Finance Capability Lead, Bluefin Solutions
Why Customers are NOW Loving FSCM
04 May 2010
ERP Finance, ERP, Finance, Consumer Business
Financial Supply Chain Management as a product has been around for over 5 years now. However the initial uptake of the product has been slow. I believe this is down to three key reasons:
- Knowledge of the product
- Old versions of ERP
- Lack of cash to implement new ERP projects - Global recession
It is fair to say that the obstacles listed above have slowly ebbed away for more and more customers. Add into this the impact of the recent global recession and it becomes clearer why more and more customers are treating this as a must have product in ERP.
So let's go back in time and review what the issues were and how things have now changed.
Product Awareness
Obviously if you don't know about something you can't want it. That is not to say that Customers did not need it. The previous versions of ERP had a big gap with regard to Collections and Dispute Management. Companies had to either create their own systems in SAP, or use a 3rd party to provide the required business processes. The functionality available is FSCM is now well documented and therefore I will not go into this in this article.
System Upgrades
Now consider that to fully benefit from the full functionality of FSCM a customer needs to be utilising ERP 6, it becomes clearer why the uptake of the product has been slow. Over the past 2 years there has been a significant move for customers to upgrade or re-implement to ERP 6. The majority of upgrades have been technical only, and new functionality has been implemented after this. By having more customers on ERP 6; the scope of the customers who could utilise the product has therefore increased.
Global Recession
Lastly the Global recession reduced the available spend for all customers to invest into SAP products. Many projects were put on hold or scrapped all together due to the impact on their cash flow. As we slowly exit the global recession the timing to implement could not be better. More and more emphasis is being put on a Group's cash flow and a SAP product that can maximise cash flow is now seen as very attractive. Customers who have recently upgraded to ERP 6 can benefit from all of the latest functionality that is being released via the enhancement packages. At the same time customers are now reviewing their accounts receivable business processes to ensure they meet the current requirements rather than the requirements at the time of the initial implementation.
So in summary we are now in a position where the product is stable, the amount of customers who can fully utilise the product has risen and the business appetite has significantly grown. Each time the functionality is released for Enhancement Packages I review to see the latest benefits for FSCM. I have been informed there will be more functionality being released in Enhancement Package 5. If you considered FSCM a few years back it could be worth reviewing the product both in terms of functionality and business requirements for your Organisation.
Comments
Mark Chalfen 23 Mar 2011
Phil,
Your comments are very valid. Deductions do not naturally fit within the dispute process. However using the SD process only looks at the dispute and does not look at the customer payment (taking the deduction) and how to clear the two items.
We create a deduction document in FI, which is a debit and credit for the same amount to the customer. The debit is disputed, and will be cleared by any credit issued to the customer. The credit line will be used in the cash allocation process where a customer takes their deduction in their remittance.
Phil Davison 23 Mar 2011
Hi Mark,
I'm working on a project at the moment to implement disputes management and i keep coming up against the question, why should we use disputes management when we can manage the customer claims using the SD process of Credit memo requests?
Each time a customer deducts a payment they can raise a credit memo request which has the workflow in order to forward the claim on to the appropriate approver.
I'm a big advocate of disputes, but I've not been on any training and find it difficult to answer the question. can you offer any advice?
Thanks!
Phil.