Sto SE & Co. KGaA: More efficient reporting
- Success stories
- Automation, Data Science, Planning, Predictive Analytics, Forecasting
- 2 min reading time
Dr. Stefan Lieder
More efficient reporting:
Successful development and implementation of a structured process for
monthly consolidated financial statements
About Sto SE & Co. KGaA
Sto SE & Co. KGaA is a leading international manufacturer of thermal insulation composite, coating and curtain wall systems as well as paints, plasters and varnishes. Together with s-peers AG, the company has made its group reporting fit for the future: the responsible department is now able to create monthly group financial statements largely automatically via SEM-BCS and to efficiently integrate further reporting occasions based on all activities relevant to the financial statements. The convincing result of the project is a clearly structured process of monthly consolidation (including extensive automation to reduce sources of error and reconciliation activities), with regular reporting proceeding smoothly and uniformly.
The task
Sto SE & Co. KGaA is an international group with around 50 subsidiaries; 15 of which have been added in the last five years alone. The size of the company, its rapid growth and the ever-increasing reporting requirements (both internal and external) increased the challenges for the group accounting department. In the past, only two consolidated financial statements (semi-annual and annual) were prepared each year with SAP SEM-BCS. Monthly reporting and the fulfilment of other (mainly internal) reporting requirements were still largely done manually with the help of Excel. Various sources of error were inherent in these manual activities. The same applied to internal reconciliations and reconciliations between internal and external reporting. Replacing the Excel-based internal reporting system and integrating it into the existing group reporting landscape based on SAP BW was therefore urgently needed. The resulting high number of SEM-BCS reports, the number of people involved in the process and the tight timing of the reporting occasions required adherence to a structured process with clear deadline targets and responsibilities. Together with all those involved, this process had to be revised and then implemented in the system.
Project requirements
- Project planning and controlling
- Collection and documentation of all activities relevant to the financial statements for the harmonisation of the
consolidated financial statements (internal and external) for all reporting occasions within a financial year - Reduction of the need for coordination between parent company and subsidiaries and reduction of previously necessary manual adjustments
- Consolidation of redundant financial statement processes with regard to all reporting occasions at individual company and group level
- Further development of the consolidation system and reporting: design and implementation of new functional requirements
Solution
- Creation of the technical concept for precise mapping of monthly reporting according to internal and
external group requirements - Automation of all processes relevant to the consolidated financial statements - in particular through implementation of the interfaces for uniform data entry of the subsidiaries as well as monthly reporting in SEM-BCS
- Workshops and user training with stakeholders
- Support for current financial statements
Highlights
- Integration of all necessary process steps in the SEM-BCS consolidation monitor with the help of customer-defined measures
- Significant reduction of manual effort, resulting in less error-proneness
- Simple and uniform data provision even for business units without their own SAP systems
- Creating more effective steering options
through accelerated uniform reporting
Technologies
- SAP SEM-BCS
- SAP BW
- SAP BW Integrated Planning
