1 + 1 = 3

The world is changing very quickly. There are new business models, new technologies, mergers of companies or market shifts, including the resulting opportunities. A corporate finance and accounting function must be efficient and productive to keep pace with a company's changes and to serve as a supporting pillar for business decisions.

Transparency as well as up-to-date and valid financial data are guaranteed when as many processes as possible are automated throughout finance and accounting and sources of error are eliminated. This also applies to companies that use SAP S/4HANA in Finance or are preparing for this platform.

This is because targeted and comprehensive automation, for example in the financial closing area, closes the media gap between SAP S/4HANA and the undesirable manual tasks that are still widespread.

There is no way around process automation

SAP ERP solutions are powerful tools and offer companies a wide range of management and control options. However, ERP systems also have so-called white spaces, i.e. areas that do not cover the end-to-end process completely or only to a limited extent.

These include, for example, the analysis of open items with high risk and high age, as well as the reconciliation of accounts and the preparation of journals, which are still done manually and with Excel in many companies today. Manual processes have serious disadvantages. Media discontinuities, transmission errors or time-consuming reconciliations harbor high risks of error and hinder a daily updated preparation of financial data.

When you're operating in a complex environment with branching processes, using spreadsheets to deliver high-quality financial results or forecasts is more than ambitious. There is an enormous amount of work involved in checking and validating the results - in other words, finding and correcting errors.

An international study by BlackLine from the end of 2020 underpins this fact: only about half (56 percent globally and 50 percent in Germany) of company management confirm they have full confidence in the accuracy of their company's financial data.

When asked about the reasons for the lack of trust, 37 percent of global respondents and 38 percent of German respondents cited continued reliance on inflexible spreadsheets and outdated processes that leave finance teams in the dark until month-end. A solution to automate these processes that sits seamlessly on top of the ERP system can solve this trust issue.

Automation from the start

The ERP architecture of SAP S/4HANA has been developed in such a way that modern in-memory technologies can be optimally used and the boundaries between transaction, analysis and planning systems are eliminated. Valuable analyses across all dimensions and data are thus possible in principle from scratch.

However, especially in the monthly financial close, the processes are so complex that manual work is still necessary and thus potential sources of error are not automatically eliminated.

It therefore makes sense to illuminate and evaluate these manual processes and bring them together on one platform. Only then can the gap be closed and the entire end-to-end process standardized and also automated. The result brings more transparency to the closing process, while providing more time for accountants to focus on exceptions and act as business partners. The question of whether the additional use of a platform makes sense should be asked by those responsible in companies even before the conversion to SAP S/4HANA.

Automation, no matter at what point in time, wants to be managed

The automation of manual processes in financial closing usually occurs in two different situations: retroactively, when SAP ECC is already in place and the processes are to be optimized, or in the course of a complete upgrade to SAP S/4HANA in conjunction with an additional automation solution.

It is important to critically scrutinize all processes as early as the planning stage for the migration to SAP S/4HANA and to reorganize them if necessary. At this point, in addition to IT, the view of the financial experts in particular must also be actively included in the strategic planning. The digital transformation is not only the task of the IT specialists, but also that of the experts from the specialist departments.

The automation of previously manual tasks in finance departments prior to an ERP upgrade is recommended. The potential here lies primarily in the area of account, intercompany and transaction reconciliations. This can reduce the effort involved in closing processes in the department.

The advantages of a significantly minimized risk of error and significantly higher up-to-dateness of the financial data are considerable. This gives the financial experts more time to plan the migration and jointly design the company processes to achieve the desired state.

Conclusion: 1 + 1 = 3

By switching to SAP S/4HANA including BlackLine's solution, manual steps can be automated and thus better controlled. Solutions like BlackLine close the gap between ERP or S/4HANA Finance and CPM/EPM solutions with reliable and secure automation processes.

Today, BlackLine offers the only SAP Solution Extentions for financial closing available on the market - without media breaks, in the cloud and specifically designed for finance and accounting. SAP customers report up to 70 percent faster close cycles, a doubling of accounting efficiency, and happier and more motivated finance and accounting staff.

What SAP and BlackLine offer together is many times better than what either company could offer individually. This is due to the uniform strategy and roadmap and the same understanding of closing and accounting processes. One and one is sometimes more than just the sum.