BAO6714 - Analyzing SAP S/4HANA Finance: Benefits, FICO vs S4HANA

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of SAP S/4HANA Finance, exploring its historical development, contrasting it with the current SAP FICO system, and highlighting the benefits it offers to businesses. The report begins with a historical overview of SAP S/4HANA, tracing its origins and evolution. It then delves into the key differences between SAP S/4HANA Finance and SAP FICO, emphasizing the advancements and improvements in the newer system. The benefits of SAP S/4HANA Finance, such as improved reporting, increased agility, and faster computing speeds, are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the report includes case studies of companies that have migrated to SAP S/4HANA Finance, examining the issues they faced and the improvements they achieved in their operations. The report concludes by summarizing the advantages of SAP S/4HANA Finance and its potential to transform financial management in organizations.

Running head: COMPUTERIZED ACCOUNTING IN ERP SYSTEMS
Computerized Accounting in ERP Systems
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

2COMPUTERIZED ACCOUNTING IN ERP SYSTEMS
Introduction:
There exist a lot of information which the organizations need to look at every time.
Besides this the existence of the big data has also been responsible for a rise in the extreme
huge amounts of data that the organizations rely upon so as to create patterns and trends
within the markets. SAP S/4 HANA is one of the new trends which have been associated
with playing a very vital role in the process related to the refining of the big data into a more
detailed analysis. This in turn has been associated with boosting up of the understandability
along with helping in improving the processes related to decision making of an organization.
S/4 HANA Finance ran by the SAP HANA is one of the important components which is used
for the purpose of managing the SAP Finance (Salmon and Wild 2016). This is the module
which is used for managing the SAP Finance. This model is also used for the purpose of
Carrying out various operations as well as helping in accounting activities on a real-time
basis, along with the creation of reports by making use of the Business Intelligence tools.
SAP Simple Finance is associated with playing a significant role in the process of
analyzing the financial performances of the business. The aim of this paper is to carryout an
analysis of the SAP S/4HANA Finance (Densborn et al. 2017). The report has been
associated with discussing about the entire concept of SAP S/4 HANA and the
SAPS/4HANA Finance, along with discussing about the historical overview of this,
contrasting this with the current SAP FICO and lastly the benefits of this. Lastly the report
discusses two case studies so as to analyze the SAP S/4HANA finance and for improving
their operations and for drawing a conclusion.

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Historical overview of SAP
The origin of SAP HANA can be traced back from the research which was started in
the year of 2006 spearheaded by the co-founder of SAP Hasso Plattner. During that time
when the idea related to the development of the SAP came up, Hasso Plattner was working as
a professor of computer programs in Hasso Plattner Institution situated in Potsdam, Germany
(Plattner and Leukert 2015). The main objective of his idea was developing a database which
would be helping the business in their operations which consisted on response time near to
zero for the transactions as well as for the analysis of the processed data. Plattner had a desire
of overseeing a system development which would be associated with delivering of all the
answers which an individual or a business would have within the shortest possible time.
Followed by the development of the SAP was the development of the new software SAP
HANA which was provided to many customers as a pilot test version in the year of 2010
(Maheshwari 2017). The first acceptable version was the SAP HANA 1.0 which was made
available in the market on June 18th 2011. As time passed by more and more developments in
the software was made which made the version SAP HANA 2.0 achieve success in the
markets in the year of 2017.
SAP HANA has always been considered to be one of the biggest achievements which
was also considered to be an upgraded version of the SAP Suite. SAP HANA is considered to
be the simple fast and the robust platform which has been continuing its improvements
related to the effectiveness and efficiency of running the business. This is associated with
providing an improved interface as compared to the SAP suite, which acts as the major
reason behind the incorporation of this into the business (Bardhan et al. 2017). Followed by
this due to some of the failure of SAP HANA led to the introduction of the SAP HANA S/4
which is one of the solutions that is associated with offering choices between the on-premise
software and the cloud and this provided in accordance to the type of business. Many

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modifications were done in the S/4 HANA which made this much more famous and effective
than the SAP HANA and besides this the modifications were also associated with allowing
this solution in helping in the process of achieving delivery of any kind of projects within the
time.
One of the versions of SAP included the SAP S/4 HANA 151 cloud services which
was released in the year of 2015 on 11th November and consisted of the latest marketing and
project services. The entire version was supported by the SAP services which consisted of the
configuration, along with the integration, migration and onboarding (Alexander et al. 2018).
There also existed certain addition services like the custom code management and extension.
This latest solution consisted of features which was completely free from the problems
related to redundant data and besides this the table was also redesigned which clearly
separated the master data and the transactional data.
SAP S/4 HANA Finance was released in the year of 2014 which was initially known
as only finance and this was expected to be the solution to numerous problems which the
organizations and the managements were facing (Baumgartl et al. 2016). The release of the
SAP S/4 HANA Finance was expected to be bringing a lot of improvements in the operation
on an organization by providing assistance to the chief financial officers in different ways
such as the improvements in function of reporting, increased agility as well as speed of
computing which in turn was associated with making improvements in the process of
decision making and improved efficiency of the operations which are conducted by an
organization.

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The contrast between the SAP S/4HANA Finance and the current SAP
FICO:
SAP S/4 HANA Finance is the finance model that has been created for being used in
the SAP HANA platform which was formerly known as the Simple Finance. The main
purpose of this application included the getting rid of different ways of analysis which are old
fashioned along with getting rid of the transactions as well as the management of the systems
(Burns 2018). this is done so as to avail the immediate insights. In addition to this the model
is used or external as well as for the external processes.
Whereas the SAP FICO is considered to be the crucial unit Enterprise Resource
Planning which is associated with storing the financial accounting data along with the
controlling models store data related to financial transactions (Fahn et al. 2017). SAP FICO
can be stated as a solution provider that has been derived from the SAP HANA, however this
is very easy to use and is associated with offering prompt solutions for the finance.
Despite of the fact that both of this accounting models are associated with elevating
the finances in a corporation, they still consist of certain differences some of the differences
have been discussed below.
SAP S/4 HANA is the model which runs on the HANA DB, whereas the SAP FICO
is the model which either runs on the Oracle or on the SQL server’s compatible database
versions too. Second of all, HANA is associated is associated with running the modest
finance whereas the equivalent model FICO is associated with running upon the ECC 6.0
policy (Walz, Tritschler and Rupp 2017). Besides this the controlling is also a finance sub
module.

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The SAP S/4 HANA consist of the simple finance which is an upgraded module that
has been received from the FICO model, is associated with making this a more suitable
module without consisting of the shortcomings that the SAP FICO Generally faces.
The finance institutions are always having the need of embracing the digital era so as
to keep up with the new innovations of the business in order to become capable of offering
suitable solutions. The SAP S/4 HANA Finance is associated with providing corporate
insights related to the financial as well as the operational data (Pedell et al. 2017). Besides
this it is also associated with providing flexibility along with expandable recordings,
systematization of the procedures, and lastly rapid access to the various financial
consequences of the business options by having a real-time analytics and predictions so as to
help the users in having an impeccable experience. Contrarily the SAP FICO is associated
with offering advancements in the process of managing the finance for the corporations (Nica
et al. 2017). Finance acts as one of the important aspects of any business and the SAP FICO
is associated with ensuring the fact that there always exists an effective management of
finance which is difficult to be done by human resources.
SAP S/4 HANA Finance is having the main objective of assisting the financial
specialist and the experts existing all across different fields such as the Chief Financial
Officers, the accounts and the other parties as well who are associated with taking part in the
process of account management, computation of ax, budgeting, managing of risks and many
more. The application is not only being used by the Fortune 100 businesses but also by
numerous small as well as medium sized enterprises.
Contrarily the SAP FICO consists of two parts that s FI which stands for the Financial
Accounting and the CO which stands for the controlling. The SAP S/4 HANA FINANCE
FICO is considered to be one of the most typical modules that the ERP system is having. The

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components of the FI and the CO can act as store for the various financial transactions data
(Missbach et al. 2016). The elements of the SAP S/4 HANA FINANCE FI is associated with
dealing with the financial relations of an enterprise and is associated with assisting the
employees in managing the data which are mainly associated with dealing with the monetary
and the commercial transactions. SAP S/4 HANA FINANCE FI is seen to be having a great
importance in those organizations where the number of report generation is very high
(Plattner and Leukert 2016). Besides this the SAP S/4 HANA FINANCE FI is highly flexible
and is associated with performing very well in different type of economic situations. The
SAP S/4 HANA FINANCE is associated with playing a very vital role in bringing all the data
from a wide range of activities as well as from legal provisions irrespective of the size of the
organization.
Benefits of SAP S/4 HANA Finance for business:
There exist numerous benefits of using the SAP S/4 HANA Finance. SAP S/4 HANA
finance is the model which is associated with providing the best combination of tools that is
comprises of tools which are associated with working in a combined way so as to provide a
data from the Financial Accounting as well as from the managerial accounting (Krueger and
Center 2015). The tool is then associated with speeding up of the period which is generally
taken by the data so as to be processes in a complete way. This is usually done by utilization
of the real-time data.
Followed by this the SAP S/4 HANA Finance is also associated with providing a real-
time report. The model is also associated with providing a table that consists of information
which are very much important for the financial sector. The model is associated with the
incorporation of the power as well the technology of in-memory computing so as to generate
a complete feedback which would be consisting of detailed information and is generally

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provided on a real-time basis (Missbach et al. 2016). This is the feature which is associated
with playing a substantial role in the process of eliminating the need related to batch jobs and
the data replication in other systems.
Then comes the Finance Close, which is well prepared by this model on a monthly
basis. Besides this the responsibility related to producing this type of close is also done on a
quarterly basis or bi-annually or annually and this is entirely dependent upon the tool that is
being used (Riesner and Sauer 2017). The major aim of this is to assist the managers in taking
wise decisions related to the analytics along with the usage of new trends as well as members.
SAP S/4 HANA Finance is also associated with playing a very vital role in the
process of financial planning. The plans made can be easily assessed by making use of
interface which is based upon Microsoft Excel. Besides this the interface would also be
associated with the streamlining of the various financial processes (Linke and Strahringer
2018). The financial data transfer would also be automated by the SAP S/4 HANA Finance
cloud. This would also be associated with ensuring the fact that the analysis is being done at a
quicker rate and is being released on a real-time basis.
The Model is also associated with providing assistance in the process of cash
management. S4 HANA finance is one of the cash management models which is associated
with easing the process related to the management of the bank accounts of an organization,
along with helping in analysis of the short-term financial performance of the banks. Similar
to the other components, this module is also associated with the usage of the real-time data in
the computation of the financial analysis (Ghattamneni 2016). The only thing that is to be
done by one is accessing the toolset which is associated with playing a vital role in the
process of managing the cash of an organization. This software is also associated with
assisting in the process of Financial Reporting. There exists one feature known as financial

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reporting that is associated with providing a quick access to a suite of analytical tools which
are very comprehensive and general in nature.
Case Study 1:
The McDonalds
McDonalds in the year of 2012 had made an attempt of adopting the SAP S/4 HANA
Finance so as to manage their financial data. The managers of McDonalds were very much
skeptical in putting the software to usage as they were entirely unaware of what are the things
that can be expected from the program (Plattner and Leukert 2015). Almost after a time span
of 6 years the company had been associated with taking a decision of adopting a software
version which is much more complex and is having the SAP S/4 HANA as well. This was
considered to be an entirely new technology that introduced in the digital era. The eagerness
of learning and curiosity made the organization use this software. Again, after a year the
company again made a decision of adapting a simple software which was known as HANA
DB. It was seen that this was associated with posing a higher amount of challenge for the
company (Suryaman, Kusumasari and Hediyanto 2018). The major reason behind this was
that the workers were not capable of using this so as to save the data. Besides this the
manager of McDonalds was also associated with admitting the fact that this SAP S/4 HANA
Finance is also going to assist the business a lot however the adaptation of this technology is
very much challenging.
The financial managers of McDonalds have stated out the fact that the migration of
the manual financial data inputs to the usage of the new SAP S/4 AHANA Finance is one of
the vital steps as this has been associated with helping in the conversion of the transactional
data int a new model of the universal journal (Sampat 2016). During this phase of

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transactions, it was found that the organization has lost a huge amount of data and for then
the regaining and recompiling of the financial data was very much hard. The managers also
stated that this phase caused a huge loss for the organization and the main reason behind this
was due to lack of proper accounting as there was a loss in the financial data.
Case study 2:
Stanford Bank:
This section discusses about the second case study where the Stanford bank has made
a decision of using the SAP S/4 HANA Finance in the year of 2013. The bank after usage of
this software stated that this software is associated with aiding the bank in providing the
accurate financial records (Costin and Cojocaru 2017). The works done by the finance
officers were also made easy by usage of this software. Accurate records related to finance
were provided to the stakeholders as well as to the management by the accountants which
were much more reliable. Firstly, the bank was did not achieved success in the process of
implementation, but still the officers were capable of using this software in an effective way
in the later period (Jolton and Eisbart 2017). The employees had claimed that in the first
attempt the usage of this software was very much hard which was actually responsible for
incurring a huge amount of cost upon the organization. Later when the workers became
familiar with the tool, they become more responsible and more accountable.
Conclusion:
The SAP S/4 HANA Finance is the software which has been designed for the purpose
of assisting in the process of accounting as well as in the process of making the financial
reports. This financial software has been associated with helping the organizations in making
their work much easier for the financial accountants as well as for the stakeholders associated

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with an organization. The real-time reports help in provisioning of the accurate records. The
tool has been associated with making the process of solving the problems much easier by the
management. The problems which are generally solved includes the personal level problems
as well as other problems as the report is associated with showing the main source of the
problems. The software is also associated with showing the financial data in an accurate way
which is very much crucial for any organization and this is presented in a well-mannered way
by this software. This software is also associated with playing a major role in the accuracy
and accountability of the information. This is the reason for which the activities of an
organization can be run in a smooth way along with the major roles being played in a
responsible manner. One of the major problems which is seen in this software is that the data
transfer takes place in an inconsistent way. The process of transition is associated with
causing a loss of some of the vital information which might seem to be very much crucial for
an organization. The report has also been associated with discussing about two case study
where it can be seen that one organization is successful in the process of implementation
whereas the other organization has entirely failed in the process of implementation.

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References:
Alexander, S., Fahn, S., Schäfer, M., Vink, D., Pedell, B. and Sautter, J., 2018. SAP®
S/4HANA Finance–Ein Akzelerator für diedigitale Transformation im
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Bardhan, D., Baumgartl, A., Chaadaev, D., Choi, N.S., Dudgeon, M., Lahiri, A., Meijerink,
B. and Worsley-Tonks, A., 2017. SAP S/4HANA: An Introduction (SAP PRESS).
Baumgartl, A., Chaadaev, D., Choi, N.S., Dudgeon, M., Lahiri, A., Meijerink, B. and
Worsley-Tonks, A., 2016. SAP S/4HANA: An Introduction (SAP PRESS).
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