Enterprises can no longer afford to wait until the end of the month to see results or the annual budget cycle to make decisions.  The impact of digital disruption is real and 52% of the Fortune 500 have been merged, acquired, gone bankrupt, or fallen off the list since 2000. The transformation of finance will impact multiple teams including Financial Planning & Analysis, Accounting & Tax, Accounts Receivable/Payable, Treasury, Finance Operations and Risk.

During this session, you will hear how SAP S/4 HANA can revolutionize finance processes.  What if you could leverage predictive modelling to analyze growth strategies in hours instead of weeks? What decisions would be made with real-time visibility into customer profit and product cost along the entire value chain? How would you better leverage resources in accounting if we could free them up from repetitive tasks using machine learning? How do you keep your executives informed with Financial Data with real time reporting/analytics. These and more questions will be explored during the session.

New sales tax laws have gone into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the South Dakota vs. Wayfair Inc. case in June 2018. This ruling changed the requirement of sales tax collection liability from a physical presence nexus to an economic nexus, which is based entirely on sales revenue and/or transaction volume. This ruling is leaving remote sellers scrambling to figure out where they may need to register to collect and remit sales tax on out-of-state transactions. Like a domino effect, other states are reacting to the ruling at a rapid rate, legislating similar laws to help fill state revenue deficits. Learn how Rio Grande benefited from implementing Avalara’s indirect tax solutions for fast and accurate compliance and easy reporting and filing.

Key Business Benefits:

• Learn how and why the U.S. Supreme Court South Dakota vs. Wayfair Inc. decision is impacting hundreds of thousands of companies.


• Understand the steps that Rio Grande went through to address its sudden need for assistance with tax compliance.


• Discover the benefits Rio Grande achieved through automating its sales tax compliance process.

The typical treasury management system (TMS)—SWIFT connected, multiuser, and loaded with functionality—is a marvel of modern technology. There are few tasks in treasury that cannot be made efficient through the use of a TMS, and there are very few sophisticated treasuries without one. Yet many of these same treasuries also integrate specialist solutions for bank account management, foreign exchange, payments, and other tasks with their TMS. From a technology standpoint, this is a simple matter. From a business perspective, this suggests that many treasurers see superior functionality beyond what’s offered in their TMS.

Dirk Schreiber, group treasurer at Fresenius, had a need for sophisticated payments processing and made the case for a specialist solution. The resulting combination of a TMS and TIS smart payments has given Fresenius more than the sum of the two parts.

Fresenius is a company with annual sales of over €33 billion from operations in more than 160 countries and more than 90 production facilities. Legacy treasury operations were decentralized with separate and unconnected systems installed at many company operations. Change was required, and Fresenius took the first step in a journey to integrate cash management, improve controls, and increase cash visibility while reducing the number of banking systems used.

Key Business Benefits:

• Centralization of corporate payment operations and increased cash visibility


• Process automation


• Straight-through processing with seamless SAP ERP integration

Month-end close seems to last far too long and with manual processes, it often does. In July 2017, Lincoln Electric System (LES) completed its close by the second Friday of each month, which was then followed by a one-week close for two additional entities. This lengthy process left little time for reconciliations, projects, or vacations—not an ideal situation for the accounting team. Although the LES accounting team was able to get the work done, it was tedious, and the staff had less than two years of tenure and no prior SAP experience. So they went on a journey to try to reduce time and increase productivity. In this session, you will hear how LES has been able to eliminate a week of this close process through employee empowerment, a focus on continuous improvement, the implementation of Excel4apps’ GL Wand and GLSU, and the redistribution of workload. Change isn’t always fast, easy, or always successful, but creating a culture that embraces it can make it meaningful.

Key Business Benefits:

• Shorter close process and timely financials


• Increased productivity


• Improved employee satisfaction

Join this session and learn about Verizon's experiences in automating the process of creating and posting SAP financial documents. At this open Q&A session, you’ll hear how Verizon is maximizing its Excel-to-SAP processes, including journal entry uploads, payroll, miscellaneous vendors, purchasing cards, and travel and expense processes.

Through real-world examples and experiences, you’ll learn how to:

1. Use GLSU on an SAP S/4HANA® system


2. Streamline finance document posting process, resulting in shorter month-end close cycle


3. Improve audit processing with increased accuracy (prevalidation feature) and the attach source feature


4. Enhance your SAP experience with features including validating and posting more than 1,000 lines, posting multiple documents from a worksheet, and creating a template from a posted document


5. Use Excel and Z Option’s GLSU to automate manual entries or replace in-house (custom) uploaders