Investment management with SAP Project System

Challenge

The group, an important international player in the Chemical & Pharma sector, needed to re-engineer the investment management process to:

• allow an analysis by macro-family of investments
• detail the level of planning by type of investment with greater depth
• monitor the budget, final balance and Cash Out values ​​for investment and investment family
• limit, lighten or even cancel the manual activities of the Project Controllers and the administration

Solution

In order to meet the requirements, the following areas for improvement were identified, which, shared and approved by the customer, led to the implementation of the Project System module:

• the registry structures of the investment objects (internal orders) did not reflect the real need for classification and detail
• some procedures required methods performed outside the SAP standard
• the detailed analyzes for each investment project were carried out extra-SAP with a consequent high time-consuming
• project Cash Out was not available from the system

The implemented solution followed the guidelines:

• Process standardization: adopting a solution as much in line as possible with the current budget approval process and start of the investment initiative, with attention to back-to-standard where possible.
• Advanced features: introducing the standard SAP solution to manage complex projects and allow a hierarchical analysis of the same, using the functionality of the SAP Project System (PS).
• Process improvement: adopting the required planning detail (annual, monthly) within SAP S/4HANA to reduce manual analyzes on an excel basis.
• Real-time and more accurate project analysis: activating the standard functions to allow the evaluation of the order cash out.
• Group model: defining a valid model that can be extended to all Group companies.