How SD Worx reshaped its finance processes for business success

Sep 13, 2024
  • IT
  • finance
  • operations
  • SAP

Since 1945, SD Worx has been providing solutions and services that simplify payroll and HR, adding value to businesses and the people in them. Originally a Belgian service provider, the company now serves over 5 million people daily, across Europe. With international growth came the need to reshape its complex finance software landscape. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition now enables a single source of financial truth.

  • Client: SD Worx People Solutions SA, professional services company
  • Challenge: Reshaping the complex, dispersed finance software landscape to deliver more value to the business
  • Solution: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

The challenge: Centralise and harmonise the fragmented IT landscape

SD Worx has been expanding its international footprint rapidly over the past five years, mainly through mergers and acquisitions. Such acceleration, however, led to a dispersed IT landscape with different accounting applications, each connecting to multiple local systems and databases. As these silos hampered visibility and slowed consolidation and intercompany reconciliations, the company decided to reshape its finance operations – driven by advanced, cloud-based software. 

In numbers

50%

reduction in time for intercompany reconciliations

14

countries live

6 million

invoice lines processed per month

The process: Fit-to-standard approach in 14 countries

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition came out on top after a thorough selection procedure, mainly on account of its robust and scalable technology. SD Worx chose Delaware to guide the business through its transformation journey. “We trusted the expertise and experience of the Delaware consultants,” commented Gert Luyten, Manager Financial Systems at SD Worx. “Moreover, they were committed to a fit-to-standard approach, ensuring the minimum number of customisations.”

Our experts advised using the SAP Activate methodology to jump-start the deployment. “We first defined a clear scope with the help of the digital discovery assessment. Thanks to the robust preparation and the fit-to-standard approach, the maiden implementation in the Netherlands was smooth,” Gert continues.  A templated onboarding format ensured an equally smooth roll-out of SAP S/4HANA’s integrated finance, controlling, procurement, and budgeting modules in 14 more European entities: Belgium, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Poland, Croatia, and Italy.

Why go standard? The benefits of a fit-to-standard approach

By choosing a standardised implementation approach and a standard technology foundation, SD Worx:

  • Saved development and implementation costs and time
  • Accelerated the rollout across its many businesses
  • Easily decommissioned legacy applications
  • Keeps saving costs and time for maintenance
  • Is sure of continued access to the latest updates

The result: New efficiencies in finance service levels

Today, SD Worx’s many business entities enjoy streamlined finance operations and automated workflows powered by SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Thanks to significant automation, the finance team works far more efficiently, and tasks can now be flexibly shared among colleagues during peak workloads or staff absences. This allows SD Worx to serve more customers without adding to its headcount. 

“By harmonising data and processes across our entities, critical accounting tasks like intercompany postings and reconciliations are done much faster and more accurately. They now take just minutes, rather than days, to complete,” says Gert. “In addition, we have greater visibility across the organisation, better reports, more powerful forecasting capabilities, we can more accurately benchmark the performance of our business entities.”

Last but not least, the new platform improved global collaboration and learning, and the accounting employees are pleased to replace their manual, repetitive chores with more value-added tasks.

We trusted the expertise and experience of the Delaware consultants. Moreover, they were committed to a fit-to-standard approach, ensuring the minimum number of customisations.
Gert Luyten, Manager Financial Systems, SD Worx People Solutions SA

The future: Set for more business success

SD Worx now has a robust financial engine that enables stronger business controls and lowers the cost of IT ownership. In the meantime, they also implemented SAP Analytics Cloud to support the budgeting processes. 

While things are running smoothly, SD Worx is always eager to raise the bar. Together with Delaware, they now plan to integrate the lead-to-cash process, and simplify expense management, possibly with SAP Concur. Also on the roadmap: SAP Subscription Billing, and SAP CPQ – two solutions that will help SD Worx innovate their business models and lift customer services to new levels – in order to support SD Worx’s continued business success.

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