I love speaking with SAP partners about their visions of the future. How about this one: a day when finance professionals will be able to see everything and do everything necessary to manage working capital, all on a small mobile phone. “Achieving that vision will be the ultimate confirmation that digitalization works,” said Axel Rebien, CEO and CFO of Serrala, referring to the FS2 suite of solutions including Serrala FS2 AccountsPayable, a terrific solution for financial management available on SAP Store. Axel told me about attending the recent Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference in London, where he spoke about leveraging emerging technologies to achieve finance transformation. “It’s a topic I care about deeply, as it’s a big part of what we do at Serrala,” he remarked. “I thoroughly enjoyed talking with finance leaders from around the world who are likewise immersed in transforming our work. I discovered that others share the same dream of full digitalization, which will free them up to concentrate all their attention on steering working capital with a high degree of predictability.”
Achieving Operational and Financial Excellence
Serrala FS2 Solutions let CFOs and finance leaders take a big step toward the goal of autonomous finance. This best-of-suite solution unifies treasury, accounts payable, and accounts receivable, the three pillars of finance, into a central ecosystem. Axel noted that the name “FS2” represents the second generation of a solution originally designed to manage financial processes that now does much more: automating and providing insights into cash flows and working capital while creating more secure payment capabilities. Because security is always top of mind for finance leaders, FS2 also provides fraud monitoring. From an operational standpoint, the solution is embedded into SAP S/4HANA to centralize financial data and eliminate disconnected systems, streamlining processes and boosting accuracy and transparency.
Managing Working Capital
But security and operational efficiency aside, the main emphasis of my conversation with Axel and his colleague Magali Nedjar was on working capital management, which is clearly his passion and a core purpose for the company. Why? In this uncertain global economic environment, Axel explained, companies must be able to monitor liquidity and ensure that their cash count can withstand macroeconomic shocks. Supply chain disruptions are a constant threat, stemming from the pandemic, wildly gyrating demand, environmental disasters, and international sanctions, to name a few. Meanwhile, customers whose enterprises have been upended by geopolitical events can’t pay their bills, depleting coffers on the receivables end. And the fundamental risk for any enterprise is running out of cash.
He added that margins are tighter within every sector, from retail to insurance and real estate. There is much more scrutiny from shareholders on financial management and how the CFO delivers on key performance indicators. In fact, the Office of the CFO has evolved from being perceived as a straightforward accounting function into a strategic role with a place in the C-suite.
A longtime CFO with extensive experience as a financial expert, Axel is well acquainted with that evolution. Before joining Serrala, he led a new company developing a fast-growing modular platform for international payment transactions.
Delivering Extraordinary Results Through Partnership
Serrala was created nearly 40 years ago in Hamburg, Germany, and has a long history with SAP. “The original founders saw the potential of ERP, which, back then, was just SAP,” Axel commented. “A brilliant first step was having the foresight to focus on bringing ERP into the Office of the CFO.”
Today, Serrala has an SVP, Partner Ecosystem responsible for all partners – that’s Magali – who invests a lot in building a great partnership with SAP. Other partners in the ecosystem include newer companies like FloQast as well as well-established firms like NTT Data, IBM or Microsoft. Her primary focus is on amplifying these partnerships and adding value. “When we can put all the parties together with the power of an ecosystem, the results we can deliver are extraordinary,” she said.
Axel noted that Serrala’s relationship with SAP has matured from an informal partnership to an alliance that aims to help customers improve their processes without altering their core, “We are a partner to our customers in their transition to SAP S/4HANA.”
If your organization shares this vision of achieving financial transformation, I recommend that you visit SAP Store to learn more about Serrala FS² Accounts Payable and the FS² suite of solutions.
