A global payment factory template to de-risk an S/4HANA rollout
More than $3m a year saved through standardised payments and bank connectivity
One of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies modernised payment infrastructure across its legacy SAP ECC systems, de-risking bank connectivity ahead of its move to a single global S/4HANA instance.
A standardised payment factory that cut cost and complexity ahead of S/4HANA
Annual savings through standardised payment processes
SAP configuration areas and programs standardised or eliminated
Reduction in direct and proprietary connection protocols to banks
The challenge
Payments and bank connectivity were spread across six SAP ECC instances, with bank-specific connections and local working practices. The client needed to standardise all of it before rolling out a single global S/4HANA Finance template.
- Centralise bank connectivity and standardise payments and banking setup across multiple SAP instances
- Modernise payment formats and bank statements to global SWIFT standards with FileAct connectivity
- Give treasury and the banking shared service consolidated visibility of cash balances by market and bank
- Centralise bank account ownership, procedures and controls to reduce key-person dependencies
- Automate payment delivery, monitoring and reversal between six SAP instances and a single bank connectivity gateway
- Reduce the complexity and effort of bank connectivity when entities are acquired or divested
The solution
Through a multi-year partnership, SkySparc supported the programme framework, payment technology selection, a global payment factory template and regional rollouts to multiple SAP instances, while helping lift and shift regional deployments into S/4HANA.
- Joint definition of the transformation programme, including the move to a single global SWIFT standard
- A repeatable, bank-agnostic SWIFT Service Bureau onboarding approach replacing host-to-host connections and bank portals
- SAP standardisation of payment methods, DMEE formats and bank master data, ready for the S/4HANA template
- Prototype and pilot market deployment to establish the global template
- FIS ERP Connector API integration removing manual file handling across six SAP instances, automating payments through to status, reversal and blocking events
- Automated payments testing using JIRA X-Ray and the FIS Automated Testing Framework for parallel ECC and S/4HANA regression testing
The result
Standardising payments on the ECC instances delivers more than $3m in annual savings and de-risks the single global S/4HANA instance.
- More than 800 SAP configuration areas and programs standardised or eliminated
- 90% reduction in direct and proprietary connection protocols to banks, using SWIFT
- 59 custom SAP middleware banking interfaces replaced with a real-time FIS ERP Connector interface
- More than 1,300 global payment batch jobs optimised, around a 60% reduction
- A single bank-agnostic SWIFT solution, making onboarding new banks materially faster
- Foundations in place for the client's next ambition, a global payment factory and in-house banking
"I wanted to take a moment and congratulate the team on reaching this significant milestone on our journey to support our S/4HANA ambition. This achievement is an important step towards further modernization and standardization, and I am excited to see the continued progress of the project. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this success." Lead, Client Cash and Banking Function