European Schools S/4HANA Case Study

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • This is the European Schools S/4HANA, which is part of our research study.
  • We evaluate the accuracy of this case study.

Introduction

European Schools manages a nursery, primary and secondary schools in 7 European countries based out of Brussels. ES operates somewhat of a co-op of 15 different entities. Therefore, the implementation involved these 15 entities in accounting, controlling, and procurement.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

  • This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers. 

This implementation was the most prolonged timeline that I could find published. A 1-year implementation is on the shorter side for ECC, and for S/4HANA, being so immature, this is still also quite short considering that European Schools is more of a co-op.

The implementation scope was the following:

  • General Ledger
  • Accounts Payable
  • Accounts Receivable
  • Asset Accounting
  • Funds Management
  • Cost Center Controlling
  • Purchasing Request
  • Purchase Order
  • Contacts
  • Request for Quotation
  • Goods Receipt
  • Sales Order Processing
  • Billing
  • Dunning
  • Installments
  • Master Data Administration
  • Net Salary Processing

This is one of the more credible public case studies of S/4HANA. It has the added benefit of being one of the few case studies to explain the actual scope of the implementation. And it is also one of the few to explain the benefits received as the following quotation attests.

Functional Impact

“We moved from 27-step invoice validation down to a best practice 3-way match (Purchase Order – Good Receipt – Invoice Receipt).

With the new tool, we have gained a better overall vision and management of budget planning as well as budget consumption. In the past, we needed to make manually separate and cumbersome consolidations – now, we have consolidated ad-hoc view over all entities at any time!

In the past, the paper flow of documents did not allow a view of current approval status – now integrated workflow system enables tracking of the process steps and current status of approval!

Technical Impact

Database Instance: a reduction from 15 instances to one single instance!

Time for Creation of Reports required by regulations: from up to 10 days down to less than 5 seconds.

Users in Live System: 160 in 15 entities throughout Europe using various languages (English, German and French).”

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Conclusion

Once again, as a school, it is not a typical target for an ERP system. But this case study at least has some details and can describe some of the implementation’s actual benefits.

This article is part of The S/4HANA Implementation Study. Please see that study for the overall conclusions.