SAP Application at a Glance

SAP ERP Financials

The SAP ERP Financials solution

provides completely integrated
nancial management functionality
to help ensure compliance, enable
predictable business performance,
and provide enterprise-wide trans
parency. SAP ERP Financials
provides modular applications
that enable our customers to
tailor a financial management
solution to their specific business
needs by addressing changing
financial reporting standards, improving cash flow, and managing
financial risks.

SAP ERP Financials

Comprehensive and Integrated Financial

Management Solution
Key Functionality
Financial Accounting
Statutory reporting
Management reporting
Fixed asset, accrual, bank, cash journal,
inventory, and tax accounting
Accounts receivable (AR) and accounts
payable (AP)
Parallel valuations
Management Accounting
Contract, profit center, project, product
cost, profitability, and cost center
accounting
Investment management
Revenue and cost planning
Transfer pricing
Financial Supply Chain Management
SAP Credit Management Application
Employs sophisticated tools to analyze
customer credit worthiness and establish
policy
Helps avoid overdue accounts and bad
debt losses by proactively managing
customer credit risk exposure
SAP Biller Direct Application
Enables customer access to invoices,
account status, and payment information
over the Internet
Integrates seamlessly with existing
customer- or supplier-facing portals
SAP Dispute Management Application
Resolves invoice disputes faster and more
systematically
Reduces days sales outstanding (DSO)
and improves cash flows
SAP Collections Management Application
Enables more effective management of
past due accounts
Accelerates collection of delinquent
payments though prioritized collections
efforts
Treasury Management
SAP Cash and Liquidity Management
Application
Helps monitor and manage cash flow and
liquidity
Generates comprehensive and timely
cash forecasts and plans

Internal and Partners Only

SAP In-House Cash Application

Enables centralized control of banking
balances, cash management, and
payments
Reduces costs of interunit payments,
transfers, and bank fees
SAP Treasury and Risk Management
Application
Models risk scenarios and executes
mitigation strategies
Reduces financial risk levels and helps
ensure regulatory compliance
SAP Bank Communication Management
Application
Streamlines and optimizes corporateto-bank communications
Provides straight-through processing,
improved payment control, and lower
processing costs
SAP Integration Package for SWIFT
Enables direct connection to SWIFTNet,
the secure bank payments network
Reduces complexity by providing a single
point of connectivity to multiple banks

Staying in the Know

For more information on SAP ERP
Financials:
Solution highlights: www.sap.com
/solutions/business-suite/erp/financials
/index.epx
Additional documentation:
http://channel.sap.com on the global SAP
channel partner portal
Up-to-date insight and content:
www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx
/financial-excellence or
www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx/erp on
SAP Community Network
For additional third-party insights within the
discipline:
International Accounting Standards Board
(IASB): www.iasb.org
Financial Accounting Standards Board
(FASB): www.fasb.org
American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants (AICPA): www.aicpa.org
CFO magazine: www.cfo.com
Business Finance magazine:
www.bfmag.com
CFO Project: www.cfoproject.com
Institute of Management and Administration
(IOMA): www.ioma.com

Target Market

Value Proposition

SAP ERP Financials is best fit for midsize

and large-scale enterprises that:
Need to support both local and group-level
statutory reporting standards
simultaneously
Operate in multiple geographies
Transact and report in multiple currencies
Support multiple business units or
operating centers
Require real-time integration between
finance and revenue-generating or
expense-related operations
Expect a comprehensive set of internal
controls for reporting
Need support for specialized, industry,
or sector-specific financial management
or reporting processes (such as public
sector fund accounting or construction
capital project accounting)
Want to utilize electronic-based processes
for reporting, payments, and bank
communications
Seek a long-term solution for financial
management processes

This comprehensive financial management

solution scales to fulfill the accounting,
reporting, working capital management,
compliance management, and performance
management requirements of global
businesses.
Complete integration links all areas of
finance and connects them with core
business operations in purchasing, sales,
contracts, human capital management,
and similar organizations.
The solution enables connectivity with
banks and financial service providers
by featuring prebuilt, standards-based
connectors, as well as support for inter
national electronic payment standards
and networks.
Robust applications for financial supply
chain management include electronic
invoicing, credit management, collections
management, and core treasury and cash
management functionality.
Flexible reporting and insight provide
the transparency to view performance
by unit, organization, or cost center and to
respond to changing business conditions
quickly.

SAP ERP Financials Top Reference

Customers
More than 30,000 best-run businesses
in over 120 countries rely on 45 countryspecific versions of SAP ERP Financials.
Financial and Managerial Accounting at
W. R. Grace
W. R. Grace & Co. is a premier specialty
chemicals and materials producer. Its two
operating segments incorporate over 200
company codes spanning 45 countries. The
firms reliance on three separate ledgers as
data sources caused delays and inconsis
tencies in its financial close process. After
deploying the SAP General Ledger application, the firm now has a single general ledger
design based on profit-center accounting
resulting in a common set of data definitions,
consistent accounting methods, greater
transparency into working capital, and faster,
more informed decisions.
Financial Supply Chain Management at
The Wolf Organization
The Wolf Organization Inc. has grown from
a small lumber store into a full-service
enterprise with US$385 million in revenue.
Following its successful, 12-week deployment
of SAP Biller Direct, Wolf reported a 5%
increase in credit and receivables productivity,
plus a 100% customer retention rate.
Treasury Management at Fujitsu Siemens
Computers
As a large, global organization with nearly
7 billion in annual revenue, Fujitsu Siemens
Computers understands the importance of
effective cash management. Implemented in
less than six months, SAP Treasury and Risk
Management allows the company to run
real-time scenarios on its profit and loss to
help mitigate potential risks. The software
also enables eight people to run the
in-house bank across 11 currencies and
50 worldwide subsidiaries.

Comprehensive Business Processes

SAP has led the software industry by identifying value scenarios or comprehensive
sets of interconnected business processes
that are most essential to companies in
todays economy. To help customers meet
and exceed expectations in running their
business, SAP ERP Financials enables the
following value scenarios:
Accelerated financial close processes
Streamlined invoice-to-pay cycle
Rapid customer-to-cash processes
Treasury and risk management
Financial shared services
Operational and financial performance
management
Risk and compliance management
For more information on the value scenarios
supported by SAP ERP Financials, please
visit www.sap.com/solutions/executiveview
/finance.

Key Facts
More than 30,000 organizations in over
120 countries
45 country-specific versions available in
over 20 languages
More than 2,200 references
More than 1,100 channel partners
More than 550 add-on solutions from over
290 software solution providers

Competitive Differentiation
SAP ERP Financials helps mitigate risk by
enabling enterprise-wide visibility and transparency. SAP is the only vendor whose software natively sends all detailed data into the
general ledger, providing full underlying insight.
Oracle and others send only composite data,
providing just the abstraction but not the detail.
This lack of clarity differentiates our complete
solution from other competitive software.

Unlike the Oracle competitive solution,

SAP ERP Financials offers:
Real-time integration between operational
systems and the general ledger, enabling
up-to-date information
Superior financial supply chain management
functionality for invoicing, receivables
management, and cash and treasury
management
Lower-risk option with credible applications
and a platform road map
Compared to the Microsoft competitive
solution, SAP ERP Financials offers:
Deeper financial management, analytics,
and reporting functionality
Global scalability
Agnostic support of database solutions
(supporting both IBM DB2 and Oracle
DBMS)
For additional competitive differentiators,
please see the table at the end of this
document.

Main Competition
While SAP enjoys a leadership position in
the financial management software sector
based on revenue, our primary competition
comes from global, established enterprise
organizations like Oracle and Microsoft.

Partner Ecosystem
Deloitte Consulting LLP Provides
industry-specific consulting expertise
to help companies develop successful
SAP softwarebased solutions
Accenture Offers consulting expertise
to help organizations that are looking for
new ways to leverage their SAP software
investments and create tangible value
IBM Delivers SAP softwarebased
solutions designed to help customers
solve enterprise-wide business problems
BearingPoint Inc. Provides consulting
expertise to help organizations leverage
their SAP softwarebased solutions to
create enterprise-wide value
PricewaterhouseCoopers Develops
and implements SAP softwarebased
solutions, drawing on corporate treasury
system expertise, as well as program
management services
Infosys Technologies Ltd. Offers SAP
softwarebased consulting services,
leading corporations across a variety of
industry sectors

SAP Contacts
Rebecca Polley Solution Management
Hendrik Vordenbaeumen Solution
Management
Philip Say Solution Marketing
Pete Graham Field Services, Business
Development (United States)
Ralph Schoepfer Solution Management
(EMEA)
Marc Astor Financials Application Suite
Solution Management

www.sap.com /contactsap
Business Driver

Value Proposition

SAP Differentiators

Accelerate consolidation and reporting cycle

times and lower resource costs while producing
balanced and accurate sets of financial statements by individual unit or cost center

With the SAP ERP Financials solution, finance

departments can:
Produce consolidated and individual sets of
financial reports across multiple business units
on a timely basis
Accelerate period-end closes
Reduce the administrative cost associated with
managerial and financial reporting
Strengthen internal controls and reduce the
cost of financial reporting compliance
Standardize financial reporting processes and
systems globally
Reduce data entry errors by automating the
reconciliation of journal entries and allocations
Take a structured approach to help ensure efficient and effective conversion to International
Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

The new general ledger functionality in SAP ERP

Financials improves financial accounting and
reporting by enabling finance teams to:
Leverage rules-based, real-time allocations
between business units
Automate the reconciliation of journal entries
across multiple units
Support an extensible chart of accounts
Eliminate the need to manage and maintain
multiple ledgers
SAP ERP Financials also provides integrated
enterprise performance management (EPM)
functions, eliminating the need to purchase
additional third-party software to perform
financial consolidations, enterprise budgeting
and planning, and management reporting and
performance measurement.
SAP ERP Financials provides comprehensive
functionality for parallel accounting that supports
both IFRS and local regulations around the world.
So you can adhere to the complex accounting
standards of the multiple countries in which your
company conducts business, meet the reporting
requirements of the capital markets, and optimize
the reliability and transparency of your financial
reporting.

Reduce the time, effort, and cost of managing

the entire working capital cycle from customer
payments to treasury cash management by
examining current business processes, as well as
the applications and systems that support them

SAP ERP Financials enables finance teams to:

Optimize the receivables, payments, and cash
management processes
Lower working capital expense
Integrate e-invoicing as a standard method
of accounts receivable
Integrate automated payment and cash
management processes with banks
Improve workflow and reporting for collections
and dispute management processes
Accelerate the flow of information between
the finance, treasury, and cash management
departments

The SAP Financial Supply Chain Management

(SAP FSCM) set of applications allows finance
teams to:
Gain comprehensive process support for
the entire financial supply chain and cash
management cycle
Leverage the complete integration of cash,
treasury, receivables, and payment data
Rely on integrated bank-data communication
Readily integrate core accounts receivable,
accounts payable, and general ledger
applications
Utilize robust intracompany payment and
in-house banking functionality
Benefit from Web-based invoicing and credit
management

Create timely, intuitive scorecards and management reports to measure performance throughout
the organization, understand business performance drivers, and analyze profitability at the
division, product, and channel level

SAP ERP Financials improves performance and

profitability by enabling finance teams to:
Rely on a single, integrated source of
enterprise-wide performance data
Deliver rich, intuitive scorecards, reports, and
key performance indicators (KPIs) to managers
and information workers so they can align their
performance with overall company strategy
Provide greater depth of information by linking
operational and financial data for modeling
and analysis
Improve access to information through
personalized, role-based portals

SAP ERP Financials provides a single solution for

finance to:
Provide business managers with real-time
insight into profitability by product, profit
center, or business unit
Leverage prebuilt integration to transactional
functions, such as general ledger, accounts
payable, and accounts receivable
Rely on a product design cost-estimation
solution to improve product profitability
analysis
Utilize Web-based reporting and online access
to performance data

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