SAP S/4HANA brought busi­ness ben­e­fits to Nordcloud

Nord­cloud suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed SAP S/4HANA and SAP Con­cur in 10 coun­tries. The suc­cess­ful project car­ried out with Islet Group imple­ment­ed SAP Con­cur’s trav­el and expense man­age­ment and invoice cir­cu­la­tion solu­tions in addi­tion to the SAP S/4HANA enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) solution. 

Nord­cloud is a Euro­pean pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in cloud ser­vices. It offers ser­vices and solu­tions to orga­ni­za­tions that want to uti­lize cloud ser­vices in their busi­ness. Nord­cloud helps its cus­tomers plan, build and man­age cloud-based sys­tems. Nord­cloud’s mis­sion is to sup­port its cus­tomers in adopt­ing cloud ser­vices, thus enabling suc­cess­ful busi­ness operations.

Nord­cloud’s con­sol­i­da­tion and report­ing sys­tem was com­plex at the out­set and its func­tion­al­i­ty chal­lenged by a chang­ing envi­ron­ment. Report­ing needs increased fur­ther when IBM pur­chased Nord­cloud at the begin­ning of 2021. All this hap­pened in the back­ground as Nord­cloud’s busi­ness grew strong­ly, mak­ing it even more impor­tant to make changes.

Nord­cloud’s ERP project goals 

Nord­cloud want­ed to move from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ERP sys­tems to one, a “sin­gle source of truth” sys­tem, to get an up-to-date over­all pic­ture to sup­port deci­sion-mak­ing. The reform helped to form a reli­able and real-time pic­ture of the business.

Anoth­er impor­tant goal was the stan­dard­iza­tion of process­es. Har­mo­niz­ing finan­cial man­age­ment process­es and expand­ing devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties were key goals and ben­e­fi­cial in all ten coun­tries where the com­pa­ny operates.

The third sig­nif­i­cant goal was sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, i.e., min­i­miz­ing unnec­es­sary com­plex­i­ty and man­u­al process­es. The aim was to achieve even more effi­cient work in finance.

Ambi­tious schedule 

Nord­cloud’s ERP project start­ed in August 2021 with plan­ning and the kick-off phase, and the imple­men­ta­tion took place in two stages in the fall of 2022, since when the new solu­tion pack­age has been part of Nord­cloud’s every­day life.

New imple­men­ta­tions includ­ed SAP S/4HANA, SAP Con­cur Expense, SAP Con­cur Invoice, Nomen­tia, and Pagero solu­tions. Mar­ket leader SAP S/4HANA was cho­sen as the ERP solu­tion by mutu­al deci­sion of the par­ent com­pa­ny IBM and Nord­cloud. This solu­tion cov­ers key account­ing and gen­er­al ledger functionalities.

SAP Con­cur Invoice and Expense solu­tions were cho­sen for expense reports, pur­chas­es, and invoice pro­cess­ing. They cov­er pro­cure­ment, pur­chase requests, pur­chase orders, goods receipts, trav­el and expense reports, as well as sup­pli­er invoice review and approval. Nomen­tia was cho­sen to han­dle con­nec­tions to banks and enable cen­tral­ized pay­ments. Pagero, on the oth­er hand, was cho­sen for receiv­ing sup­pli­er invoic­es and for­ward­ing sales invoices.

“Best of breed” vs. “Best of suite” 

Dur­ing the project, Nord­cloud switched from the seem­ing­ly best fit­ting “Best of suite” strat­e­gy to a “Best of breed” approach, to ensure the best pos­si­ble solu­tion for each func­tion and process. The project includ­ed 35 inte­gra­tions, which suit­ed the agile tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny well.

The most sig­nif­i­cant change was mov­ing from ten sep­a­rate ERP sys­tems to one. Also, work­ing with ten dif­fer­ent part­ners changed to a sin­gle-point-of-con­tact mod­el, which made the main­te­nance and devel­op­ment of sys­tems eas­i­er in lat­er every­day life.

Project was a success 

At the end of the project, an audit was also car­ried out by an inde­pen­dent exter­nal actor, the pur­pose of which was to eval­u­ate the qual­i­ta­tive cri­te­ria of the project. As a result of the audit, the project was described as very suc­cess­ful and par­tic­u­lar­ly praised for stay­ing on a tight sched­ule and pro­fes­sion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion described with the term “world class”.

Islet ensures the con­ti­nu­ity of sys­tems in operations 

When pre­vi­ous­ly dis­trib­uted coun­try-spe­cif­ic sys­tems were cen­tral­ized, SAP’s role became crit­i­cal. In this cen­tral­ized solu­tion, the impor­tance of a skilled part­ner was empha­sized, and the high-qual­i­ty main­te­nance and fur­ther devel­op­ment ser­vices pro­vid­ed by Islet, which ensure the con­ti­nu­ity of the business.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, main­te­nance was based on indi­vid­u­als, which increased the risk in oper­a­tions. The project achieved a new approach, mov­ing towards “gen­uine ser­vice”. This ser­vice includes proac­tive mon­i­tor­ing of prob­lems, ser­vice lev­el agree­ments, and con­tin­u­ous development.

Gen­uine busi­ness ben­e­fits were achieved with the solution 

“From 2021 to 2022, Nord­cloud’s cus­tomer base was mul­ti­plied by 2,5 times, and with it sales invoic­es also increased by 2,5 times. The num­ber of staff quadru­pled and expense invoic­es increased six­fold. In sup­port of such strong growth, the new finance solu­tion pack­age guar­an­teed effi­cien­cy, sim­pler process­es, and bet­ter trans­paren­cy. Also, the clos­ing peri­od was short­ened from the pre­vi­ous 20 days to just one day.” — Tuo­mas Toropainen, CFO, Nordcloud

Learn more about Nord­cloud’s SAP S/4HANA and SAP Con­cur project from Islet Talk ‑video (in Finnish). 

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Nord­cloud is a lead­ing Euro­pean cloud ser­vices expert, offer­ing a wide range of ser­vices for the design, con­struc­tion, and man­age­ment of cor­po­rate cloud infra­struc­ture. The com­pa­ny, which merged with IBM in Feb­ru­ary 2021, now has over 1500 experts and more than 200 customers.

#cus­tomer­sto­ry #cus­tomer­ref­er­ence #Nord­cloud #Islet­Group #S4HANA #SAP #SAP­Con­cur