SAP Innovation Awards 2021 Entry Pitch Deck

PUBLIC

IBM

Intelligent Finance Planning enabled by IBM Evolution

Company Information

Headquarters

Industry

Web site

1 New Orchard Road Armonk, New York 10504-1722, United States

Technology & Services

www.ibm.com

IBM is a global technology and innovation company founded in 1911 and headquartered in Armonk, NY.

We are industry, process and IT experts who apply breakthrough thinking and technology to solve our clients’ greatest needs. With the

skills to provide fearless innovation and matchless execution, we are the only services company that invents, applies and co-creates

new products or experiences with our clients. We help our clients design, build and run businesses at speed and scale.

As part of the Evolution Partnership, IBM deliver’s intelligent business outcomes for customers based on the use of

Business Technology Platform, that provides the main set of capabilities that underpins the Essential Platform for SAP..

• One of our “Media & Entertainment clients” who specializes in movies, tv series and news amongst many other media-based

products was looking for a strategic partner who could get them on with the “Finance transformation” journey enabled by HANA &

Cloud adoption. IBM’s continued drive towards innovation and providing the best of services to our clients made us collaborate

with the client to put together “First of a Kind” – Real time planning based solution that would support employees across the

organization from different regions to access a real time “Balanced balance sheet” and with virtualization across entities to

have a financial reporting not having to wait for the daily loads / weekly loads before the required balance sheet journals could be

accessed.

• This helped with optimizing the overall planning cycle and especially reducing the month end by about 2 business days

overall and putting together the foundation for predictive based analytics adoption. This was made possible by SAP technologies

such as SAP HEC as cloud hosting for the BW on HANA (implementation was all in compliance with BW/4HANA based objects),

Analysis for Office for Excel, Web Intelligence, BPC Embedded along with Consolidation, BODS, SAP S/4HANA to SAP

BW on HANA along with SDA for certain Non-SAP source systems where applicable.

Solution

Outcome

“We no more are worried about system &

functionality providing consistent data

and see team passionate to generate

insights day on day.

Chief Financial Lead – From Client

“I don’t have to wait for month end to

post the journals. I know exactly where

my balance sheet is & what I need to

post.”

Business lead for FI month end – From

Client

IBM

Multidisciplinary project team with IT & business resources working in a hybrid Agile methodology with the BW on HANA

objects to be built in full compliance with SAP BW/4HANA (for making the future BW/4HANA conversion as a technical

upgrade) based data streaming along with BODS & SDA supported by AFO, Web intelligence,LUMIRA & BPC

Embedded for the use case & business value driven approach. Leverage the content along with the custom built

applications in planning & consolidation for rapid development while integrating it with SAP S/4HANA & other BW based

source systems (SAP & Non-SAP – 10+ source systems, 70 Million+ records for historical data loading reconciling the

planning data).

A real-time balanced Balance Sheet, capability to report on planning data real time through complete virtualization,

real time planning scenario execution only on changed records within AFO for immediate settlement processes, 4 manual

offline processes now standardized, master data on the fly for the business developed with the best time to market ever

achieved for such magnitude of scope. All made possible by 8+ planning scenarios, Group Consolidation, Rationalization

of 600+ reports down to 260 reports, 90+ input templates within AFO, 90+ BW data flows, 80+ BODS based jobs, 8

SDA based scenarios along with dashboards in LUMIRA.

20x

Wait for a day or more just for reporting on “Actuals” and then maximum up to a week for consuming “Planning” based

data, impacting strategic business decision making and the ability to have a global view of the overall planning data in real

time for making the required adjustments not having to wait for the same. Automate & standardize the forecasting &

budgeting along with consolidation process across multiple entities in the organization to become an intelligent data driven

company.

End to End BW &

BPC based process

automation through

control tables

80%

Reduction in month

end effort to carry

out support activities

and for reconciliation

70%

Finance Transformation Journey enabled by HANA

Improvement in

report execution

time (performance)

Challenge

Business Challenges and Objectives

In it’s journey being an intelligent data driven company, the client faced following challenges:

- Actuals & Planning data in different systems making it hard to report on the dataset in real time for being able to generate the data

driven insights.

- Wait for overnight & weekly jobs to complete for the business process settlements to show up in the reporting impacting the

business decision making.

- Multiple manual processes with data processed offline restricting with clear auditing requirements w.r.to source validation.

- No flexibility to the business to generate master data on the fly to address most of the planning requirement.

- No single easy to consume consolidation process making the group consolidation a major obstacle every quarter.

The objectives were to

- Build a robust, global foundation of harmonized and reusable data from all SAP Source System(s) and from the business through planning to

enable data driven use cases & improve decision making.

- Have a real time capability around being able to report on both Actuals (as per extraction schedule) and planning data not having to wait for

overnight jobs.

- Real-time capability of planning logic execution to ensure the business can carry out the AUC and other project based settlements instantly.

- 60 – 80% automation of activities for month end process (both from IT & from Business perspective).

- Have a single, near real time, trusted source of SAP data to lay the foundation for future use cases around AI/ML, time series forecasting.

Project or Use Case Details

The icons below represent different planning scenarios & consolidation based functionality implemented as part of the project in addition to the

reporting functionality.

- Successfully delivered above planning processes along with Consolidation & reporting, to allow real-time cash & AUC settlements along with

Project ETC calculation within BPC which in turn made the “Balance Sheet” to be “Balanced” real time through out the month end process. Supported

by “Master data on the fly” functionality to provide business flexibility for planning based consumption.

- Successfully delivered a user centric & easy to use “Analytics” solution with embedded self service reporting by having a co-located project

team with the business to support the “Agile” ways of working following the scrum methodology and involving users at the “core” of the solution through

out the implementation.

- Successfully delivered 80% of automation for month end by leveraging the Control table approach to automate BPC based setting related import

process along with multiple table monitoring process including many other such accelerators/assets (aggregation level, inactive object checker,

lookup/pattern identification, BW Assistant, HANA Health check etc...)

- Along with a successful implementation of a complete virtualized reporting approach across all the above planning and consolidation models to provide

single pane view around the financial data to trigger the concerned month end activities with SAP BPC related business drivers for Forecast, Planning,

Consolidation & Analytics.

- Utilized tools such as BW on HANA, BODS, SDA, BPC Embedded & Consolidation, AFO for Excel, Webi along with 8 SAP & Non-SAP source systems.

COST CENTRE & HR

PROGRAMME PROJECTS & ECAT CONSOLIDATION

FUNDING MODEL

REPORTING

PEPA

CAPITAL

PROFIT CENTRE

BPC CONTENT

SCHEDULES

Business or Social IT (optional) Human Empowerment

Benefits and Outcomes

Replacement of existing BW, BPC (Microsoft

version) with multiple standalone instances by a

single robust solution provides business a

consistent, real time planning capability.

Planning data for both user input and report

consumption (Real time from overnight /

weekly schedule) → Users now not only are

able to enter the plan data but are also able to

carry out the AUC & Project based settlements

along with Project ETC validation real time.

Through out the month end, the balance sheet

is balanced for entries made highlighting the

impact on Group Consolidation real time along

with 20x report performance improvement.

Use advanced analytics-based reporting

functionality along with self service “Super

Queries” to significantly improve project planning

and HR based allocations for any potential

issues along with extended cash split into further

level real time.

All templates in compliance with accessibility

standards.

Master data on the fly capability for business.

3000+ reports to 460+ reports post rationalization,

and upon the system setup, further reduced to 260

Reports, 90+ AFO input templates.

Business team now has “Super Queries” which are

super charged version of the “Self Service” queries

where along with standard functionality required for

majority of the queries, there are also pre-calculated

characteristics, keyfigures, so that the business can

pick up them up and execute them.

Manual processing around HR, External Cash, Cost

Center along with year end schedule management are

now streamlined with the automation put in place.

Cutting-edge techniques to upskill IT resources and

attract new talents.

Direct access to data real time helps and motivates

business to work on data quality and processes.

Usage of modern tools with ready to use data increase

attractiveness of operational jobs.

70% reduction in month end support activities,

IT no more has to support four different systems

and is all replaced by a single system with BW

on HANA and BPC Embedded components

along with best-in-class SAP AFO, LUMIRA &

Webi for reporting (SAC on horizon with PoC

completed).

80% of the month end support is automated in

terms of moving across BPC based configuration

setting related changes which otherwise would

have to be done manually, control table concept

for monitoring multiple tables for potential

dependency entries, 4500+ projects to be

processed for ETC calculation by 10+ process

chains with automated individual value selection.

60% reduction of the BODS usage replaced by

SDA for real time data consumption thus leading

to reduction in IT support & in alignment with IT

strategy.

All data reconciliation issues in the earlier instance

are resolved with a repeatable reconciliation

process in place.

Less impact on HANA usage by leveraging

system wide virtual reporting process along with

context-based planning sequence execution

capability.

Architecture (Logical)

Architecture (Overview)

End user

SAP BODS /

Flat Files

Firewall

SAP ECC, HR, SRM

SAP LUMIRA &

Web intelligence

Data for Dashboard & other

reporting along with BPC Input

templates with AFO

On-Premise

Non-SDA Compatible

External Data

Source(s)

BW on HANA*

SAP BPC

ADSO

Composite Provider Virtual tables

Query as Info Provider

APD

* - All objects compatible with

BW/4HANA to ensure the future move to

BW/4HANA is a pure technical upgrade

Data replicated for Non-SDA

compatible source from Non-

SAP systems

SAP data for ECC, HR,

SRM replicated into BW

on HANA

Non-SAP source system

SDA compatible

replicated into virtual

tables

SAP AFO for Excel for reporting

& BPC Input templates

BW 7.02

Data Migration for

historical data loading

SAP BI

Launchpad

(FIORI version)

BW on HANA (other

LoB instance)

SAP S/4HANA

For Group

Consolidation

SDA Compatible

External Data

Source(s)

Architecture (Detailed)

SAP® technologies used:

Date Number of users

Deployment status

Deployment

If you have used one or more of the services or support offerings from SAP Services and Support during the implementation or

deployment phase, please indicate which one(s) below with an

SAP MaxAttention

™

SAP Value Assurance

SAP ActiveAttention

™

SAP Model Company

SAP Advanced Deployment

Others:

SAP Innovation Services SAP Innovative Business Solutions

Feb 10

, 2020 1800+

Live

SAP Technical Integration Check

prior to Go live along with

penetration testing services

SAP product

Deployment status

(live or proof of concept [POC])

Contribution to project

SAP BW on HANA

Live

SAP Data Warehouse compatible with BW/4HANA based objects to

enable future upgrade as pure technical upgrade

SAP BPC Embedded

Live

Budgeting & Forecasting solution with Group Consolidation

SAP AFO, Webi, LUMIRA

Live

Planning Plugin (BPC) & Reporting tool, Dashboard tool

SAP S/4HANA

Live

To support Entity based Consolidated data extraction into BW warehouse

solution for group consolidation

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, BODS, SDA

Live

Cloud product for BW on HANA deployment along with BODS & SDA used

for SAP Extraction approach along with BW extractors

The following advanced technologies were part of the project.

Advanced Technologies (1 of 2)

Technology or use case

Product used*

Contribution to project and

how product used integrates with SAP products

Machine learning or artificial

intelligence

Robotic process automation

, conversational AI,

-based knowledge graph

Intelligent data management

Multi

-cloud, data virtualization and governance, smart

data tiering, persistent memory, data privacy

SAP S/4HANA

(consumed & not

implemented)

SAP Success Factors

SAP Concur

SAP HANA SDA

Complex SAP & Non

SAP architecture, which was designed by leveraging SAP BW

based standard extractors along with SAP BODS to extract the data into BW on

HANA instance. SAP SuccessFactors, Concur based data has been extracted into

the Data Warehouse Solution along with the data from ECC &

SAP S/4HANA.

SAP HANA SDA supporting the data virtualization between SAP ECC and BW on

HANA landscape.

Advanced and augmented

analytics

•

Real-time and streaming analytics, spatial analytics

•

Natural language query and generation

•

AutoML to identify trends, patterns, outliers

•

Predictive analytics (time series analysis and

forecasting, regression, classification)

SAP BW on HANA built

with all objects

compatible with

BW/4HANA

SAP HANA SDA

SAP BW on HANA was used data warehouse solution with every object used

compatible with

SAP BW/4HANA → to ensure the future move to SAP BW

/4HANA is

just a technical upgrade (including queries with modelling tools along with other

scenarios).

Real time data replication from Non

-SAP systems into BW on HANA through HANA

SDA.

Data and analytics solutions in

the cloud

•

Unified data and analytics cloud platforms by SAP

•

Modern/self-service data to analytics

SAP BW on HANA with

AFO for Excel along with

limited presence of SAP

Analytics Cloud usage.

BPC Embedded

Used

AFO for Excel to create “Super Queries” to enable the Self Service reporting

capabilities to the end users, who can then drag and drop the pre

-defined KPIs

beyond the standard layout to carry out modern, self served analytics on the data

set.

Delta flag usage to enable users to only calculate the logic for processed records

and not for the entire AFO selection when using BPC based planning functions.

*If this is not an SAP product, explain how it integrates with SAP products.

The following advanced technologies were part of the project.

Advanced Technologies (2 of 2)

Technology or use case Product used*

Contribution to project and how product used integrates with SAP products

Advanced cloud integration

•

API economy (monetization and API marketplaces)

•

AI-based or crowdsourced integration

•

High throughput, low-latency digital integration hub

Industry cloud platform

SAP

HANA Enterprise

Cloud

To host the BW on HANA landscape on cloud platform.

Blockchain

Internet of Things

3D printing

*If this is not an SAP product, explain how it integrates with SAP products.

Additional Information

Success Story (Video link)

- https://ibm.box.com/s/k0gclkruvlda8dpb3bdzifa9dw6f8e9w

Client feedback

Project Innovation

Below is a summary of the innovation delivered to the client as part of the implementation

- Allow users to input I&E related data periodically and Balance Sheet level data as cumulative.

- Allow users to generate Master data on the fly to support the business planning activities not having to wait for IT to create the master data but still

have a strong governance around what values can be generated.

- Delta enablement of the records changed by the business users, and given the standard planning function cannot process only records changed

(default logic across the entire model is currently allowed by out of box functionality) creating a custom approach which can based on the delta flag set

will only process those records changed allowing

- the entire AUC/Cost Centre/Project settlement live ensuring business can see the impact downstream not having to wait for overnight job

schedule for immediate reconciliation.

- auto balancing of the balance sheet ensuring at any given point in time, the business knows the impact on the cash flow and any required journals

to be posted.

- Rollup of data from HR into Cost Centre for further roll up into profit centre for a higher level aggregation for overall financial budgeting &

planning data status with a click of a button.

- Allow users to selectively load the data into consolidation post validating against multiple business rules and data quality checks to avoid any

issues and delay of month end with a click of a button not having to technically know how to access & trigger in the backend.

- Roll up of the periodic data on the fly while loading into Consolidation especially both I&E and Balance Sheet data to be at Cumulative level.

- “Super Query” concept with pre-calculated KPIs across different hierarchies to ensure the users don’t have to rely on canned reports for month end

financial packages to be prepared. The users are now able to drag and drop different KPIs and views needed to deliver 60+ views with a single AFO

provided.

- Intuitive customized dashboards both in LUMIRA & Webi to support the business aspiration towards integrated “What if” scenarios.

Project Innovation

In continuation to the earlier slide,

- Trigger the approval workflow for project approvals from the initial submission validation (on who can submit vs with what inputs it can be submitted

vs ensuring the same is locked during the time when the approval process is ongoing or when approved).

- Have implemented custom control table approach which ensures there is a complete workflow end to end triggered with all controls and checks

put in place.

- A global approval template with 8 status selections based on the selection a different planning sequence processes to be triggered off along with

different control tables downstream to be updated.

- Extensive VB code integrated with AFO for Excel based functions provided by SAP to achieve the “Scenario-based” processing based on the

user input providing real time validations as well.

- There are about 4600+ projects on a daily basis for which the “Estimated time to complete” needs to be re-calculated based on different attributes

along with the remaining cost to be distributed based on the initial forecast vs actuals spent vs commitments made.

- Given the time to complete processing for all 4600 projects could be about 3 business days due to different planning scenarios to be processed,

parallelized the approach with auto selection of the project list along with characteristic relationship and planning locks to get the process completed

with auto deployment of scaled process chain count (depending on the number of projects as per auto selection the process chain count can scale

down and scale up).

- This brought down the overall processing to 3 hours from 3 business days.

- Multiple assets built as part of the project to automate and optimize the effort involved

- Auto monitoring of the control tables for progress made on the process chains along with auto triggering of the process chains

- Able to move the planning locks configuration across the landscape (standard functionality needs it manually moved across the landscape)

- Inactive object checker in the landscape post moving any transports

- Lookup or pattern identification for hardcoded values used