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LEARNING POINTS
Understand the current challenges with Close Process
and our approach and methodology to improve the close
process
Improve your understanding of how SAP Financial
Closing Cockpit (FCC) can help to gain complete visibility
into close process
Advance your knowledge of identifying and optimizing
processes and tools automation to improve future closes
Learn how the features of FCC enhance monitoring
controls around the close process
AGENDA
Introduction
Current Challenges
Close Acceleration Approach & Methodology
Leading Practices
Tool enablement using SAP Closing Cockpit
Key Learnings
Wrap Up
Todays environment
Companies face increased pressure to provide higher quality information faster
and more efficiently.
External Pressures
Higher expectations of transparency from banks, venture capital firms and other financing sources
Increased scrutiny from the investment community with larger penalties for restatements and/or material
weaknesses
Accelerated deadlines for certified results and greater complexities associated with multi-GAAP reporting
Internal Pressures
Greater need from the business to provide critical decision support with timely and accurate analysis
Increased responsibilities beyond traditional components of corporate reporting including planning, budgeting
and forecasting and business analytics
Expectation to deliver insight into how to interpret data to drive decision making and improved performance
Demand for automation and integration within financial systems for tax, management and operational
reporting
Cost Pressures
Executives looking to maintain profit margins demanding better value for the money from finance functions
Increasing pressure to do more with fewer resources without compromising accuracy and control
Insufficient
Accuracy and
Control
Dependence on
Manual Processes
Ineffective
Decision Support
Too much time collecting data and not enough time on analysis and decision support
Limited standardization, complex reporting requirements and ad-hoc requests
Potential financial surprises are difficult to identify
Inconsistent data and limited performance measurement
Analyze &
redesign
Test and
roll-out
Continuous
improvement
Process
Technology
Change management
The initial stage requires
a strategy and focus
dedication of a project
team to move forward.
Alignment of realistic
objectives needs to be
properly communicated
with stakeholders and the
project team.
A detailed assessment to
identify specific
bottlenecks in the closing
process highlight the pain
points and opportunities.
An evaluation of
proposed solutions
should be prioritized to
attain desired results.
Organization, process,
structural and information
technology changes
require testing and are
ultimately rolled-out
according to a plan
sequentially.
Change communication is
critical to the success of
the effort.
Approach
Strategy
Is the companys financial strategy aligned
with the overall vision of the organization?
Structure
Are the financial organization structures
meeting the needs of internal and external
stakeholders?
People
Process
Are financial processes streamlined,
simplified and standardized throughout the
cycle?
Technology
Are the capabilities of systems and tools
properly leveraged?
7.0 days
PwC Global Practices Benchmark
10
11
Min
Median
Max
Monthly
8.2
1.0
5.0
7.0
10.0
30.0
Quarterly
12.2
1.0
6.0
10.0
15.0
66.0
Yearly
28.9
1.0
10.0
16.0
33.0
270.0
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Common characteristics
Close activity
Day activity
complete
-1
Payroll
-1
Inventory
-1
Material Close
Accounts Payable
Fixed Assets/Depreciation
Cash
SG&A Accruals
Revenue
2-3
Operational Costs
2-3
Accounts Receivable
2-3
Intercompany
3-4
4-5
Management Reporting
6-7
Automation of reconciliations
Elimination of duplicate data entry
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Potential Benefits
Enable multi-GAAP or financial reporting requirements through common book of record and
use of parallel ledgers
Improve integration with document splitting reducing intensive manual reconciliations
Maintain audit trails and book to report differences in common ledger
Balance sheet across multiple dimensions
5. Optical Character
Recognition and Data Entry
tools
Enhance entry of data intensive transactions such as vendor invoice entry or manual entries
Scan invoices and reference originating financial transactions
Improve compliance and preserve audit trail by tightly integrating financial postings and
documents
6. Disclosure Management and Improve report format and explanation of cause of change
XBRL
Reduce time and effort required to generate XBRL reporting
Eliminate XBRL outsourcing services
7. Mobility
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Source : SAP
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Tasks to be executed as part of the close and a timeline for the tasks (e.g., Run payroll on key
date -1 day, Run allocations on key date +1 day)
Enforcing any dependencies between tasks (e.g., Do not run allocations until Payroll data is
available).
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Local Controller
Local Controller/
CFO
17
Local Controller
Local Controller/
CFO
Local Controller
Local Controller/
CFO
19
Local Controller
Local Controller/
CFO
20
Optimize
Gain Insight
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plan.
Do not contain any financial data instead they display the statuses
of tasks in a Task List.
Can be accessed only via the Enterprise Portal and access can be
provided to most financial users by default.
Use Direct data access to read the data from the live system
rather than data replicated to BI.
At the start of each close, the task list structure (hierarchy of tasks)
need to be extracted once to BI.
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24
SAP Enterprise
Portal
SAP BI
SAP CPS
(Central Process
Scheduling)
ORACLE
JD Edwards
Other Systems
25
26
Comprehensive and
user-friendly WEB UI
Ability to add comments
to tasks through Portal
Operation across SAP
clients or systems as
well as non-SAP
systems
Advanced grouping of
tasks into phases and of
task lists by status
Integration into SAP Net
Weaver Portal or SAP
Net Weaver Business
Client
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KEY LEARNINGS
Leading Practices and approach to accelerate the Close
Process.
Designing the Global template is key to successful
implementation of SAP FCC.
Finance team should be responsible for the template and
task list maintenance.
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KEY LEARNINGS
FCC supports closing tasks from multiple transaction
systems and integrates the Close Process.
BI Queries help to monitor and control the close status
and improve the future close.
Leveraging FCC Add on features provide more
opportunities to enhance the close process.
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STAY INFORMED
Follow the ASUGNews team:
Tom Wailgum: @twailgum
Chris Kanaracus: @chriskanaracus
Craig Powers: @Powers_ASUG
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