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

Identifying our needs and the systematic and professional way of driving transformation was one of the cornerstones of the project’s success. Our cooperation with Islet was close, smooth and straightforward throughout the project. Islet team has a professional approach and we decisively solved the challenges that came up together. We are very satisfied with the cooperation.

Tuomas Toropainen

CFO, Nordcloud

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”.

In the project, our partner Islet responded to challenges quickly and solved them. A good example was a situation where Nordcloud’s project manager left a few days before the go-live date, but fortunately Islet had a very experienced replacement for the role within 48 hours and so we managed to stay on schedule.

Tuomas Toropainen

CFO, Nordcloud

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.

Islet has created extensive integrations on top of the SAP Business Technology Platform with its expertise. In addition, we use the functionalities of SAP applications with the Fiori interface. Development work has continued even after successful implementations, and was not limited only to the content of SAP applications, but up-to-date and high-quality support has also been received in relation to SAP’s platform and technical areas. The cooperation has been straightforward and working well, any problems have been addressed quickly and communication towards Nordcloud has been fluent.

Antti Mattila

CIO, Nordcloud

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.