SAP data entry in the financial area

In this interview, Ralph Weiß, Sales Director DACH at Winshuttle Germany, describes the status quo in dealing with data quality and gives an outlook for the future.

E-3: What do you see as a recurring challenge for SAP users?

Ralph Weiß: These are clearly the manifold problems with data quality - they are omnipresent in companies of all sizes and industries. Companies strive for the highest data quality in their systems in order to be able to implement processes smoothly.

However, it is extremely difficult to achieve this goal without a comprehensive approach and if the Microsoft Office environment prevalent in most companies is closely integrated with the SAP environment.

We have observed that data governance and process governance are best ensured when a systematic approach is taken. This means more documented procedures and technologies across system boundaries.

E-3: But can technology sustainably improve data quality?

White: Let's take a look at the financial sector as an example. Most accounting professionals and auditors would agree that technology is a better approach than relying solely on policies and procedures - which are often manual and can be circumvented.

Depending on the type of implementation, suitable technologies ensure consistency and compliance with specifications. This can reduce the costs of optimizing processes because they are consistently checked and the security of the processes is thus increased.

E-3: That sounds a bit nebulous - can you give an example?

White: For the process of manual posting in SAP, there is naturally the expectation that the quality and consistency of the entries meet the highest requirements, after all, the financial system provides the basis for the reporting of every company.

However, without a reliably managed process, the costs of executing and checking manual bookings are disproportionately high.

There is also a risk of incorrect data, which is difficult to avoid or reduce without the implementation of technological solutions.

E-3: So companies should automate all bookings as quickly as possible?

White: Many organizations see the process of manual bookings as cumbersome, risk-prone and yet indispensable. However, if the processes are not fully automated due to a lack of integration, for example, or if the results of business activities are not clear or are intentionally or unintentionally influenced by incorrect manual entries, corrections have to be made "by hand" again.

This leads to delays and possibly other sources of error. In our discussions with controllers and accountants, they have repeatedly ruled out the possibility of doing without manual postings. However, they also see that the scope of such processes can be reduced.

While no one questions the principles of accounting accuracy, minor rounding errors and discrepancies should only be corrected if they have a significant impact on the accuracy of the accounting or reporting.

E-3: How does this challenge affect SAP and IT in general?

White: We often hear that the system forces every balance sheet to be accurate to the penny and every allocation to be correct. Many of the methods used today for transferring data into SAP-compliant journals are not interactive, they do not provide practical feedback and do not work directly with data from Microsoft Excel.

This means that specialist departments are dependent on IT to transfer data from Excel to SAP. If errors occur during processing, these usually have to be corrected by the business department after a time-consuming search in order to trigger a new import by IT. This ping-pong further increases the time pressure during monthly or quarterly closings.

E-3: But does this collaboration actually work in everyday working life?

White: Usually not smoothly - the reasons lie in the workload of all those involved and the complexity of the SAP infrastructure. We often hear from finance departments that they have to work with a large number of manual workarounds until IT can close existing gaps in relation to the requirements set by day-to-day business.

This inevitably tempts users to create their own solutions, which are beyond the control of IT and must therefore be assigned to shadow IT. The typical user in the financial sector "lives and breathes" Excel for tasks of all kinds - including the provision of data for the manual processing of journals.

Excel has almost become part of the DNA of these users, and most users in the financial sector could not get through a working day without using some kind of spreadsheet.

E-3: Won't there have to be a rethink in management in the future to ensure governance?

White: That really is the order of the day. After all, users only implement their agile solutions because they basically want nothing more than to be able to do their work precisely and efficiently. This should be in the interests of every company management.

The good news is that agility and governance do not have to be mutually exclusive. In most companies, the end result will be a symbiotic relationship between the hierarchical organization for traditional IT tasks and an agile environment for the development of lean applications to quickly solve user requirements.

E-3: What solutions are there to provide support in this situation?

White: Our approach is to automate manual booking processes - by reducing the workload, we help users in the finance department to devote themselves to more demanding activities such as analysis and reporting.

We enable users to prepare the data in Excel in their familiar environment and then transfer this data to SAP automatically, securely and traceably.

Our customers from a wide range of industries use our platform in a variety of ways to optimize their data management processes. One of these ways is to minimize trivial requests, increase governance and introduce verifiable approvals of data requests.

This is achieved through a template-based approach without the need for programming for data management tasks such as manual booking and the use of workflows for routing, approval and rejection as well as the automated transfer of manual bookings to systems such as SAP.

E-3: What results can be achieved with this approach?

White: For one customer, the implementation of our platform enabled them to increase their "first time right" KPI for manual postings from 88% with their previous solution to 99% today. This customer was able to continue using their existing Excel templates, but at the same time take governance and workflow approvals to a new level by integrating with SAP Financials without having to change the underlying SAP technology.

Another customer uses forms to manage its financial master data process. The company uses the Winshuttle platform to manage requests for changes to items such as customer and supplier records, cost centers and profit centers, general ledger accounts, budget values and even employee data.

E-3: What could the accounting of the future look like in most companies?

White: A more advanced approach is workflow-supported journal entry. Accountants can continue to work in Excel in order to utilize the advantages of the spreadsheet for entering or processing document data.

In addition, the documents can be validated against SAP, with success or error messages being written to the corresponding Excel line for each posting line. Once it has been ensured that the documents are error-free, they can - depending on the process - be posted directly to SAP or embedded in a web form in order to go through further release steps before posting.

Typically, the document basis is attached as a mandatory document and automatically attached to the document in SAP after final approval. For many companies, this may sound like gazing into a crystal ball - but in fact, a few of our customers have already introduced such processes.