In 2019, Daiwa House Industry, Japan’s largest homebuilder and a prefabricated housing specialist, tapped Fujitsu Ltd., global information and communications technology equipment and services company, to help the company build an ERP system that will unify its growing group of 357 companies as well as strengthen overall governance across the organisation. Leveraging SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Daiwa House was able to have a two-tier ERP system with zero add-on development, reduced version upgrade costs, create development procedures templates, and standardise finance processes.

Following the successful SAP implementation project, Daiwa House Industry has renewed its partnership with Fujitsu for the management infrastructure system of the company with a focus on finance transformation. (InsideSAP Asia often references articles from websites in other languages to bring you as much information as possible.) Daiwa House’s finance modernisation project is centred on SAP S /4HANA and SAP S /4HANA for Central Finance to deliver deeper governance to the global construction firm through enhanced capabilities on financial information analysis and visualisation.

Starting as a pioneer of prefabricated housing, Daiwa House Group has massively grown since 1955, has become a highly-diverse construction and housing multinational company, and has been on the Fortune Global 500 list for 12 consecutive years. As of March 2021, the Japanese enterprise has grown to 444 companies employing over 48,000 professionals worldwide delivering its vision of co-creating “value for individuals, communities, and people’s lifestyles” by leading urban development and offering living services aside from building houses.

Addressing Growth Challenges with Digital Finance Transformation

Daiwa House’s expanding market footprint and scaling business growth driven by mergers and acquisitions and rapid globalisation has revealed emerging challenges. The company recognised the need for an IT platform to address pressing concerns on financial and non-financial information visualisation, governance and risk management, management resources utilisation across business divisions, and business management in regional offices.

Relying on Fujitsu’s SAP expertise to deploy SAP S/4HANA as the core of the Daiwa House’s digital transformation–anchored on three key interests namely link internal and external processes, drive speed, and innovate with the latest technology– the company is focused on the following:

• Real-time understanding of the financial status
• Faster decision-making capabilities 
• Enhanced operational efficiency and management plans as a result of automation in analysis and report creation

In addition, the multinational enterprise has also slated to deploy: 

• SAP S/4HANA for central finance to unify financial data across the organisation including overseas offices, acquired companies, and joint ventures. SAP S/4HANA for central finance enables companies to transform their financial data and modernise processes in a phased SAP S/4HANA ERP onboarding, which helps avoid disruption on multiple ERP legacy systems and reduce risk.

• SAP Central Finance Transaction Replication by Magnitude for SAP S/4HANA for timely accounting slip collection regardless of the system used. The solution connects central finance to distributed systems, allowing real-time visibility to third-party operational details and transactions for faster, more-cost-effective finance implementations.

• SAP Central Finance Data Harmonisation by Magnitude for SAP S/4HANA for master data identification and replication. The solution enables organisations to create powerful master data record that supports finance processes, accelerating governance and integration of master data from distributed SAP and third-party systems.

Daiwa House Industry and Fujitsu’s SAP project implementation will kickstart on August this year.

The post Daiwa House Embarks on Digital Finance Transformation with SAP appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

For nearly three decades now, SAP Concur has been assisting organisations in streamlining and automating their financial processes with intelligent solutions. In 2019, the company opened a development centre in Shanghai to develop and strengthen integrated spend management technologies for the Chinese market. Continuing its commitment to enabling the digitalisation of businesses by improving their intelligence capabilities, SAP Concur advances finance transformation through a diverse portfolio of professional solutions and a strong partner ecosystem. 

For SAP Concur Greater China General Manager Jeff Lam, building a successful and resilient business amidst the COVID-19 pandemic is challenging. He believes that technology has played a key role in how organisations effectively stay competitive and adapt to changing needs today. One of the numerous organisations that have chosen SAP Concur for digital finance transformation is PrimeCredit. The company aims to customise its expense limit approval functions for various types of expenses in order to meet its specific and intricate internal compliance requirements.

Commenting on the partnership with the provider of credit, financing, investment, and other services in Hong Kong, Lam expressed:

“It is encouraging to see how the SAP Concur solution has supported PrimeCredit, a key player in Hong Kong’s non-bank consumer finance groups, to unleash business potential with data and digitalisation.”

PrimeCredit Accelerates Digitalisation with SAP Concur Invoice and Expense Solutions

Indeed, financial institutions like PrimeCredit face a compelling need to leverage the power of technology to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and meet their emerging business needs in light of a fast-paced industry and regulatory landscape. Established in 1977, PrimeCredit’s branches mostly provide personal loans and credit cards to its user base of more than 300,000 and other individuals that otherwise may not qualify for traditional bank lending. 

According to William Ng, Chief Financial Officer at PrimeCredit Limited, digital transformation presents a major change to business processes and operating models, consequently building significant barriers for financial groups as they embark on their digitalisation journeys. Expounding on their collaboration with SAP Concur, he shared:

“The SAP Concur solution has been a key step in our digitalisation strategy. It has helped us optimise our workload, which is instrumental in resource planning. We also have better data visibility and a deeper understanding of our various businesses and financial health for better-informed budgeting decisions.”

Harnessing the capabilities of cloud-based solutions such as SAP Concur Invoice and SAP Concur Expense that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), PrimeCredit was able to:

• Obtain a comprehensive and integrated view of spend categories, reimbursements, and invoice activity.
• Improve transparency and credibility by gaining real-time data visibility to support the business’ expansion needs.
• Creating a highly productive and efficient workplace by rerouting manpower to valuable tasks.
• Empower managers and support teams to conduct more effective spending reviews.
• Simplify the finance team’s overall workflow in terms of budget prediction and expense approval by streamlining and optimising finance processes.
• Track, retrieve, and analyse data for cash flow projection, profit and loss management, and expense control without the use of manual forms.

Moreover, SAP Concur Expense and Invoice solutions enable the non-bank consumer finance group to assess expense control strategically and prepare for the coming year’s budget by expediting the process from input to review and approval. With the help of the cloud-based system, PrimeCredit can also allocate resources more efficiently.

SAP Concur Greater China GM Jeff Lam concluded:

“At SAP Concur, we are committed to being the credible companion of local enterprises and financial institutions of all sizes, enabling them to thrive amid the pandemic and beyond, and supporting them along their digital transformation journey with our industry-leading automated spend management solutions.”

PrimeCredit also intends to explore more SAP solutions in the future to further improve efficiency, and it looks forward to deploying more products that can aid in modernising the company’s operations.

The post PrimeCredit Digitalises with SAP Concur Invoice and Expense Solutions appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

As the world’s leading provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions and services, SAP Concur digitises companies of all sizes and stages by improving their intelligence capabilities. Its Expense Management system delivers greater visibility into transactions, simplifies processes for the whole organisation, and improves compliance all at the same time through an automated end-to-end solution that links the company’s travel, expense, and invoice transactions in one system.

Celcom Axiata Berhad is one of the numerous customers that have successfully implemented SAP Concur expense solutions. The leading communications provider in Malaysia, with a subscriber base of 14 million users, estimates that SAP Concur would enable the business to cut RM 3.4 million (US$ 833,000) from its operational spend in the first year.

By implementing the SAP Concur expense solutions, Celcom has been able to capture spend from multiple sources, and make informed business decisions based on accurate data. Key benefits of the solutions include:

• Providing a single place to see expense data
• Enabling easy execution of spending policies
• Automating receipts and process reports
• Reimbursing employees with faster transactions

Celcom Automates Processes and Improves Compliance

Aside from Concur Expense, Celcom also integrated products such as Concur Request, Concur Intelligence, Concur Audit, and Concur Budget into its SAP finance management system. Following its company-wide digital transformation program, Celcom has since adopted the solutions to replace a legacy platform, principally an HR system, that did not have expense management features.

Dr. Hari Nair, Head of Human Capital Transformation, Celcom Axiata Berhad, shared:

“Concur Expense has transformed our expense claims processes – removing human error, giving hours of lost productivity back to personnel, and cutting non-compliant claims to less than 8 percent while reducing costs.”

Additionally, automation in SAP Concur also allows Celcom to reassign two full-time equivalents (FTEs) from manually processing claims to other tasks. Within 30 days of its launch, around 70{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of employees were using SAP Concur for expense claims while Concur Audit had significantly decreased non-compliant claims and reduced costs.

“Concur has aligned expense management with our broader digital transformation goals for the cloud to play a bigger role in our IT delivery and smartphone technology to become more integrated with workplace practices,” Nair maintained. 

Paving the Way for Digital Transformation with SAP Concur Expense Management 

Moreover, SAP Concur continues to strengthen its commitment to enabling organisations’ digital transformation and improving their intelligence capabilities. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic changing the way most of the companies currently operate, SAP Concur’s portfolio of professional, digital finance solutions and its vast partner ecosystem help enterprises adapt to the ever-evolving environment and further embrace modernisation.

Highlighting the importance of digital technologies and collaboration tools as businesses adjust to new work cultures, Laura Houldsworth, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific Japan, and Greater China at SAP Concur, said in a recent statement:

“Finance leaders should use this phase as an opportunity to redefine their business strategies, operations, and technology to lead their organisations through this challenging time.”

As more and more companies explore intelligent solutions that would future-proof spend management, SAP Concur is well-equipped with solutions that help them automate their expense, invoice processes, and gain greater visibility and control over corporate spend.

“And as we have seen here at SAP Concur, a resilient finance function can be delivered through the adoption of truly automated, digital finance processes. End-to-end, automated data synchronisation between SAP Concur and other business applications provides management with more visibility into employee spend,” Houldsworth further stressed.

The post How SAP Concur Expense Solutions Transformed Celcom Axiata Berhad appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.