Business Suite on HANA and S/4HANA Finance Business challenges and solutions Accenture’s internal IT organization Accenture’s internal IT organization is charged with driving teamed with Accenture Finance to define Accenture’s finance vision, needs the company’s digital agenda. Building on the legacy of and challenges and to assess how SAP a notable IT transformation, the organization is focused S/4HANA Finance can address them and on three key roles: aligning IT with business priorities, provide business value. “Our Finance organization needs to operate with enabling a digital Accenture and driving down the cost greater responsiveness based on real-time of IT. Accenture must put in place the technologies insights,” says Grant Ireland, Accenture’s that provide its more than 375,000 employees with Senior Managing Director – Corporate Finance Planning & Strategy, “in order access to the information and capabilities to be a high- to drive business outcomes and enhance performance business. The company’s single-instance SAP® Accenture’s competitiveness.” This initial enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is critical to assessment gave the team preliminary findings of the value of the migration that the organization’s drive for high performance. Separately, Finance and IT then proceeded to prove Accenture and SAP have a co-development agreement to out. design, develop and jointly take to market SAP Business Proof of concept Suite on HANA. Using the initial findings, the Finance and IT team set up an SAP S/4HANA Finance proof of concept. Three key objectives were set to: 1) determine whether the Opportunity Solution migrations would provide the desired Accenture runs its business on a single Accenture has consistently kept its SAP value, 2) gain an understanding of the global instance of SAP, using it for internal application up to date, treating SAP as technical challenges and 3) determine the business functions, including Finance, a significant business asset. “Instead of cost. Human Resources, Governance, Risk having 50 different cars, so to speak,” and Compliance (GRC), Forecasting and says Kirner, “we have one highly powerful, A team consisting of Accenture’s other capabilities. Accenture’s business, technically advanced automobile, and internal IT organization, SAP resources however, is changing as the company we take care of it.” Accenture viewed a from Accenture Technology, Accenture transforms into a digital and more diverse migration to SAP Business Suite on HANA Consulting, Accenture Digital, Accenture enterprise. In this new world, Accenture as a key step on its digital road map—an Finance subject matter experts and needs to operate with more insight, agility, opportunity to deliver value to the business consulting resources from SAP came efficiency and compliance across multiple and to meet future business needs. together to perform the proof of concept. business units, business processes and The team defined test business use cases applications. This means both the business For these reasons, Accenture has embarked based on key business value levers of processes and IT capabilities must contend on the next step of its strategic road speed, agility, analytics and future ERP with a fast pace of change, growth, larger map—migrating its current Finance and HR capabilities. With the use cases prepared, volumes and diverse businesses—all driving instance to SAP Business Suite on HANA conducting the proof of concept was next. the need to evolve Accenture’s ERP to be in order to implement new capabilities ready for the future. in the future. This suite is built on SAP’s Working with a masked copy of advanced in-memory platform, SAP Accenture’s production system, the multi- “We are investing in SAP Business Suite HANA. In determining the implementation organization team set up a pilot system on HANA not because it is needed now,” approach to SAP HANA, Accenture in an Accenture Innovation Center for says Dan Kirner, Executive Director of recognized there are two key options— SAP Solutions, performed an upgrade to Accenture’s SAP Program, “but rather migrate and “greenfield.” Accenture chose Enhancement Package 7 and migrated the because Accenture will need it in the near to migrate to SAP HANA considering its database to SAP HANA. The team then future when we will need to be more highly optimized existing platform and ran the Accenture HANA Profiler Toolset insightful, agile and faster—a true high- standardized business processes. When an to identify and apply ABAP programming velocity enterprise.” At the same time, organization’s current business processes optimizations and installed SAP S/4HANA Accenture is advancing the company’s and configuration cannot meet its future Finance. The final steps were to perform digital agenda, an agenda of investing business needs and its current environment Accenture regression testing. The proof of in technology to operate the business consists of diverse platforms, a “greenfield” concept was completed in three months, in a digital way. SAP HANA will become or reimplementation approach may be rapidly enabling Accenture to evaluate the Accenture’s new platform in its digital better. results. transformation agenda to ultimately enable a strong foundation for long-term performance. The proof of concept demonstrated migration was minimized by separating ERP capabilities. Highlights of outcomes significant value to Accenture and aligned functional changes into a previous include: with Accenture’s digital agenda. As deployment. As Accenture's SAP strategy is expected, the migration to SAP S/4HANA to keep current on Enhancement Packs, the • Progressing Accenture’s digital Finance did uncover challenges that prerequisites of Enhancement Pack 7 were transformation road map, and gaining needed to be remediated for the actual delivered in an earlier release. the ability to leverage future capability migration. The overall findings of the and flexibility, enabled by SAP S/4HANA proof of concept were used to complete Accenture’s dynamic business environment Finance, including Central Finance, Accenture’s detailed planning for the Cash Management, Fixed Assets and demands frequent delivery of incremental Forecasting. business case and migration. business capabilities, posing the decision to delay the SAP Business Suite on HANA • Delivering analytics on real-time Business case migration or develop in parallel to the transactional data versus the historic Using speed, agility, analytics and future migration. Careful risk assessment and approach of using extracts and monthly ERP capabilities as the criteria for early go/no-go decisions provided the roll-ups. value, the Finance and internal IT team steering committee with supporting facts confirmed that SAP Business Suite on to approve a concurrent go-live of SAP • Experienced on average a 25 to 50 HANA with a future plan to upgrade to HANA and business change. With enhanced percent improvement in performance S/4HANA Finance is the best SAP HANA stabilization and hypercare support, the across transactions, batch programs, scenario for Accenture, with a parallel overall solution was brought live on time distribution of data and report implementation of BW on HANA. The and without business disruption. In the performance on an already highly team then developed a full business case first month, full business volume was optimized system, with select with scenario analysis of high-value executed ahead of schedule, and without transactions across these same areas necessities and optional scope items and a major defects. Within the same quarter, improving in speed by up to 98 percent. full study of the implementation plan. This the solution accelerated finance close included the following: processes by two days. • Reduced disk storage footprint by almost 50 percent on an already highly optimized database. • An integrated program plan depicting As SAP’s leading partner and largest timeline options with associated implementer of SAP HANA-based solutions Accenture’s experience demonstrates prerequisites and dependencies and applications globally, Accenture that a proof-of-concept migration can was able to leverage a range of unique, provide benefits with minimal risk. Helping • Budget analysis for various options proprietary tools to accelerate migration to ensure the active involvement of the including capital and expense items to SAP HANA and reduce the risks. The business and SAP at all levels through across hardware, software, business, Accenture SAP HANA Profiler, for example, the proof-of-concept, planning, testing, IT, internal consulting and external significantly reduced manual effort to migration and post-migration phases consulting ensure a successful and more efficient enabled a detailed road map to be migration. The team also used SAP’s ABAP developed for the actual implementation. • Resource/role and headcount Test Cockpit tools for remediation and In addition, taking a business value- projections automated testing capabilities to reduce driven approach by consulting extensively project efforts. Applying tools, accelerators, with Finance leaders to understand their • Major risks and mitigations lessons learned, best practices, a dedicated priorities confirmed that the migration is team and standardized processes in strategically advantageous for Accenture— Implementation pre- and post-migration activities can positioning it to take the necessary steps The implementation of SAP Business significantly reduce the time and risk to establish an SAP HANA platform for compared with a traditional migration delivering new capabilities and get the most Suite on HANA took six months, and was approach. value from its IT investments. performed by the same team consisting of internal IT, Accenture’s Consulting, Technology, and Digital practitioners, Results The migration to SAP S/4HANA Finance The SAP Business Suite on HANA and supports Accenture’s digital strategy Accenture Finance and consultants from S/4HANA Finance proof of concept of harnessing technologies to drive SAP. Project governance was performed confirmed the overall business value transformational changes in value, by a weekly operating committee and a Accenture expected and provided productivity and capacity. “Accenture views steering committee that met monthly, its migration to SAP Business Suite on and included leaders from all the important direction on the best approach HANA as a huge step forward in preparing participating organizations. The team used to a full-scale migration. Accenture is one its ERP for the future and key to delivering Accenture’s methods, assets and tools, of the largest live systems on SAP Business business value,” says Kirner. “The qualities including Accenture Delivery Methods Suite on HANA in terms of database size, of speed, agility and analytics insight will and estimators to increase the reliability, users and transactions. SAP HANA moves be needed to support Accenture’s projected quality, speed and predictability of the Accenture from a SQL database to an growth and performance in a diverse delivery work. Business disruption due in-memory database that provides the range of businesses in a more complex and to the SAP Business Suite on HANA value of speed, agility, analytics and future volatile environment.” About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network— Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 375,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.