{"id":21264,"date":"2023-05-10T11:02:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T09:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=21264"},"modified":"2023-05-10T11:02:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T09:02:35","slug":"better-together-customer-conversation-with-watco-financial-systems-overhaul-with-sap-btp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/better-together-customer-conversation-with-watco-financial-systems-overhaul-with-sap-btp.html","title":{"rendered":"Better Together Customer Conversation with Watco, financial systems overhaul with SAP BTP"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest episode of SAP Better Together: Customer Conversations,\u00a0Sylvie Otton Sollod<\/a>\u00a0hosted a\u00a0discussion<\/a>\u00a0of a project to overhaul the financial systems at\u00a0Watco<\/a>, a transportation solutions provider headquartered in Pittsburg, Kansas.<\/p>\n

The company owns and operates a diverse network of short line railroads, terminals, ports, and repair terminals. It has grown through lots of mergers and acquisitions, has around 5,000 employees, and is planning for further rapid growth.<\/p>\n

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But to support this, they needed to rethink their core systems, with a move from on-premise SAP ECC to S\/4HANA in the cloud with\u00a0RISE with SAP<\/a>. They turned to the integration capabilities of\u00a0SAP Business Technology Platform<\/a>\u00a0to plug in other applications and provide a foundation for future changes.<\/p>\n

And one of the key goals of the project was providing more timely, accurate information directly into the hands of the people implementing business strategy. To support this, the company took the opportunity to move from BusinessObjects WebIntelligence to\u00a0SAP Analytics Cloud<\/a>\u00a0and SAP HANA for high-performance reporting and planning,<\/p>\n

Andy Nielsen<\/a>, Senior Vice President of Finance and Accounting at Watco explained that the company wants to grow and improve customer services, but \u201cyou have to have plan in place. You can\u2019t wake up and just decide \u2018I want to be great today\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has a strategic plan, a business plan, and a financial plan. And they wanted to make sure that financial plan was in the hands of everybody across the business so they could adjust and adapt when (inevitably) things do go as planned.<\/p>\n

Like all finance departments, they loved Excel. But with growth things started slowing down: they couldn\u2019t use Excel for financial planning across 400 different locations and quickly get data back in the hands of people who needed it.<\/p>\n

For example, historically, they may have decided to adjust diesel fuel costs, but that meant going into a hundred different files to make the changes, and could take a week to roll up all those changes and see the overall result. Now the company can do the same thing in thirty minutes or less.<\/p>\n

Corey Corrick<\/a>, VP of Applications at Watco, explained some of the lessons learned along the way, including working closely with the users to understand and support their needs, for example letting them combine analytics with the ability to drill down into individual transactions using\u00a0SAP Fiori<\/a>\u00a0interfaces.<\/p>\n

Other lessons learned covered in the interview include:<\/p>\n