range from fully harmonized SAP monoliths to fragmented ERP landscapes.

Among other things, our Best Practice models offer:

• Complete transfer of the entire booking material from any source system into a fully harmonized platform
• Preparation of consolidated financial statements according to group accounting, based on local accounting standards (incl. IFRS 15, 16, etc.)
• Legal consolidation
• Management Consolidation
• Corporate reporting and central KPI dashboard
• IC reconciliation
• Central Treasury, Inhouse Banking, Cash Management
• Tax Compliance Management
• Central numbering
• shared services
• Integrated planning
• Analytics and Mobile BI
• Data hub MDM layer

Your Way to SAP Central Finance with GAMBIT

You find our Central Finance Best Practice models convincing, but would now like to learn more - preferably in a personal conversation? Have you already decided on SAP S/4HANA Central Finance and are looking for an implementation partner?

Contact us - we are always available to answer your questions or to make you an offer. A connection of various systems to SAP Central Finance can be implemented at short notice.

More information about SAP Central Finance in detail

You are not yet ready and would like to get more information first?

Get to know the advantages of Central Finance even better and learn more about

• the importance of Central Finance for the development of Financial Shared Services,
• which is why SAP Central Finance makes your consolidated financial statements easier and is an up-to-date consolidation solution,
• why Central Finance is the ideal door opener for SAP S/4HANA,
• why Central Finance massively accelerates the integration of acquisitions (M&A) into the group-wide figures and
• the importance of Central Finance also with regard to your liquidity forecast and planning.

SAP Central Finance: 6 advantages in detail

The main purpose of SAP Central Finance is to provide greater transparency and reliability in financial management. CFOs can only make the right decisions for the future with comparable and reliable data.

1. SAP Central Finance enables real-time value flows and consolidation

Up to now, value flows have often been merged for reporting purposes with the help of SAP BW, a large number of Excel routines or third-party applications that were not intended for this purpose.

It is not uncommon for management information systems to be created as expert systems in this way. However, this meant that business-critical information could only be condensed and made available with a considerable time delay and under governance risks.

Consolidation measures could also only be carried out on specific, previously defined reporting dates.

The necessary data had to be stored redundantly in the individual Group companies. For consolidation, they then had to be laboriously transferred to the existing consolidation systems.

Under today's conditions, however, this is no longer appropriate. Rather, what is needed is group-wide transparency so that financial analyses and forecasts can be made at very short notice - i.e. also on a sub-periodic basis and not only on a specific cut-off date at the end of a reporting period.

In order to eliminate the state of non-transparency, it has been necessary to carry out extensive system consolidations of existing SAP and non-SAP applications. Only then was it possible to integrate all relevant value flows and the reporting systems based on them.

With SAP Central Finance, this is changing: Value flows can now be standardized across fragmented ERP system landscapes and made available in real time and in high quality - and that when this controlling-relevant data is required. In this way, consolidation in real time is also possible.

2. SAP Central Finance enables faster and better decisions

Companies can be managed faster and more effectively on the basis of consolidated and accurate data. Documents and postings are available in SAP Central Finance at the touch of a button.

This also reduces the number of errors. And the effort involved is also reduced: redundant data storage of master and transaction data is no longer necessary.

The introduction and use of SAP S/4HANA Central Finance can accelerate the following benefits in particular:

• Fact-based and therefore transparent decisions in real time
• Increased process and information transparency through the use of uniform group-wide standards
• Secure and automatic mapping of international compliance requirements
• Improve business analysis and reporting quality based on similar and trusted data (Single Point of Truth)

3. Building financial shared services with SAP Central Finance

The introduction of SAP Central Finance enables customers who work with complex system landscapes to achieve a completely new level of transparency in the financial system at a manageable cost.

Further processing of documents or document chains is possible, even if their origin is an ERP system connected to SAP S/4HANA Central Finance.

Customer invoices from any ERP system can be transferred to SAP Central Finance and processed there at top speed.

The same applies, for example, to central processing of incoming invoices, central cash management, centralized financial statements (including consolidation) and centralized and standardized reporting.

The introduction of such centralized processes in Financial Shared Services can enable considerable potential for increasing efficiency and thus reducing costs. And this can be achieved without first having to solve the problem of a heterogeneous ERP landscape through costly ERP consolidations.

The future use of artificial intelligence technologies for transactional processes in the finance sector will further increase the automation rate. The economic attractiveness of shared services will thus be further increased.

4. SAP Central Finance as simplified entry into the SAP S/4HANA world

Under the motto "Finance First", SAP Central Finance can be used as an elegant, fast introduction to SAP S/4HANA. In specialist circles, SAP Central Finance is even regarded as the ideal way to open the door to SAP S/4HANA.

Basically, the changeover from ERP systems such as SAP R3 or SAP ERP 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA presents companies with special challenges.

The SAP S/4HANA-based central finance concept therefore often serves as the first step in an SAP S/4HANA greenfield implementation, which is successively supplemented by other central processes such as procurement, R&D or risk + compliance management.

SAP Central Finance can therefore be implemented before SAP S/4HANA is rolled out. In such cases, SAP S/4HANA will be implemented step by step - starting with SAP Central Finance - based on agile project management.

The main purpose here is to achieve significant business benefits more quickly and to parallelize the tasks of system consolidation by setting up a new platform for global processes. The necessary adjustments are manageable because they are largely based on best practice processes. The introduction of SAP Central Finance can be implemented relatively quickly.

The step-by-step approach allows companies to reduce the risks associated with a complete conversion to SAP S/4HANA in just one step.

5. Central finance in the M&A process

One of the biggest challenges in M&A deals is the integration of the IT of a purchased company into the buyer's system landscape - while maintaining data quality and integrity.

After the purchase, decentralized and heterogeneous data sources need to be processed promptly. However, this also increases the effort required to provide relevant key figures of meaningful quality for the management level of the finance department (e.g. CFOs, seniors).

In the context of M&A transactions, the implementation of SAP Central Finance offers an efficient way to connect acquired companies - with SAP and non-SAP landscapes - to decentralized process execution and consolidated reporting.

Implementing SAP Central Finance means that you no longer need to maintain a decentralized network of source systems. For CFOs and finance departments, SAP Central Finance means reliable data, transparency and quality at top speed - even during high acquisition activity.

6. Liquidity planning with SAP Central Finance

The advantages of SAP Central Finance are currently also being demonstrated in the Corona crisis - for example, in terms of securing liquidity. Companies that already use SAP Central Finance are currently at a clear advantage.

Securing liquidity is always of central importance for companies, but is even more so in an economic crisis. If liquidity is no longer available - and this includes credit lines with banks - the company is insolvent and has to file for insolvency.

For companies, it is therefore important to recognize possible liquidity bottlenecks at an early stage, to analyze their willingness to pay and to tie up capital.

With SAP Central Finance, these challenges can basically be solved satisfactorily for the first time. The real-time processing of data in SAP Central Finance makes accurate, regular and timely liquidity planning possible in the first place.

Reports, analyses and decisions are no longer dependent on the latest monthly financial statements, which, in cases of doubt, processed figures four to six weeks old.

Especially in the case of rapidly deteriorating economic conditions - as in the Corona crisis - decisions based on such old data can be fatal. What's more, under certain circumstances they can also be of criminal law relevance for a company management (delay in filing for insolvency).

By the way: In addition to the liquidity key figures, GAMBIT offers you a KPI Dashboard with more than 40 of the best known key figures from the profit, financial and asset situation, which can be retrieved in SAP Central Finance in real time at any time.

You would like to know more? Please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to present the KPI Dashboard to you in detail.

New functionalities: SAP Central Finance 1909

The current version of SAP S/4HANA Central Finance - SAP Central Finance 1909 - was introduced in September 2019.

Compared to the previous version SAP Central Finance 1809, this version contains additional functionalities such as replication of material cost estimates and replication of activity rates.

In addition, several interfaces for third-party systems were added and the initial load was optimized.

Conclusion: Data at top speed for your finance department

With the introduction of SAP Central Finance, CFOs can make decisions based on reliable data. This guarantees a new quality of transparency even in complex corporate structures.

Your benefits at a glance:

• Real-time replication and reporting at group level
• Single point of truth for all data and consolidation
• Better analysis functions, more reliable forecasts
• Accelerated integration of SAP and non-SAP systems (for example, after M&A transactions)
• Simplified introduction of shared service units
• Easier migration to SAP S/4HANA

Take advantage of the benefits of SAP Central Finance now - and set the course for the future.

Talk to us. We will be happy to advise you and implement your SAP Central Finance project together with you so that you too can benefit from the advantages of this solution.