HPC is transitioning to the SAP Public Cloud
the SAP Public Cloud
Project management, finance, controlling and procurement at HPC now run in the SAP Public Cloud.
Consultants in our own cause
As an SAP consulting firm with around 85 employees at two locations in Germany, we have been guiding our customers on their way to the cloud for years. For our own administration we took the same step and moved our entire system landscape to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. What we recommend to customers, we now use in our own house: close to standard and transparent.
employees work in the new system every day
locations in one shared landscape
SAP solutions that feel like one system to users
separate HR system needed, leave runs through the project system
Grown, but not end to end
Our grown system landscape mapped business processes end to end only to a limited extent. Financial accounting was outsourced to an external provider, which led to delays and manual processes. Evaluating the profitability of individual projects was possible only with effort.
The target picture: a system landscape that connects project management, finance, controlling and procurement end to end. For a service company like ours, project management is at the center, because this is where the profitability of the business is decided. More transparency in project management, controlling and financial accounting was meant to make business decisions much easier in the future.
Many systems, one experience
Instead of a single system, we introduced a complete system landscape that appears as one unit to users. The core is SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with project management, finance, controlling and procurement. It is complemented by several connected systems and targeted custom developments.
The system landscape
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition as the core for project management, finance, controlling and procurement
- Commission calculation as a custom development on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
- Leave and other HR topics directly in the project system, without a separate HR system
- Travel expense reporting via SAP Concur
- CRM via SAP Sales Cloud
- Government reporting and invoices via SAP Document and Reporting Compliance (DRC)
- Incoming invoices via SAP Ariba, including automatic document recognition via OCR
- Semi-automated interface to payroll accounting via DATEV
Implemented in about one year
HPC hybrid model on SAP Activate
We implemented the project in about one year using our HPC hybrid model, which builds on SAP Activate. Close collaboration with SAP and specialized partners helped overcome the initial technical hurdles of the still young public cloud environment.
SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Analytics Cloud was a strategic focus. Building it gave us a lot of reporting know-how, which now flows into our customer projects.
External partners as users
External partner companies are also set up as users in the system and record their time directly. This makes the user group much larger than our own workforce, and project data is complete and up to date from the start.
Change Management
For key users and end users we ran training sessions, created accompanying documents and videos and actively used the system help to make the switch as understandable as possible. After go-live, the new system was well accepted across all age groups.
Lean HR solution
For HR topics we deliberately chose a lean solution close to standard. A comprehensive HR system would have been oversized for a company of our size.
Transparency at the push of a button
The biggest difference shows in access to our own figures. Where it used to take several days for evaluations to arrive from the external provider, business data is now available at the push of a button. Analyses of project management and controlling are possible immediately, and the profitability of individual projects can be assessed transparently at any time. This creates a much better basis for business decisions.
Direct access to financial data
Accounting data is available immediately, instead of with a delay from an external provider.
Transparency in projects
The profitability of individual projects can be evaluated directly.
Higher data quality
A shared data basis replaces many manual reconciliations.
Good acceptance in the team
The new system was well accepted across all age groups after go-live.
Our own project gave rise to a team
We carried out the project ourselves and deliberately built our own public cloud team in the process. Since then, this team has successfully completed further customer projects.
Example: SAT Anlagentechnik
Cloud ERP implementation at SAT, awarded the SAP Quality Award
The system landscape is in place
The system landscape is in place, and we are expanding it in a targeted way, above all in reporting and controlling on the basis of the new data foundation.
From our own project we take experience that flows directly into our customer projects: we know the degrees of freedom and limits of the Public Edition from our own use and know how to implement extensions cleanly.
We are happy to share our experience from our own project. In an initial conversation we clarify how SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition fits your company.
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