An iconic character symbolizes the global leader in fiberglass technology. The Pink Panther – an idiosyncratic, elegant, aristocratic yet cuddly cartoon character – is the official corporate mascot of Owens Corning. How much success the character has brought is difficult to quantify. But the fact remains that the American company, with sales of USD 5.3 billion, has been the global frontrunner in the fiberglass market for decades. Applications include building, insulation, wind blades, hockey sticks, tennis rackets, sailboats, and much more.

With a company the size of Owens Corning, it is a challenge to arrange all treasury administration, in various currencies, properly and efficiently. “Our previous treasury management system was outdated,” says Isabelle Badoux, European treasury & credit leader at Owens Corning. “It was not a global implementation, and at the end of the day, we used the system in Europe and North America in two different ways. Also, the system did not support all transactions. In addition, the company had decided to upgrade to SAP 6.0 as a general ERP.” ERP is enterprise resource planning, a system that integrates all (financial) processes within a company.

“The system will be there for several years. There’s only one chance to do it right”

Isabelle Badoux, European treasury & credit leader at Owens Corning

Local knowledge

What can a company do with its current treasury management system and the interface to the old SAP version 3.1i, including posting the accounting entries of treasury transactions? In other words, how was Owens Corning going to integrate a new SAP upgrade into its system? Badoux explains: “We had to consider whether we were going to use the interface of the old treasury system or choose the fully integrated approach. It became clear that the development of a new interface would be a large investment and would have considerable consequences, although it would not achieve full integration. We then made a strategic decision to go for the integrated version of the SAP treasury, migrating to one global integrated version for Europe and North America, which could be implemented in Asia Pacific and Latin America, too.”

This was 2010, a period in which Owens Corning was looking at ways to increase efficiencies within its department. “The new treasury system created an opportunity to review all our processes, aligning them with all global activities,” says Badoux. The company sent out a request for proposal (RFP) to a number of specialized companies. Two of these, Zanders and the American company e5 Solutions, combined an offer for global design and implementation. “We were having partnership discussions with e5 Solutions at the same time both of us received the RFP,” says Laurens Tijdhof, who manages Zanders’ international offices in Brussels, London, and Zürich.

“Our presence here, and that of e5 Solutions in the US, made it easier to have quick, local decision lines. The partnership worked well for Owens Corning, and we have continued this partnership in other fields as well.” Badoux acknowledges: “For global implementation, it helps to have consultants with local knowledge. And we liked the offer. It was very efficient for us.”

For several years

In the RFP process, you need mutual understanding of the scope, says Tijdhof. “It starts with a proposal but, while discussing the scope in detail, the proposal changes and you end up with a document describing exactly what you’re going to do. That way, the number of uncertainties is reduced and the result is clear for both client and consultant.” Owens Corning required help from both a specialist and a generalist, says Badoux. “Since this field is very technical, we really needed a specialized consultant in treasury. I knew Zanders from the interim management perspective of my previous company, and I knew that they have consultants for implementing systems as well. In Europe, Zanders is recognized for its consulting expertise within treasury, and during the project the cooperation between both Zanders and I was always ‘straight to the point’. That made decision-making much easier. Good documentation has been very valuable in the process too, as it shows all pros and cons of all options. Configuration is key. You need to configure well from the start, as the system will be there for several years. There is only one chance to do it right.” The planning was aggressive. The project kicked off in January 2011 and five months later, in July, Europe went live.

In-house bank

At the end of 2010, a month prior to the kick-off, one of the employees left Owens Corning’s treasury department. Badoux says: “One of the Zanders treasury consultants joined us for interim support and advice on daily treasury operations. After that, he was transferred to a new department to assist in treasury accounting, now segregated from the treasury area.” In Brussels, five people are managing Owens Corning’s treasury, foreign exchange (FX) management, and cash management in Europe, including Badoux, who is also responsible for the company’s credit management. The treasury department in Brussels is like an in-house bank for the European entities of the group.

“Structure was crucial,” says Badoux. “Treasury also performs a number of services for hedging the foreign exchange exposure centrally for the entities in Europe. This used to be a manual process, as we had to look at the individual ERP’s of the entities and their balance sheet exposures. Then we had to consolidate it in an Excel template before taking action. That’s now facilitated. We also do the processing of most of the internal and external payments centrally. Not all, but we are centralizing the platform for the electronic banking system. SAP ECC 6.0 is now connected to our electronic banking system.”

The same language

The concept of in-house banking has been common in Europe for some time, but not yet at Owens Corning's U.S. offices. Badoux explains: “One of the advantages of the global design is that we now have in-house banking in the U.S. as well as in Canada. The advantage is that you can offset some flows and avoid certain bank transfers, such as internal loans, optimizing cash management on a global scale.”

Owens Corning is now focusing on centralizing FX exposures in North America, hedging the exposures of Latin America and the Pacific from there. Europe served as a model. "Asia is much less centralized than we are, so the challenge there is clear. We are looking at other companies to find the best way to implement it. But SAP’s treasury functionality has made things much easier; in the U.S., they now have access to our data, and we are working together much more. A major advantage is that everything is standardized and configured in the same way. We speak the same language due to the global design.”

Change and training

In order to achieve the global design, OC Europe had several design sessions with colleagues from the U.S. Badoux says: “We discussed process by process and made various decisions in terms of elements fitting the overall blueprint. It was a short time-line, but all resources from both Europe and the U.S. were dedicated. And having a good resource on the consulting side is then of great importance too.” On behalf of Zanders, consultant Laura Koekkoek managed the project. “In particular, the full-time availability, of both Nicolas Van de Maele and the Information Services (IS) resources in Europe, were very efficient and kept the momentum going,” she says.

After going live, it became clear that two elements should not be underestimated. “Change management is key in post-project implementation,” says Badoux. “People need to have the commitment to work with the system. They have to get to know the system and be curious about it.” Also, the training of people involved is essential after implementation. Within Owens Corning, Nicolas Van de Maele appeared to be the appropriate trainer for his colleagues. And he could work without external assistance. “In the final stage of a project, it’s important to be able to work independently, without an external consultant,” says Tijdhof. Badoux agrees: “A treasury system changes, it is a living system, so you definitely need internal resources for the configuration maintenance.” According to Tijdhof, the main aim is to achieve a stand-alone client. Badoux adds: “And a happy one.”

Building houses, mobility, energy and nature – these are the areas in which Ballast Nedam is active. Customers are large and middle-sized companies, private and public. In addition to building roads and houses, the company installs foundations for offshore wind farms, invests in alternative fuel, extracts gravel, and works to make homes more sustainable. Ballast Nedam aims to be involved in the entire life cycle of projects – development, realization, management, recycling, and funding. This enables an integral approach.

An example is the approach of highway A2 through Maastricht, commissioned by the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, where Ballast Nedam, as part of the combination Avenue 2, is working on an integral solution. The tunnel roof of the dual-layered tunnel will become at a later stage a green strip of nature that reconnects the different city parts of Maastricht. Large projects like these will in most cases be executed through a consortium with other contractors, to spread the risk. Just like the Kromhout military base in Utrecht, a project for the Ministry of Defense, with a value of more than EUR 450 million on an area of 19 hectares.

Life cycle thinking and doing

A public-private partnership (PPP), such as the Kromhout military base, is a form of cooperation between the government and one or more parties. In an increasing number of cases, Ballast Nedam is also taking on the responsibility, after the building phase, of management and maintenance. Such outsourcing of the management means clarity and cost savings for the government. For the construction firm, it is a secure source of income, which in certain cases also increases the room to maneuver when designing the project.

In another PPP-project for the construction of the A15 Maasvlakte-Vaanplein highway, the government posed a mobility question and requested a complete solution, starting with a list of concrete demands. This project is about the widening of the A15 at a busy section and the building of a new Botlek bridge. Ballast Nedam is part of the consortium A-Lanes A15, which is responsible for the design, building, and funding of the project plus 20 years of maintenance, with a value of approximately EUR 1.5 billion. Because of the management component, such projects last longer, sometimes even 30 years.

“These sorts of requests, where the government engages in a contract for many years and outsources the management, are relatively new,” explains Bart Buyck, financial controller at Ballast Nedam Concessions.

They have been in the market for about 10 years and have seen strong growth in this sort of contract in the past five years. That is why Ballast Nedam established its Concessions arm to focus on what we call ‘life cycle projects,’ public-private partnerships with a long completion time. Concessions acts within Ballast Nedam as financier. So how can Ballast Nedam finance these large long-duration projects?

Thinking outside the box

For every PPP-project, a Special Purpose Company (SPC) is established. The project is based around that SPC, which is the link between customer, financier, shareholder (Ballast Nedam and other investors), builder, and manager. With all these parties, the SPC concludes agreements. A PPP-project, with a contract value of sometimes hundreds of millions of euros, will for the largest part – 80-90 percent – be funded privately, by a bank. Depending on the size and the risk of the project, Ballast Nedam is involved in a certain portion, varying from 20 to 100 percent.

Ballast Nedam Concessions acts in the SPC as project manager, quality assurance manager, and process manager. Preferably, it will assume responsibility for the entire project. “In that case, you can make a difference at bids,” Buyck says. “If you continue to think inside the box, you will not achieve optimization. Designer, builder, and manager should decide together what the smartest, most efficient solution is. Only by doing so will you be able to break out of the box.”

Interest rate swaps

For the duration of the contract, the customer periodically pays a fixed amount of interest, repayment, and services. Buyck says: “An interest component is included on the customer’s invoice. When offering a PPP-project, you need to consider the impact of that interest rate and hence fix it. The funding is based on a floating interest rate. Because you receive a fixed interest rate and pay a floating interest, an interest rate risk arises. This risk limits financing possibilities and can have a negative effect on the return. To hedge interest rate risks, the SPC concludes an interest rate swap: it pays a fixed rate to the bank and receives a floating interest rate in return. That is how one can hedge that sort of risk.”

With hedged risks, all parties involved know where they stand. But from an accounting perspective, not all conditions will have been met. Ballast Nedam reports as a listed company under IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). IFRS contains rules for the preparation of annual statements and for other periodical financial reporting.

That is the moment when the expertise of Zanders Valuation Desk is required.

Bart Buyck, financial controller at Ballast Nedam Concessions.

“At this moment we have five of this kind of SPCs. In 2008 we were confronted for the first time with IFRS requirements with regard to the valuation of interest rate hedges on SPCs. We engaged Zanders at that time to value the interest rate swaps. Together we set up and refined the methodology.”

Hedge Accounting

Derivatives like interest-rate swaps have to be valued in the books at market value in accordance with IAS 39. Changes in market value must be accounted for in the profit and loss account. This can cause undesired temporary volatility in the result. To remedy that, IAS 39 allows for hedge accounting; a company can – provided certain conditions are met – put the market value of derivatives temporarily on its balance sheet.

Buyck notes: “Every quarter Zanders performs two things for us. Firstly, they determine the market value of the instrument using current yield curves. Secondly, they apply hedge accounting; they use an effectiveness test to determine the degree to which the hedge instrument is still in line with the premises on which it was originally concluded and the underlying funding position. We provide them with our loan positions and the forecasts for the future.”

If you do not apply hedge accounting, you must account for changes in market value in your profit and loss account. If you do apply hedge accounting and you comply with the requirements, you may put it as a provision on your balance sheet. “It is a very technical and specific area,” Buyck says. “All sorts of things are involved in this; the valuation methodology, the accounting in connection with that and finally the financial reporting both internally and vis-à-vis the auditor. But it does create transparency. Thanks to swaps – while causing accounting complexity – we have secure cash flows. This will make it easier to find funding for all the great projects we are still going to do.”

Zanders’ Valuation Desk provides and validates valuations of financial products for all market segments. In addition, experts study the financial markets and analyze market developments. The valuations and analyses of the Valuation Desk are objective and independent. The services of the Valuation Desk include periodic valuations (for example for commodity derivatives), hedge accounting, research, and support when calculating margin calls.

Would you like to know more? Contact us today.

The Delft University of Technology (TU) aims to be a world-class institution with excellent research in specific disciplines. In order to achieve this, it needs good research facilities. A substantial part of the current facilities is up for renovation. How can this be financed in times of cost cutting?

More than 5,000 people work at TU Delft, and 17,000 students study there, preparing for professional life. “The TU is a city in a city,” Rianne van der Slot explains. She is the controller of the real estate management team at the University of Delft. “We own 36 buildings with a floor space of approximately 550,000 square meters. We manage all real estate ourselves, as well as the land. We even own the sewerage and have to maintain it ourselves.”

In 1999, the government donated all university real estate to the TU. Most buildings date from the 1960s and ’70s and are in need of thorough, large-scale maintenance or replacement. “The TU Delft will have to finance this itself,” says Mariëlle Vogt, director of finance at the TU. “The estimated costs of possible new buildings, renovation, and large-scale maintenance for the next 10 years amount to approximately half a billion euros.”

The Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science gives a Government Contribution to the TU on a yearly basis, as it does to all Dutch universities. This amount varies as a consequence of different government decisions and adjusted ministerial budgets and is more likely to decrease than to increase despite the growing number of students.

Vogt says: “Unfortunately, we receive no extra government contribution for these investments in real estate. All universities struggle with the combination of real estate in need of renovation and little resources of their own, but for a technical university like ours, it is even more essential. Real estate is a core asset in our primary process. You need a specific building in order to build a sophisticated lab. At universities, you won’t attract renowned scientists with a high salary unless you also have top-rate facilities, so infrastructure is essential. Only then will you be able to attract the right people.”

Role-play

At the end of 2009, the university decided to make extra savings in order to be able to put funds aside for renovations in real estate, education, and science. The plan was to borrow a limited amount and, in addition, put some money aside every year. From 2010 onwards, however, considerable cutbacks were made in the contribution of the government. “As far as revenues are concerned, The Hague is now an uncertain factor,” Vogt says. “It is really difficult to make funding prognoses for the next 30 years. We have to engage in scenario planning and perform sensitivity analyses to ensure that we can pay the loans back in time. That was a reason to look for external help, from Zanders.”

TU Delft preferred funding from the government: Treasury Banking (in Dutch: ‘schatkistbankieren’). Apart from the fact that it is cheaper, it makes more sense for us, as a university, to borrow from another public body. In addition, the government has sufficient resources available, says Ronald van den Bosch, senior business controller of the TU. “We did not know, however, if we could meet the conditions of treasury paper.”

Together with Zanders, a role-play was developed. Vogt explains: “We prepared everything as if we were going to a commercial bank and then asked Koen Reijnders and Hendrik Pons to take the critical position that a bank would take. By doing this, we wanted to submit ourselves to the discipline of a commercial bank – then you know that you are acting in a prudent manner.”

Infrastructure is essential. Only then, will you be able to attract the right people.

Mariëlle Vogt, director of finance at the TU.

Scenarios

It became clear that the TU was able to meet the conditions of Treasury Banking. The business case that Zanders developed with the TU departments for Real Estate and Finance led to a model with which one could calculate the outcome of all kinds of scenarios. An extra investment in one of the buildings, an unexpected interest development, or a higher indexation of building costs: the consequences of all these occurrences will become clear from the model.

“Together we built a toolbox with which we can – so it seems – anticipate developments,” Vogt says. “It is a custom-made model that extends to 2030 and contains a number of scenarios – different financial prognoses in which there is a constant connection between the overall financial prognosis of the TU Delft and its real estate plans.”

The interests of the two departments differ. Real estate feels the pressure of users that require certain facilities. Finance supervises the prudent use of limited funds. “Zanders has connected these two interests,” Van den Bosch states. “In the case of real estate, one argues on project level, whereas the finance department thinks on a balance sheet level. With the model, the consequences on an aggregated level became clear for both sides – a good joint effort of the departments. By constantly setting the costs of certain investments against the funding of those investments, one can decide what the possibilities are within a certain period of time.”

Towards the future

It happens all too often that such a model is built to support funding but afterwards disappears in a drawer. The TU chose to use the model as part of the process to make timely adjustments, when necessary. Vogt says: “Twice a year – also to inform our supervisory council – we update the investment and maintenance plan, including all financial prognoses at TU level. We have subjected ourselves to this discipline; normally you would leave that to the bank. The model safeguards that this happens in a well-thought-out manner.”

At an earlier stage, it was not necessary to use a “model with scenario buttons,” as the costs coincided mostly with the revenues. The real estate investments were the direct cause. Now the model will be used in future. “Together with Zanders, they have the up-to-date knowledge of the market,” Vogt says. “Our two focus areas this year are the finance and risk policy. Of the EUR 500 million that we spend each year, approximately EUR 350 million comes from the government. Every time, you have to carefully consider which investments you will make that year. The model indicates per year the effect of such an investment on your liquidity, amortization, and maintenance costs.”

No vibrations

“In the case of investments in large-scale maintenance, we look for opportunities to reduce costs toward the future,” Van der Slot says. “Certain investments will lead to energy savings or lower CO2 emissions. Renovation will also reduce certain maintenance costs. It is very interesting to see that in such a model.”

Growth is not the purpose of renovation. It is more likely to see fewer TU buildings than more in the future. With the renovations, the ‘New Way of Working’ will be introduced. BK City, the housing complex for the TU faculty of Architecture, has many open spaces and flexible workplaces. We will introduce renewed concepts of education, such as offering digital classes.

All sorts of rankings exist that indicate the relative position of universities. These are not just based on the number of students, but decisive factors are primarily the amount of research and the number of publications. These, then, depend again on the infrastructure that one can offer. Vogt notes: “Some buildings have to satisfy very high standards, like the building of Applied Sciences. In the Nano labs, the passing of a truck should not cause any vibration whatsoever. It is an interesting but complicated matter. We are not a cookie factory.”

WPP has treasury operations on three continents and each center has its own individual needs. The company needed to devise a request for proposals (RFP) for implementing a new treasury management system (TMS) and Swift-based bank communication that would serve the diverse needs of each regional office. Zanders worked on this project from an early stage, helping WPP to write a cohesive RFP and providing objective advice at the selection stage.

The biggest marketing company in the world, with 2,400 offices and operations in 107 countries, WPP has four main treasury centers. With headquarters in London and three regional treasury centers in Brussels, New York, and Hong Kong, the requirements of each hub differed considerably. The process of writing an RFP that would meet, combine, and harmonize the needs across the London, Brussels, and New York treasury offices was the first conundrum.

An RFP to meet all TMS requirements

Zanders was involved in the RFP from the outset, having come through a consultant selection process. Paul Delaney, director of treasury at WPP’s London headquarters, says: “We felt Zanders were best qualified to help us in the project, and they had good feedback from other companies with similar requirements.”

It was Zanders’ task to become very familiar with the organization, processes, and system requirements of each of WPP’s three treasury centers, and they did this by visiting each office and spending three days assessing their needs. Three Zanders consultants were working on the project throughout: Thomas Pels, David Kelin, and Laurens Tijdhof, all of whom worked with the treasury staff at WPP to write up an RFP that would set the company on its way to selecting a new TMS. “It was a joint effort between WPP and ourselves to make sure that we went into great detail and got all the questions we needed for the RFP,” explains Thomas Pels, of the Zanders’ Brussels office.

We felt it was important to bring in an independent view partly because, as a treasury department, we aren’t necessarily up-to-date with the changes in TMSs and aren’t best-placed to make an objective assessment of what best suits our needs.

Paul Delaney, Director of Treasury at WPP.

Paul Delaney believes that bringing Zanders on board was the right way to manage the project. “We felt it was important to bring in an independent view partly because, as a treasury department, we aren’t necessarily up-to-date with the changes in TMSs and aren’t best-placed to make an objective assessment of what best suits our needs,” he says. This is an opinion echoed in each of WPP’s treasury offices. David Hughes, WPP’s director of treasury operations in New York, points out that Zanders facilitated the RFP process between the three offices: “That is something I think we would have had a really hard time doing if we didn’t have Zanders – they were able to take an objective point of view.”

Three treasury centers – one global TMS

The most important requirement for the TMS from the London headquarters’ point of view was to have an updated reporting function, says Felicity Ronayne, UK treasury operations manager in WPP’s London office. “We wanted a system we could all use that was up-to-date, with really good report-writing features and a cash position worksheet that we could access across all regions.”

The heavy reliance on checks, zero-balancing, and WPP’s large number of US operating companies meant that the needs of the US office varied significantly from the offices in Europe. David Hughes notes: “We sometimes have over USD 100 million checks clearing in the morning, so one of our needs was for controlled check disbursement funding notification to be included in the workstation cash positioning. We also need to maintain a lot of inter-company schedules on the treasury workstation and another big difference is our reliance on zero-balancing from the operating company accounts to the main WPP account – in the US it is the basis of everything we do.”

The requirements for the Belgium office were slightly different. Veronique Freymann, European treasury manager at WPP’s Brussels office, notes: “The Belgium team manages more than 2000 accounts of the 750 entities in more than 15 countries. Furthermore, we manage the cash pools (zero-balancing, notional, and multi-currency), the group account structure, inter-company loans, and the group’s guarantees. For this, the possibility to have cash forecast information delivered via the web was one of the major requirements.”

Zanders managed to combine all the different regional requirements into one global RFP document. The RFP resulted in three potential TMS providers, but WPP finally chose IT2. The system is being implemented gradually across the headquarters and two regional centers. It is near completion in New York and Brussels, while implementation in the London office will begin with static data in Q4 2012.

Veronique Freymann says: “The implementation of IT2 is gradual – so we have started to upload data from bank statements, which enables us to use some tools already. We will start with the inter-company loans and it will be a step-by-step process.”

The TMS in the New York office will be fully functional by the first quarter of 2012, although they will be testing it and running parallel with it before then.

Choosing a Swift Service Bureau (SSB) provider

As well as playing an active part in the TMS selection, WPP’s Brussels office also led the process in selecting an SSB provider. David Kelin, director at Zanders’ London office, points out that the TMS selection and the choice of SSB provider were complementary projects. “When we were looking at the TMS, we also assessed WPP’s banking relationships and communications – we established early on that an SSB would be necessary and that Alliance Lite would not be sufficient for WPP’s needs.”

WPP eventually chose Swiss provider BBP to provide their Swift bank communication. The selection of the SSB was completed in August but it has not gone live yet. WPP’s Brussels office is currently transmitting data across to the new SSB system, and it will become effective before the end of 2011.

As with the TMS selection process, Zanders was instrumental in helping WPP to understand their needs for Swift and then choose the right product. “We are the end users, so we know what we want, but we don’t know what advantages one solution offers compared to others,” says Thierry Lenders, European treasury manager at WPP’s Brussels office.

It is expected that the SSB will bring significant benefits for the Brussels office. Veronique Freymann notes: “SwiftNet gives a single channel of communication between us and the banks, so it will be a lot easier for us.” For now, WPP is reserving judgment on whether the SSB will be needed in its other treasury centers. Paul Delaney says: “It was evident that we needed the SSB in Brussels, but it is not yet clear if we will get the same benefits from it in New York and London. We are watching what happens in Brussels closely and we’ll make a proper assessment once it’s fully installed there.”

Bringing the project to a happy conclusion

This has been a long and complex project. What began as a challenging RFP in 2010 then became the selection and implementation of a TMS and an SSB. The project is ongoing, and several months remain before both IT2 and the SSB are fully functional.

We were very impressed with the quality of the people at Zanders and the depth of their knowledge. Most of all, we really appreciate the fact that the same three Zanders consultants have seen the project through from beginning to end.

David Hughes, Director of Treasury Operations.

For more information on selecting a Treasury Management System or on the process of choosing a Swift Service Bureau provider, contact us.

When Coca-Cola Hellenic (CCH), one of the biggest bottlers and sellers of Coca-Cola products in the world, implemented SAP in 2008, the treasury team expected great improvements in cash management and financial communication across the 28 countries in which the group operates. The reality was somewhat different, with the implemented version of SAP not interacting in harmony with CCH’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, called Wave 1. It was at that point that the newly appointed treasurer, Bart Jansen, decided to re-design and improve the SAP implementation – with help from Zanders.

When Bart Jansen joined CCH treasury in 2008, he might have been forgiven for thinking that he had joined at the perfect time – the company had just gone live with SAP Treasury. So with the latest technology already in place, surely Jansen would be able to focus on the bigger treasury issues?

He soon found that the treasury team in Athens was far from happy with how SAP was running. Treasury operated a stand-alone ERP5 installation that had to integrate with three SAP kernels at different versions of SAP. There was repetition of functions and lack of integration. Jansen explains that there were high levels of dissatisfaction with the functionality of the system among CCH’s users: “I started the new job as treasurer in the midst of the financial crisis with a team that was quite frustrated with their tools and also understaffed. I needed to do something drastic about this, so I called Judith van Paassen at Zanders.”

Jansen’s relationship with Zanders goes back a long way. As a Dutch national, he was previously treasurer at Dutch utility group Nuon, where he carried out a successful system implementation with Zanders. “After that experience, I knew that Zanders were knowledgeable about SAP, so when I moved to CCH in Athens, it was a natural step to call them,” he says. CCH sent out a request for proposal (RFP) and Zanders won the selection process.

Once Zanders had become involved in the project, things started to move quickly. Jansen says: “Bas Rebel and Bart Mol came over and worked with us in early 2009 and helped to identify 70 ‘gaps’, or weaknesses, in our process. While we identified some ‘quick wins’, we also realized that a lot more effort was required to address more structural issues.”

Integrating treasury with Wave 2

The aim of the SAP implementation was to upgrade the system to fit in more coherently with the Wave 2/ECC6 template. Every country treasury unit had its own banking partner and was communicating in its own way, so this also had to be upgraded to Wave 2. Jansen explains how the project team worked to resolve these issues: “With help from Zanders we started to develop a business case that would solve our immediate and long-term structural issues related to the tools we use and the way we interact with our 28 countries. We now have a more integrated solution – particularly for FX and cash management data – that complies with the latest standards and strengthens communications.”

The business case was approved for the implementation project in November 2009 and work started on it in January 2010. As with any major implementation involving many different disciplines, it was not without some challenges. Jansen says: “One of the difficulties was the tight corporate deadlines regarding the Wave 2 roll-out. We had to comply with the Wave 2 deadlines imposed upon us by our own company, so we had to get the project started quickly.”

Communication is key

One of the challenges of working with an international team of consultants, according to Jansen, was getting people together in the same place: “The complexity of the system and the solution meant we had to involve several experts from different fields. Ultimately it was a matter of finding the right experts and getting them together, for example getting the people from Zanders together with our IT people. It wasn’t easy as they were not always in the same country, but we still managed to communicate and address the issues.”

Zanders partner Laura Koekkoek adds: “We’re very pleased with the professional way the project has been run – in particular the testing phase was taken very seriously. We had a lot of people working together on this, so communication has been crucial.”

Complex challenge

The best advice is always to stay as close to the standard version of SAP. Although this isn’t always possible, it helps to keep the complexity at a manageable level. We absolutely benefited from Zanders’ expertise and knowledge of SAP in this regard.

Bart Jansen, Treasurer at CCH

With a complex system, designing the security and access rights has also been a time-consuming operation, as Jansen explains: “We spent a lot of time designing the authorization system, bearing in mind the segregation of duties within the company, and that has been really challenging on an integrated platform. We worked on this with internal auditors, and it was one of the most important aspects before we went live.”

A pleasant working environment

So despite the pressures and complexity of this SAP implementation, is CCH happy with the results? For Bart Jansen, the most important gauge of the project’s success was whether his treasury team in Athens was happy with the tools and system. “It has been a great success from that point of view,” he says. “They were previously spending a lot of time on administration and spreadsheets, whereas now they can spend time on more meaningful tasks. We have been able to streamline processes and thereby reduce time spent on certain tasks by 30–50%, while the controls have significantly improved. So the team has a much more manageable workload and therefore a more pleasant working environment.”

CCH’s treasury is now in the process of rolling out SwiftNet and the SAP Bank Communication Management module to the country units, replacing the local electronic banking system functionality. This year they will begin work on an in-house bank, and once that is completed, they will set up a payments factory as part of the SAP system. Jansen adds: “We are now in the process of fully automating foreign currency accounting. We’re making a significant investment into the Wave2 platform. So we are already seeing significant benefits and hope to see more in the future.”