The Road to SAP® S/4HANA: Overcoming Challenges in the Financial Close

Migrating to SAP® S/4HANA is a transformative move for many organizations, offering numerous benefits. However, the complexity of this transition presents significant challenges, particularly for finance and accounting teams tasked with producing accurate and reliable financial statements. The journey can be fraught with delays, errors, and missed opportunities if proper financial controls and compliance frameworks are overlooked during the migration.

Unfortunately, too many companies use the migration as an excuse to delay much-needed improvements to their financial close processes. But the truth is, SAP® S/4HANA migration is the perfect opportunity to enhance these processes—ultimately saving time, reducing costs, and improving the overall efficiency of the financial close process.

By integrating an end-to-end financial close platform during your ERP migration, your business can unlock substantial ROI while simplifying the entire migration process.

How Trintech Can Simplify Your SAP® S/4HANA Migration

For most companies, the migration to SAP® S/4HANA means consolidating financial data from multiple ERP instances, which often results in fragmented, inconsistent, and unreliable data. This is especially common for organizations that have grown through mergers and acquisitions or have diverse, legacy ERP systems in place.

A seamless migration requires more than just a switch to a new system. It demands process standardization—a critical step to ensuring data integrity and operational efficiency. Without standardizing financial close processes beforehand, businesses risk data discrepancies, slowdowns, and operational inefficiencies.

That’s where Trintech’s Cadency Platform comes in.

Cadency supports your migration providing:

• Standardization Before Migration: With Cadency, your financial close processes are standardized across the entire organization. Whether it’s reconciliation templates, journal entry approvals, or other critical tasks, Cadency ensures consistency and clean data, setting the foundation for a smooth migration.
• Seamless Integration: Cadency’s pre-built SAP-certified connector reduces the complexity of integrating your old ERP systems with SAP® S/4HANA. It simplifies the migration by ensuring that all data flows smoothly, even before your final transition. With minimal IT involvement, businesses can begin benefiting from standardized processes and enhanced data integrity from day one.
• Automation and Efficiency: With Cadency, automation becomes a key player in your financial close process. By automating manual tasks like reconciliations and approvals, your team can focus on higher-value activities, significantly boosting operational efficiency.

The Benefits of Implementing Cadency Before, During, or After Migration

Before the Migration: Standardizing for Success

The foundation of a successful SAP® S/4HANA migration is process standardization. By implementing Cadency early on, you ensure that key financial close tasks such as reconciliations and journal entries are standardized across the organization. This leads to cleaner, more consistent data—ultimately simplifying the migration process.

During the Migration: Simplifying the Transition

As you transition to SAP® S/4HANA, Cadency’s seamless integration ensures that your financial close activities are not interrupted. The platform automates workflows, enhancing operational efficiency and allowing your team to manage the migration with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations.

After the Migration: Optimizing for the Future

Once the migration is complete, Cadency helps you optimize the financial close process. By leveraging industry-standard templates and robust automation, your finance team can focus on higher-priority tasks, like risk management and strategic decision-making, while enjoying improved efficiency and control.

Real-World Example: Bayer’s Strategic Migration to SAP® S/4HANA

Bayer, a global leader in healthcare and agriculture, faced challenges in aligning its financial processes across multiple legacy ERP systems before migrating to SAP® S/4HANA. By implementing Trintech’s Cadency platform, Bayer standardized their financial close processes, enabling smoother integration and faster, more accurate reconciliations. The solution also improved data integrity and operational efficiency, ultimately supporting Bayer’s goal of streamlining their migration while ensuring compliance and control. The integration was achieved with minimal IT involvement, making the transition more efficient and cost-effective.

Conclusion: Preparing for a Smoother SAP® S/4HANA Migration with Trintech

The transition to SAP® S/4HANA offers tremendous benefits, but it also presents substantial challenges for finance and accounting teams. By adopting Trintech’s Cadency solution before, during, or after your migration, you ensure a reliable, standardized, and efficient financial close process. Proactively addressing process standardization and automation will not only reduce the time, cost, and risks of migration but also unlock long-term value for your organization.

Ready to make your SAP® S/4HANA migration smoother and more efficient? Contact us for a demo today and discover how Trintech can transform your financial close process.