SAP highlighted their public vs. private cloud offerings, RISE and GROW products, new AI chatbot applications, and their SAP Analytics Cloud solution. In addition to SAP's insights, several clients showcased their treasury transformation journeys with a focus on in-house banking, FX hedge management, and payment factory implementation. This article provides a brief overview of SAP's RISE and GROW offerings, with a larger focus on SAP’s public vs. private cloud offerings and their new AI virtual assistant, Joule.

SAP RISE and GROW

The SAP RISE solution seeks to help companies transition to cloud-based services. It is designed as a comprehensive offering that combines software, services, and support into a single package, including the core components of SAP S/4HANA cloud, Business Process Intelligence (BPI), SAP Business Network, and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). On the other hand, SAP GROW is a program that facilitates the implementation and organization of SAP solutions. This offering is more tailored towards optimizing, rather than transitioning, company processes. SAP GROW still includes S/4HANA public cloud solution, enabling growing companies to manage their operations without requiring extensive on-site infrastructure.

Ultimately, companies experiencing significant growth and seeking scalable, efficient solutions would benefit most from the SAP GROW offering, while SAP RISE is more suited for companies looking to accelerate their digital transformation with a focus on agility, rapid innovation, and business resilience.

Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud

SAP systems can be hosted both on the public and private cloud. The public cloud delivers greater scalability, whereas the private cloud provides enhanced security and complete control of data and governance. Often the choice between SAP public or private cloud is driven by business requirements, budget, compliance needs, and desired levels of customization. These variables, along with other important factors, are compared in Figure 1.

Figure 1: SAP Public Cloud vs. SAP Private Cloud

In summary, organizations considering SAP should carefully weigh these differences when choosing between public and private cloud. SAP is actively developing the functionality within its public cloud offering, making it an increasingly suitable option for both small-to-medium enterprises seeking rapid deployment and cost efficiency, as well as larger enterprises that require powerful solutions with limited customization needs. On the other hand, SAP private cloud remains a preferred choice for larger enterprises with complex, unique process requirements, extensive customization needs, and strict data compliance regulations.

Joule's Virtual Assistant

SAP's Business AI solutions initiative is introducing its newest member, the Joule Copilot. Similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, the Joule virtual assistant is available at the user's command. Users simply need to ask the copilot questions or explain a particular issue, and Joule will provide intelligent answers drawn from the vast amount of business data stored across the SAP systems and third-party sources.

Joule Key Features
Contextual Recommendations
Provide personalized, context-specific suggestions based on the user's role and activities. Joule can help users by suggesting possible next steps, identifying potential issues, and offering insights that can be actioned upon by users.

Enhanced User Experience
Offers an intuitive, interactive interface designed to simplify user interaction with SAP applications. Joule aims to reduce complexity and streamline workflows, allowing users to simplify their daily processes.

Real-Time Insights
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities enable Joule to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time, providing predictive insights and analytics to support the user's decision-making process.

Integration with SAP Ecosystem
Joule is fully integrated with SAP’s existing products, such as S/4HANA and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), ensuring seamless data flow and interconnectivity across various SAP solutions.

Customization and Extensibility
Joule can be tailored to the specific needs of different industries and business processes. It also accounts for the specific role of the user when providing recommendations and can be customized to align with a company’s organizational requirements and workflows within their system.

Applications of Joule in Finance
SAP Joule can significantly enhance financial operations by leveraging AI-driven insights, automation, and predictive analytics. Joule has many applications within finance, the most important being:

Automated Financial Reporting
SAP Joule can automatically generate and distribute financial reports, offering insights based on real-time data. Joule uses its AI and ML capabilities to identify trends, flag anomalies, and provide explanations for variances, ultimately helping finance teams to make informed decisions quickly. Not only does Joule provide insight, but it also increases operational efficiency, allowing finance professionals to focus on strategic activities rather than report gathering and distribution.

Predictive Analytics and Forecasting
SAP Joules embedded ML capabilities enable the prediction of future financial outcomes based on historical data and current trends. Whether you are forecasting revenues, cash flows, or expenses, Joule provides the ideal tools for an accurate forecast. Alongside the forecasting capabilities, Joule can also assess financial risks by analyzing market conditions, historical data, and other relevant factors, which allows risk management to take a proactive approach to risk mitigation.

Accounts Receivable and Payable Management
Joule can predict payment behaviors, which can help organizations optimize their cash flows by forecasting when payments are likely to be received or when outgoing payments will occur. In addition to this, Joule has automatic invoice processing capabilities, which can reduce errors and speed up the accounts payable process.

Investment Analysis
For organizations managing investments, Joule can analyze portfolio performance and suggest adjustments to maximize return while still complying with risk limits. Embedded scenario analysis capabilities assist finance teams to assess the potential impact of various investment decisions on their portfolio.

Real-Time Financial Monitoring
Finance teams can use Joule to create real-time dashboards that provide an overview of key financial metrics, enabling quick responses to emerging issues or opportunities. Joule can set up alerts for critical financial thresholds, such as reserves dropping below a certain level, to ensure timely intervention.

All in all, SAP Joule represents a significant step forward in SAP’s strategy to embed AI and ML into its core products, empowering business users with smarter, data-driven capabilities.

Conclusion

This conference summary briefly highlights SAP’s RISE and GROW offerings, with RISE driving cloud-based digital transformation and GROW striving to optimize operations. It contrasts the scalability and cost-efficiency of the public cloud with the control and customization offered by the private cloud. Lastly, it introduces SAP’s new virtual assistant seeking to enhance financial operations through AI-driven insights, automation, and scalability to improve productivity while still maintaining user control over decisions and data security. If you have any further questions regarding the SAP conference or any information in this article, please contact j.vinson@zandersgroup.com.

As a result of the growing importance of this transformative technology and its applications, various regulatory initiatives and frameworks have emerged, such as Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR), the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Pilot Regime, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) crypto standard were launched, demonstrating the growing importance and adoption at both a global and national level. Given these trends, treasuries will be impacted by Blockchain one way or the other – if they aren’t already.

With the advent of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, it is important for treasurers to understand the issues at hand and have a strategy in place to deal with them. Based on our experience, typical questions that a treasurer faces are how to deal with the volatility of cryptocurrencies, how cryptocurrencies impact FX management, the accounting treatment for cryptocurrencies as well as KYC considerations. These developments are summarized in this article. 

FX Risk Management and Volatility

History has shown that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether are highly volatile assets, which implies that the Euro value of 1 BTC can fluctuate significantly. Based on our experience, treasurers opt to sell their cryptocurrencies as quickly as possible in order to convert them into fiat currency – the currencies that they are familiar and which their cost basis is typically in. However, other solutions exist such as hedging positions via derivatives traded on regulated financial markets or conversions into so-called stablecoins¹. 

Accounting Treatment and Regulatory Compliance 

Cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, require careful accounting treatment and compliance with regulations. In most cases cryptocurrencies are classified as “intangible assets” under IFRS. For broker-traders they are, however, classified as inventory, depending on the circumstances. Inventory is measured at the lower of cost and net realizable value, while intangible assets are measured at cost or revaluation. Under GAAP, most cryptocurrencies are treated as indefinite-lived intangible assets and are impaired when the fair value falls below the carrying value. These impairments cannot be reversed. CBDCs, however, are not considered cryptocurrencies. Similarly, and the classification of stablecoins depends on their status as financial assets or instruments. 

KYC/KYT Considerations

The adoption of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology introduces challenges for corporate treasurers in verifying counterparties and tracking transactions. When it comes to B2C transactions, treasurers may need to implement KYC (Know Your Customer) processes to verify the age and identity of individuals, ensuring compliance with age restrictions and preventing under-aged purchases, among other regulatory requirements. Whilst the process differs for B2B (business-to-business) transactions, the need for KYC exists nevertheless. However in the B2B space, the KYC process is less likely to be made more complex by transactions done in cryptocurrencies, since the parties involved are typically well-established companies or organizations with known identities and reputations. 

Central Bank Digital Currencies

(CBDCs) are emerging as potential alternatives to privately issued stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies. Central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Peoples Banks of China, are actively exploring the development of CBDCs. These currencies, backed by central banks, introduce a new dimension to the financial landscape and will be another arrow in the quiver of end-customers – along with cash, credit and debit cards or PayPal. Corporate treasurers must prepare for the potential implications and opportunities that CBDCs may bring, such as changes in payment options, governance processes, and working capital management.

Adapting to the Future

Corporate treasurers should proactively prepare for the impact of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology on their business operations. This includes educating themselves on the basics of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and CBDCs, and investigating how these assets can be integrated into their treasury functions. Understanding the infrastructure, processes, and potential hedging strategies is crucial for treasurers to make informed decisions regarding their balance sheets. Furthermore, treasurers must evaluate the impact of new payment options on working capital and adjust their strategies accordingly. 

Zanders understands the importance of keeping up with emerging technologies and trends, which is why we offer a comprehensive range of Blockchain services. Our Blockchain offering covers supporting our clients in developing their Blockchain strategy including developing proofs of concept, cryptocurrency integration into Corporate Treasury, support on vendor selection as well as regulatory advice. For decades Zanders has helped corporate treasurers navigate the choppy seas of change and disruption. We are ready to support you during this new era of disruption, so reach out to us today.  

Meet the team 

Zanders already has a well-positioned, diversified Blockchain team in place, consisting of Blockchain developers, Blockchain experts and business experts in their respective fields. In the following you will find a brief introduction of our lead Blockchain consultants. 

What are the main changes influencing treasury’s added value within corporates?

Laurens Tijdhof (LT): “Business models are changing. In the decades since the introduction of the internet, ‘digital natives’ - new multinational companies such as Uber and Google - have emerged to disrupt all industry sectors. These companies have less legacy than traditional multinationals. Treasury plays an important role in that digital native environment, for example with payment innovation in ecommerce. Traditional multinationals are typically dealing with a lot of legacy because of mergers and acquisitions throughout their history. For them, the change is more transformational in nature, as they are doing something different than they have done in the past decades or even in the past century. This is one of the elements where treasury can add significant value; to understand from a financial point of view where the business is in the current cycle and to see what things need to be changed, updated or optimized to add value.”

Ron Chakravarti (RC): “Firstly, the pace of change in commerce has picked up, driven by new technologies and new ways of doing business. These are shifting the timing, value, and volume of cash flows and, of course, that impacts treasury. Secondly, while treasury always has to manage regulations and the cash flow impact of changes in global taxation, the pace of change in these have also picked up. Finally, geopolitical uncertainty has created additional considerations at this point in time. Corporate treasurers, therefore, need to ensure their teams are increasingly nimble to deal with all of these issues. The good news is that the availability of new technologies, data and artificial intelligence have the potential to change how treasury works and to create added value.”

At which point are companies ready for new technology?

LT: “Before a company can enter the next stage of treasury maturity, it first needs to get the basics right. This means having a focus on centralization, standardization and automation, typically using traditional technology like a TMS or an ERP system. And if you have these systems in place, be sure you’re using and benefiting them optimally from that environment first. Once you have the basics right, you can go to the next stage of a smart treasury, using the new digital or exponential technologies. Then you can benefit from the good basis and use more of the data in analytical ways, with algorithms or newer technologies like robotic process automation (RPA) or artificial intelligence (AI).”

RC: “I completely agree that getting the basics right, by completing the journey to an efficient treasury comes first. Treasury is on an evolution path of becoming first efficient, then smart, and finally integrated. Getting to efficient means that you must standardize, centralize, and automate. Even among multinational companies, not all have mature, centralized treasury models. Getting to a best in class model is key. In most industries that includes a functionally centralized regionally distributed treasury model, with operational treasury on a common infrastructure and processes. Once you are substantially there, you can work on the next step change, in making the move to a smart treasury. And ultimately to an integrated treasury.”

How should a treasurer deal with the continuous change driven by these exponential technologies?

RC: “Well, an issue is that – as The Future of Treasury whitepaper indicates - only 14 percent of corporates have a digital strategy at the treasury level. Why is this so low? One reason is the availability of the right resources. While treasurers have previously adapted to technology change, this change is all happening a lot faster now - for treasury and the broader business. Ultimately, treasury is all about information. Today, more than ever, the treasury function needs to include people who are technologically savvy. People who are able to comprehend what is changing and how to best deploy technology. That will become increasingly important to create value for the business. Treasury teams recognize that they need to have a digital strategy, but many of them are not fully equipped to define one. They are looking for help from industry leaders with a treasury framework to define their digital treasury strategy. That is one of the reasons for this collaboration between Citi and Zanders; in many cases we recognize that we can better do it together, creating added value for our mutual clients.”

LT: “If you compare the current situation to ten years ago, a treasurer would only buy new technology if there was a real requirement. Today, there’s new technology that many treasurers do not fully understand – in terms of what problems it could potentially solve for the company. What you often see now is that treasurers start with small projects, proofs of concepts, to test some innovative ideas. You can compare it with the iPhone; when Steve Jobs invented it, it took some time before people really understood what to do with it, what value it would add in their life. First you need to see what it is, what it can do for you, whether it can solve a real problem. That’s the exiting stage in which we are now. Some treasurers are trail blazers, others are more followers that first want to learn from others about how it has brought them forward.”

Where can these latest technologies really improve treasury? Are there any issues they cannot solve?

LT: “Treasury is all about information and data. There’s a lot of information available in a treasury environment and you sometimes need new technologies and standardized processes to unlock the value out of these data. Treasury covers a large amount of structured data in all kinds of systems. If you want to translate that data insight into valuable conclusions, then technology is probably the right enabler to help; with data analytics and visualization, for example. But, if you don’t have your data centrally available in a data warehouse or data lake, then that’s the first part you should work on; you first need to have your data centrally available to be able to do something with it. Unfortunately, many large multinational companies are still in that stage, they still have data that’s very fragmented and decentralized. For those companies, you could say that the newest technologies have come too early.”

RC: “What will improve treasury? We should first consider what treasurers are seeking to do. Today, we are seeing an increasing appetite from corporate treasurers for integrated decision support tools going beyond what treasury management systems can provide. To that end, we at Citi are running a number of experiments, collaborating with our clients and fintechs, and enabling our clients’ journey towards smart treasury. This is about moving beyond descriptive analytics to decision support and decision automation, and offering opportunity to realize the full automation of operational treasury. What won’t be solved? Well, we won’t get there in 2020 but we will certainly soon start seeing the foundational steps in this transition to a fully automated operational treasury and that’s what is so exciting.”

Endemol Shine Group (ESG), a private equity-owned, Dutch-based media company with global operations, is the world’s largest independent producer and traveler of formats. The company has grown mainly through acquisitions, resulting in a treasury organization that was largely decentralized. In 2017, the new treasury team opted for a full treasury transformation project, to unlock the available potential and to support the business’s growth ambitions.

With activities in more than 80 countries and 46,000 employees, AkzoNobel has a turnover of around EUR 14 billion. In April 2017, the company decided to change its strategy and transform itself into two high-performing businesses focused on coatings and specialty chemicals. “We needed to embark on a new strategy to build two strong independent companies”, says Gerrit Willem Gramser, head of treasury at AkzoNobel. “This plan had been on our mind some for some time, but was accelerated by market forces.”

Moving to more scripted productions has led to significantly longer cash conversion cycles, which increased working capital needs

Albert Hollema, Treasury Director at Endemol Shine Group

In 2017, Endemol Shine Group created over 800 productions in 78 territories, airing on more than 275 channels around the world. The group’s turnover is around 2 billion euros. Global hits include many non-scripted formats such as MasterChef, Big Brother, Your Face Sounds Familiar, Fear Factor and Hunted. The company's scripted business focuses on scripts for films and television series with a longer life cycle, such as the drama blockbusters Black Mirror, Humans, Peaky Blinders and Broadchurch. These series were each sold in at least a hundred regions. Another example is Sweden’s critically acclaimed hit Bron/The Bridge, which has been successfully adapted for different local regions.

As the group has mainly been growing through small acquisitions and the merger of the Endemol and Shine business, the decentralized treasury organization lacked full visibility at a central level. Consequently, treasury head office wasn't aware on a daily basis of the cash movements and other activities of thousands of bank accounts at more than 40 banks, resulting in high amounts of trapped cash. Besides, the company is highly leveraged with limited additional borrowing opportunities. Although a treasury management system was in place, it was mainly used to maintain intercompany accounts only.

Time for change

In early 2017, the treasury team underwent some changes and was slightly expanded. In the meanwhile, the demand for scripted business started to grow quickly. “For these scripted productions we need to invest more, and the broadcaster pays ESG later due to the longer production time”, Albert Hollema, treasury director at Endemol Shine Group, explains. “So, due to the longer life cycle of these productions, our opcos (operational companies) were increasingly demanding more working capital. For us there is no real credit risk – we always have signed contracts before we start to produce, so we know that the client is going to pay – but we need to bridge the gap between producing and getting paid. The cash conversion cycle is important for us. Moving to more scripted productions has led to significantly longer cash conversion cycles, which increased working capital needs. The non-scripted productions, like The Wall and Deal Or No Deal, have shorter cash conversion cycles and are therefore important for financing our business.”

Hollema explains: “We are a highly leveraged company and have a credit rating of CCC+, so for additional financing we can’t simply go to a bank to invest in working capital. Also, our two shareholders – Apollo and Fox – were not really looking to put more money into the business.” The increase in working capital thus had to come from the company’s existing resources. Hollema says: “There was a lot of cash in the organization, spread over all different bank accounts and in different entities on different locations. If we could unlock that amount of trapped cash, we would find our source of finance. That’s why we started a treasury transformation project: to make our treasury activities more efficient and to use the cash within our company to finance our growth. Because by developing the business, we generate higher profits and a higher cash flow which will help to reduce our debts and get out of the highly-leveraged situation.”

To a better category

The group’s treasury transformation included improved use of a treasury management system (TMS), bank connectivity and new treasury processes. Hollema adds: “We needed our TMS supplier to be a business partner, providing us with a solution that would really help us in today’s markets. We reached out to several providers and at the same time we had contact with Zanders, who was already supporting us on some treasury matters. They told us about their new offering, the Treasury Continuity Service, consisting of a certain number of consultancy days per month on which they support treasury, with provision of a high-end TMS and including access to their knowledge database. The service looked very helpful and was a good fit for our needs. We are a relatively small business and had just experienced a lack of interest from system providers, but due to the support of Zanders we moved to a better category on the system vendors’ lists. So, we got a state-of-the-art system that we normally wouldn’t have bought. Another important thing for us was that it offered us a software as a service (SAAS) solution, which basically needs no internal IT support. Updates are done on a regular basis and keeps our system up to date all the time. Overall, the combination of supporting elements was attractive for us.”

During the EuroFinance conference, the audience was impressed by what we had achieved in such a short time frame

Albert Hollema, Treasury Director at Endemol Shine Group

The award winning show

According to Dave van der Zwan, deputy treasurer at Endemol Shine, the implementation process went quick and smoothly: “As a team we worked closely together and within four months we were live on FIS Integrity SaaS.” At the same time, the company decided to set up new bank connectivity via Swift to receive the bank statements and access liquidity through the TMS in an efficient way. “We have a lot of opcos and learned that as a group we held over 1,000 bank accounts – and the information on these accounts was previously only available by the end of the month and a subsequent week for major opcos after the cash flow forecasting was submitted. With the managed bank connectivity solution from FIS’s Swift Service Bureau, we managed to get connected to all our banks directly to pick up all balances from all the opcos on a daily basis. Now we can see exactly how much money an individual opco holds and how much money can be extracted from it. That’s very helpful. During the implementation we opted for active pulling of balances as well – giving ourselves authority to move funds in and out of the opco accounts.”

The innovative system solution won two awards. Global Finance awarded the group for the ‘Best Treasury Management Systems Program’ and Treasury Today gave an Adam Smith Award in the ‘Highly Commended – One to Watch’ category. Hollema notes: “During the EuroFinance conference in October 2017, we presented our case and the audience was impressed by what we had achieved in such a short time frame; the solution, approach, and project management together with the scrum approach, cutting the process into small pieces.”

Bridging the gap

So what exactly made this project so successful? Van der Zwan says: “Our aim was to unlock funds for our investments in working capital. By freeing up that liquidity we were able to keep funding the business according to plan and without any need to postpone certain productions. The business case was easily made from a treasury perspective, it pays for itself quickly, but it also unlocks the liquidity we need in order to be able to grow the business. During the process, there was a snowball effect by which we’re moving from one improvement to the next. Also, the opcos realized what we were trying to achieve and proposed their own initiatives, which fitted perfectly in our overall strategy. A lot of elements came together and were unlocked in this transformation process by a small and high-quality team of Endemol Shine and Zanders people.”

Hollema adds: “From the investment point of view the treasury transformation project was a real success. By unlocking trapped cash for the company, the whole business case is basically paid out of the savings achieved in the first six months. Remember our financing costs are high given our CCC+ rating. We started to build in mid-2017 and by the end of the year the investment in the transformation was repaid, from that perspective.”

To be continued

It was the first time that the company’s head office was centralizing some activities. Van der Zwan says: “If we had taken a ‘big bang’ bank rationalization approach and required opcos to change their invoicing details, electronic banking, etc., we would have seen strong resistance. But instead we said: you can stay with your bank, things will remain as they are, we only want visibility and access. We wanted the transformation to disrupt as little as possible but on the other hand we knew exactly what our end goal was. Step-by-step, with support from the opcos, we will move to that end goal. Once you take the first step, the next step is obvious, and that response was exactly what we saw from our opcos. The support we received from both management and opcos was a big help during implementation.” Zanders consultant Adela Kozelova adds: “Endemol Shine’s treasury acted quickly, while doing things step-by-step, to get as many people on board as possible – a good example for many companies.”

With greater visibility of the company’s cash, the treasury team will be able to better evaluate which businesses are performing well and where to allocate capital. Hollema concludes: “We now pick up information via the bank statements, which doesn't require additional reporting from the opcos, but is very useful for us as a group and can even be seen as an early warning indicator on how our businesses are performing. The next steps involve the creation of cash P&Ls and cash flow overviews from this info, eliminating more manual processes by integrating the local ERPs with the FIS Integrity Solution to help improve real-time cash forecasting. Better control over FX and simplification of the IC settlement process by optimizing the in-house bank (IHB) module are also high on the priority list. The banks and bank accounts will need to be further rationalized to help the opcos. They do a lot of things that can better be centralized so they can focus on doing business. We are a business partner to our opcos, we take care of the whole financial logistics. Zanders and FIS are our sparring partners and we use them to discuss what to do in the next phase.”

Treasury transformation refers to the definition and implementation of the future state of a treasury department. This includes treasury organization & strategy, the banking landscape, system infrastructure and treasury workflows & processes.