1. The Value of the SAP S/4HANA® Finance Solution Transforming finance in the digital economy
Financial planning and analysis
Accounting and Financial Close
Accounting and financial close
Treasury and Financial Risk management
Treasury and financial risk management
Collaborative Finance Operations
Enterprise Risk and Compliance Management
Enterprise risk and compliance management
Finance operations
Dynamic planning and analysis
Real-time actual-to-plan cash management
Soft or virtual close
“Lights-out” finance
Always-on compliance
Faster M&A integration
Rapid design of new business models
Closed-loop, real-time planning at any level
End-to-end, drilled-down customer and product profitability analysis
Predictive forecasts and dynamic simulation with real-time “what if” analysis
Visual analysis of financial statements**
Foundation for “soft close”
Instant profit-and-loss insights and real-time cost control
One universal journal for a single source of the truth
Embedded real-time consolidation
Multidimensional reporting on the fly
Integrated regulatory/ statutory and managerial reporting
Reduced reconciliations
Real-time integrated liquidity planning
Improved liquidity forecasting accuracy
Instant visibility into working capital
Predictive and automated forecasting process
Simplified and automated bank processes
Higher transparency on financial exposure risk
Single source of the truth for all financial risks
Simplify, harmonize, and improve collaboration in operations
Buyer-supplier integration with business networks**
Improved budget and spend tracking**
Employee perfect trip experience**
Improved real estate management**
Instant identification and prediction of potential fraud**
Smart strategies for fraud prevention**
Streamlined, automated controls, aligning risk to business value drivers and regulations**
Integrated controls in processes**
Financial Planning & Analysis
Planning processes and functions are integrated into transactional system, allowing for closed-loop planning at any level
Real-time access to financial data with the ability to drill-down to line-item levels. Merger of financials and controlling into a universal journal, creating a single source of the truth. Central finance function eliminates the need for aggregates and tables and to accumulate cost at the lowest operational levels
Real-time “what if” analysis and simulations to model and test the impact of changes to profitability before committing to plans
SAP Financial Statement Insights Web application provides visual analysis of financial statements, including user-defined reporting hierarchies
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Accounting & Financial Close
Foundation for soft close, e.g., real-time derivation of profitability characteristics, single source of the truth, extension ledger
One universal journal entry for general ledger, controlling, asset accounting, and material management items enables continuous intercompany reconciliation
Significant reduction in the need of end-of-period batch processing in order to accelerate closing activities through real- time processing
Treasury & Financial Risk Management
Integrated liquidity management, including cash flow analysis and embedded liquidity planning based on integrated business planning
Use of prediction, simulation, and analysis functionality to support an informed and automated forecasting process
Finance Operations
Easy integration with external data providers and other data sources to simplify, harmonize, and improve collaboration in operations as well as provide an improved and intuitive UX through SAP Fiori
Improved decision making with respect to budgets and tracking spend and expenses through SAP RealSpend, and T&E expense through Concur**
End-to-end automated invoice, vendor, and supplier relationship management through SAP Ariba solutions**
Enterprise Risk & Compliance Management
Enables the full life cycle of fraud management from detection, investigation, quantification, and remediation, with the ability to monitor performance and optimize the investigation process**
Streamlined, automated controls, aligning risk to business value drivers, regulations, and policies**
50–100% reduction in financial forecasting error rate*
40–50% reduction in days to close annual books*
25–35% reduction in unnecessary capital requirements*
10–25% reduction in accounts receivable management costs*
25–30% reduction in risk management and compliance costs*
*Benefits are based on early adopters of SAP S/4HANA® or conservative outside-in benefits due to moving from a traditional ERP to enhanced SAP S/4HANA + line-of-business (LoB) and cloud capabilities. As each enterprise is at a different level of maturity, our recommendation is to work with you to determine the value proposition for the enterprise.
**Capabilities that extend beyond SAP S/4HANA shipment to SAP’s broader cloud and LoB portfolio

2. SCENARIO: FINANCE EXAMPLE
SAP S/4HANA provides reengineered and simplified business processes that can yield significant benefits, transforming the execution from static, batch-driven processes with latency to real-time processes with actionable insights.
Accelerate financial closing with event-triggered automation
Close calendar adheres strictly to financial period definition
Batch Processing
Separate close and consolidation processes
Consolidation
Traditional ERP
Batch Processing
General Ledger Close
Delayed close activities that do not begin until period end. Monthly closing done for multiple operative entities leads to significant transaction volume at month end and time-intensive posting cycles.
Period End
Multiple batch run dependencies cause bottlenecks
Multiple ledgers require time-consuming and error- prone reconciliations
Reporting
Special Ledger Close
Aggregation
SAP S/4HANA
Ongoing Transactions
Universal Ledger Close
Consolidation
Period End
Event-triggered execution enabled through real-time derivation of profitability characteristics and single source of the truth, which ensures continuous intercompany reconciliation.
Event-triggered execution
One universal journal entry for a single source of the truth
Embedded, real-time processing and consolidation that enables “continuous accounting“ from entity to group close
Reporting

3. SCENARIO: FINANCE EXAMPLE
SAP S/4HANA enables an anywhere, any-device, mobile-first, role-based user experience that simplifies and enhances employee engagement and productivity while providing a consolidated view for better decision making.
User experience simplification with SAP S/4HANA
Traditional ERP
Transactional Data
Transactional and analytical data is maintained separately, leading to a disjointed view.
Analytical Data
MS Excel Spreadsheets, and Access Databases
Visualizations, Dashboards
Multiple, Disjointed Views
SAP S/4HANA
An intuitive user experience on any device provides a single, consolidated source of the truth for all information at the lowest level of granularity.
Unified access to all information
One Single Point Of Entry

4. Customers Articulate the Value of SAP S/4HANA Finance
New York Life
Boryung Pharmaceutical
Airbus DS Optronics
Driving finance digital transformation
Improving operating margins
Paving the way to fully digital finance processes
New York Life, one of the largest mutual life insurers in the world, deployed SAP S/4HANA to enable an enterprise-wide financial transformation and enhance its overall business strategy. The company has digitized key processes in finance, procurement, expense management, and human capital management and gained a single source of the truth for delivery of accurate, real-time insights. It is
expected to provide financial leadership to facilitate vital strategic business direction,
including M&A, financing, and long-term capital market strategies that support performance along with rapid innovation.
Boryung Pharmaceutical needed to compete on a global scale, and it required a simplified IT architecture and real-time analysis to drive critical business management. It turned to the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution as a foundation for its transformation. It gained high visibility and control of its business information in real time.
A differentiated implementation methodology to realize time to value with lowered total cost of ownership allowed Boryung to reap benefits quickly, such as reducing days sales outstanding by 10 days, 4.5% Higher operating margin for in-house manufacturing goods, 75% shorter closing period, 17% higher on-time delivery performance and 15% fewer days in raw material inventory
Airbus DS Optronics migrated to SAP S/4HANA to accelerate reporting and digitize finance processes. Sales forecasts, key metrics, and project cash flows are now available instantly, in real time, facilitating more efficient decision making and planning. This also gives controllers more time to support management in strategic work.
This migration resulted in accelerated financial closing processes by a factor of 3 to 4 times – 1.5 days to close monthly books and 4 days to close annual books and Simplified IT landscape and operations with a 75% reduction in data volume
Read the customer success story >
Read the business transformation study >
Read the business transformation study >