February 20-21 2017, Hyatt Regency Dallas, Texas

Research Report

Table of Contents

Moving to S/4HANA Finance

Perfecting Master Data Management to Drive Decision Support

Financial Reporting & Analysis

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)

Treasury Management

Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)

Efficient Travel & Expense Management

Training, Skills Development & Change Management

Achieving Integrated Business Services

Maximizing Value from Your Financials System

The History of the Eventful SAP Financials Conference

Other than the 6 SAP Industry conferences that Eventful have run over the last 12 years here in the US –

including Best Practices for Utilities, Oil & Gas, Chemicals, CP, Automotive and SAP-Centric EAM - we

have also build and delivered an SAP-Centric Finance conference in Australia for 11 years and South

Africa for the past 4. In these markets the event is called “Mastering SAP Financials.” These events have

been famously successful and have been able to bring together a majority of finance people from the

business side of the equation, along with technology folks who support them. Customers sharing theirs

stories warts and all make up 75% of the content delivered.

The conference focusses on:

Business process improvement

Existing finance technologies that customers are trying to get more out of

New technology that is emerging from SAP

With Eventful and ASUG now coming together, we will be launching the equivalent US event entitled the

SAP-Centric Financials conference that will be run in Dallas, Texas on February 20-21 2017.

This Research Body

The SAP Centric Financials conference is presented by customers on the most pertinent issues faced in

the financials department. Having done research across the USA we have identified 10 of the key topics

that continue to present challenges and shortcomings in many Organizations. The following topics are

used as the blue print for the conference agenda.

Moving to S/4HANA Finance

Launched as “Simple Finance”, S/4HANA Finance is the future of finance. Organizations need to embrace

the digital age and harness the power of technology to maximize operational performance. S/4HANA

Finance will revolutionize the way business’s run, are able to make decisions and ultimately drive the

Finance function as a strategic leader in the business.

Every CFO running knows the move to S/4HANA Finance is approaching. The questions, considerations

and points of interest as they move to simpler technology encompasses the following:

Business drivers for migrating to S/4HANA Finance.

Cloud-Based S/4HANA Finance Vs. On-Premise Vs. Hybrid.

SAP’s Roadmap for Maturing S/4HANA Finance.

How S/4HANA Finance Actually Works and What It Looks Like. Is The User Interface Intuitive?

Customer Journey of Migrating.

How to Develop a Business Case for the Migration Process to Begin.

Possible Hurdles with Integration and How to Overcome Them, Including Integration to The Cloud.

Perfecting Master Data Management to Drive Decision Support

Understanding what data is important for business decision making allows you to implement procedures

and policies to maximize clean data inputs. When asked what data organizations viewed as valuable,

many were unable to answer succinctly. It is therefore important for an organization to identify what

data drives business decision making.

Clean trustworthy data allows companies to make informed decisions and fine tune existing business

processes. The most common issues related to;

Establishing a Master Data strategy

Understanding the implications of bad data

Getting those who input data to understand the downstream effects of their data quality

Governing your Master Data – How to develop processes that enhance data governance

How to effectively use data to make business decisions

Creating an ongoing control structure across all departments.

Using logic in data structure for the long term

Who should own the data? Should it be centralized?

Financial Reporting & Analysis

It goes without saying that the financial position of an organization is something that needs to be able to

be accessed on demand. Strong reporting and business intelligence capabilities allow the organization to

view the current financial position of the business and in turn drive informed decisions.

Reporting is the key input for forecasting - leveraging the data to make assumptions about potential

future outcomes. Ensuring the reports are run in a consistent and accurate manner is a not negotiable.

Developing a reporting strategy that maximizes value for decision making

Cost effective reporting strategies.

From reporting to forecasting- moving your function to a decision support role.

Real time reporting possibilities.

S/4HANA Finance reporting capabilities.

SAP standard reporting, best methods to achieve the best results.

Integrated reporting capabilities using S/4HANA Finance.

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)

The speed of change is getting faster. Agility and quality data is the primary tool a CFO needs to budget

and forecast effectively. EPM is all about having visibility of operations in a closed-loop model across all

facets of the enterprise. Specific to financial activities it supports financial planning and analysis. This is

an area of great interest to customers. Strategy formulation, business planning and forecasting and

financial management all fall into this bucket for finance teams to consider.

Getting your process right before you leap to a technology solution

What tools are offered by SAP to assist with this? and how do they compare to each other?

BPC Embedded – What Is the benefit of a fully embedded solution?

What Is SAP’s Roadmap for BPC? How Does It Fit in with IBP, SAP Planning and Cloud Planning?

Improving The scalability of your planning capability – operational vs. executive

What are the features of the latest version of BPC? What can BPC 10 do?

Is scenario Planning Value Adding or is it Just Adding Complexity

“Creating a budget is hard enough, is scenario planning better or just multiple budgets?”

Treasury Management

The recent economic global meltdown has driven company executives to really focus on the treasury

function. Treasury departments are challenged with proactively identifying sources of cash flow

optimization, while pinpointing risks and shortfalls.

Understanding regulatory and compliance requirements is strongly underlined in the role of treasury.

The mandate to reduce finance costs and mitigate the risk associated with ongoing economic and

financial uncertainties means that Treasury need complete transparency to formulate best practice

solutions. To meet these challenges and still perform at optimal levels, treasury decision makers want

greater clarity and control over complex processes associated with managing payments, cash, liquidity,

and risk. At all times, they must know where their cash is, where it’s originating, and where it’s needed.

Customers are interested in learning:

How to create financial transparency in the business

Understanding treasury management solutions from SAP

Accounts Payable automation of repetitive transactions

Financial Risk Management solutions

How to maximize treasury functionality to improve cash flow capabilities

Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)

Governance is the approach through which senior executives direct and control the entire organization.

Part of the task revolves around critical sufficiently complete, accurate and timely management

information reaching the executive team to enable appropriate management decision making. Risk

management is the set of processes through which management identifies, analyzes, and responds to

risks. Compliance is achieved through adherence to laws, regulations, contracts, strategies and policies.

GRC and GRC technologies help synchronize these activities and enables information to flow in order to

allow the business to run efficiently. Customers are keen to learn:

How to develop a risk strategy that aligns with corporate risk appetite

Can technology help in managing role identification and its implications

Compliance monitoring, assessment and effectiveness

Aligning governance policies with regulatory demands

Processes and technology for identifying and reporting risk

Integrate activities to effectively manage risk and compliance-related activities

Efficient Travel & Expense Management

With SAP’s recent acquisition of Concur, customers are intrigued by whether it can assist them with

their travel and expense function. As well as obtaining an understanding of what the tool looks like and

how it works, companies are also looking to hear the perspectives from those who have already

implemented Concur and integrated it with SAP.

Designing a simple process for expense reimbursement.

Tips and tricks to overcome the human challenges relating to expense management.

What can Concur do? How does it work? Demo of a live system

Is the integration from Concur to SAP good? What have those who have already implemented

experienced?

Training, Skills Development & Change Management

Changing your systems is easy. Changing your people, not so much. The enthusiasm and hype around

project milestones can excite, the real issues begin when your project is over, your SAP partner leaves

and you are now tasked with harnessing the technology and using it to its maximum capability in an

ongoing way. Finance departments need to harness the following initiatives to truly drive change in the

business:

Training in cost effective ways

End-User training to understand the importance of the systems capabilities.

Engaging The End-User to improve operations to what is best practice.

Moving training to role based.

Accepting the new tools.

Recognizing and accommodating tech advances like Hana and restructuring accordingly

Changing Policies to incorporate SAP standard as opposed to constant customization to suite the

status quo.

Achieving Integrated Business Services

Shared Services can help combat silo’d business processes and functions. In addition, they help improve

efficiency, transparency and reduction of costs. Integrated business services allow organizations to make

decisions based on the viewpoint of the entire organization and ideally from a single source of truth.

Enterprise-wide business challenges can be addressed in a consistent, high quality and cost competitive

manner. The co-ownership of technology and process between IT and the business is massively

beneficial and hard to orchestrate.

What has been the path for organizations that have successfully broken down silos to create an

integrated business system

Managing the change that goes along with this new approach

Data – across departments to drive integrated reporting

What is best practice for creating such a group?

Maximizing Value from Your Financials System

There is basic functionality within the SAP’s ERP Financials modules that have yet to be uncovered by

many organizations. Organizations are looking to their peers to help them sweat their existing assets

and uncover simple technology that they never knew they had access to:

Financial close – how do you reduce processing time for a faster month end close

Best practice solutions for AP automation

Creating seamless reports for the business

Maximizing FICO – What functionality are the best performers using that others aren’t.

Conclusion The way the finance department thinks and operates has evolved significantly in the last few years. An

indicator is the seniority of finance professionals taking an interest and showing up at our events – as

the speed of technology change gathers velocity.

The Finance Department understands the importance of becoming a strategic business partner and from

their unique vantage point, this offering that they bring to the table is massively beneficial. SAP-Centric

Financials must facilitate a brave conversation and enable the finance function to truly deliver value as

they understand and unpack what technology can enable them to do.