How can finance organizations accelerate innovation without jeopardizing crucial needs or being engulfed in a multi-year project?
You have three options if your company utilizes SAP for EPM:
- Continue with legacy SAP EPM products until they are no longer supported,
- Invest in SAP’s unproven next-generation solutions, such as Group Reporting, Analytics Cloud (SAC), and maybe Central Finance, or a hybrid strategy.
- Evaluate alternative EPM solutions with a solution like OneStream to take charge of your Finance Transformation.
Key Criteria for Evaluation
Complexity. Organizations must conquer the complexity inherent in their internal systems as part of any Finance Transformation to simplify the administration and maintenance of important procedures.
Change Management. Significant change management strategy is required as this is a multi-year/product project. Regardless of the sequence, SAP will ultimately require you to replace all your legacy SAP products.
Timing. Cash outflows and mass activity will have an immediate influence on the Finance, Supply Chain, and other important operations engaged in demand collecting and project planning.
Investment. The actual investment should always be a major concern in any venture. SAP Strategy is total transformation of the financial ecosystem. Depending on the size and complexity of the project, you are looking at a million-dollar commitment and this transformation required will affect Finance and other operational areas. The investment will likely affect the timing of the other key corporate initiatives.
Modernizing older transactional ERP systems and implementing EPM solutions are critical and strategic efforts that may aid financial transformation. And there’s no denying that upgrading to SAP S/4 for Finance Transformation will take a significant amount of time and effort.
Before you engage in an ERP upgrade, evaluate the business benefit of advancing the Finance Transformation by conquering the complexity of your EPM processes. When the time comes, the value you produce could even be enough to support your ERP change.
