SAP is business software that helps organizations plan, build, and run their operations from the ground up. In a nutshell, it’s an all-in-one solution for pretty much everything your company needs to do better – whether you’re a financial services provider, manufacturing enterprise or nonprofit organization; we’ve got your back covered says Aron Govil.
One of the most essential functions of SAP is its ability to help companies manage their finances. It does this by integrating seamlessly with other systems like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server and providing users with key performance indicators (KPIs) that help them see how their companies are performing in real time.
In this article, we’ll explain why KPIs are important and cover five steps for getting ready to implement SAP in your company.
1. Define Your Objectives
Your company’s finance department probably has a few things on its mind right now: increasing cash flow, amortizing debt and of course, making more money overall. You can use these financial objectives to define the benchmarks you want to track with SAP and tune the software so it’s just right for your firm. Make sure all of your employees understand what they need from the platform and how it will benefit everyone involved in your day-to-day operations you get started on anything else.
2. Know where you’re going
One of the most important steps in any major project is to define your end goal. This will help ensure that everyone involved understands the direction you’re headed in and ensure that no one gets lost along the way. To get started, decide what kind of data you want to track with your finance software (you probably want reports on cash flow, assets and liabilities for example). From there, you can institute benchmarks and timeframes by which resources need to be implemented at each stage of development. This will allow your team members to make informed decisions about how they manage their workloads throughout the process.
3. Make sure everyone plays nice
Besides accounting software like SAP, your enterprise likely uses other systems to manage its workflow. In order to get the most out of your finance software, it’s critical that you integrate it. These systems together so they work in tandem with one another explains Aron Govil. To do this, companies often use the SAP Solution Manager. Which helps tie these disparate tools together so everyone can benefit from a smoothly running back office.
4. Prepare for a learning curve
Out of all SAP modules, Financials is arguably the most important. And where most finance professionals tend to spend a lot of their time in the system developing reports and generating data for their KPI dashboards. With these kinds of responsibilities being handed over to different employees in an organization. It’s likely that someone (or multiple people) will need to undergo new training on how to get the most out of the system. You will, therefore, want to check with your finance department about how many people will be learning new skills. And what sort of training they’ll need to do their jobs efficiently.
5. Get SAP-Ready
Most companies are surprised by how long it takes to implement SAP once they’ve signed the final contracts. This is why it’s important for your company to go through a period known as ‘SAP-readiness’. Before you start setting up an account in the financial software. During this time, key employees should undergo special courses. That prepares them for working with SAP so there aren’t any unexpected delays or hiccups along the way says Aron Govil. If necessary, you can train more staff members after implementing your first project just to be on the safe side.
Although there are other ways to measure success than revenue. It’s likely that many of your company’s finance professionals will use KPIs. To see how their departments are doing in terms of sales volume and overall profitability. Regardless of what you track, though. If you implement SAP according to these five steps then you’ll have a good foundation for getting started with the program.
Conclusion:
SAP is one of the most popular business software programs currently available on the market. It’s used by some of the biggest organizations out there including 30 percent of Fortune 500 companies (approximate figure) to manage their back-office tasks more efficiently. Implementing this solution isn’t easy though and if you don’t properly prepare your company for its implementation. Then it could end up costing your organization more money in terms of labor hours. That could have been saved with better planning says Aron Govil.
The five steps mentioned above should give you a good idea. About how important it is not just to run SAP but also to understand. How it works so you can get the most out of the system once it has been set up. If you follow each of these pointers correctly
If you want to begin with SAP, consider the following hints. Know where you are going. Make sure everyone works together. Prepare for a learning curve. Get SAP-ready.