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Businesses need to embrace innovation because it will help them stay ahead of their competitors by reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
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General ledger posting was a huge time-sink for 400 finance professionals at the EY organization.
“Innovation,” “disruption” or “disruptive innovation” are not just buzzwords anymore.
Although innovation can sometimes be a daunting and uncomfortable process for businesses, CEOs must understand emerging technologies and foster innovation, regardless of their industries and level of success. Innovation helps businesses stay ahead of their competitors by reducing costs, improving efficiencies and creating better experiences for their employees.
Recently, EY teams reinvented its general ledger (GL) posting process using the Microsoft Power Platform. As a result, the lead time for the high-frequency, semi-manual process, which integrates with the EY SAP ERP system, was reduced by 95% compared with the legacy process.
Now that’s a game changer for the global finance function!
While a GL is the backbone of the global finance function at the EY organization, the team running this system must update the journal entries daily. This inefficient process requires manual intervention and is prone to errors. In addition, the complete process can take longer than a day or two, depending on the document’s accuracy and whether or not it requires additional review by managers or vendors.
At EY, 400 finance professionals across the globe prepare and post data modifications within EY GL. However, EY GL involved time-consuming data transfers between different applications and geographies and was an error-prone process more often.
Emil Hovgaard, EY Nordic Tech Hub Leader, and Ajith Haripaul, EY Global Controlling Transformation Leader, set out to streamline this high-frequency global process with the help of the team at EY Nordic Tech Hub. The team worked together to create a one-stop shop for finance professionals that would improve efficiency with additional functionalities such as real-time dashboards, built-in approval workflows, on-screen validation and enhanced processing speeds.
The better the answer
Microsoft Power Platform SAP connector proved useful for EY Nordics when building their application, helping global finance.
EY Nordic turned to Microsoft Power Platform, which provides all the required business application capabilities, such as speed to market, low-code customization and configurability, and scalability, in addition to the pre-built connectors, such as the SAP ERP connector. Then, they were able to quickly develop a solution called PowerPost that leveraged the strengths of the combined forces between EY Nordic, Microsoft and SAP.
Together with EY Nordic Tech Hub members, they created a core team called “Project Zilla.” To start, they determined what was needed to build the sandbox SAP environment customized to the reinvented finance process. Using the new connector, they tested its proof of concept (PoC). Upon successful testing, the team obtained approval from EY leadership and secured executive sponsorship to develop the platform, PowerPost — the EY global finance GL posting application.
With Power Platform’s SAP connector, we knew we could complete postings quickly by creating an app with Power Apps and use it to connect to the EY SAP ERP environment
Emil Hovgaard
EY Nordic CTO for Tax and Law
PowerPost is a powerful tool that can enhance the financial and compliance capabilities of global finance teams. The success in developing solutions can be attributed to using a scaled agile framework and the team’s fusion approach to improving business processes. In addition, the team stayed focused on functionality, knowing the UI would change and gathered user feedback regularly.
One of the most critical challenges that the developers faced during the creation of the tool was the need for a gateway configuration to connect the on-premises ERP database of the cloud-based Power Platform solution. PowerPost leveraged the power of Microsoft Data Gateway to address this requirement.
“It’s amazing how quickly we took action with Power Apps. Within a few weeks, we had a PoC ready to test, showing how Power Platform is removing the technical barriers that slow down PoC solution development,” reflects Emil.
PowerPost is a significant improvement to the existing document entry. It can reduce costs and processing time, increase efficiency, improve month-end closing process, creating a better experience for finance teams
The better the world works
With reimagination and constant testing and improvements, EY Nordics introduced a game-changing tool for global finance.
There is a lot more to PowerPost than just posting GL transactions. The implementation flexibility and user-friendly dashboard are attractive benefits for finance departments looking to improve the accuracy, efficiency and speed of the GL posting process in the organization.
The result? The team was able to deploy PowerPost to 250 users across selected global regions to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback. Moreover, EY teams have reduced lead times by 95% through the reinvention of the GL posting process with PowerPost.
A true strategy for digital transformation is so much more than technology. It allows your business to grow from outside influences and evolve as your business changes within — redefining what your brand means in a digitally connected future.
At EY, every day is a new opportunity to create something beautiful. Recently, the EY Nordic Tech Hub team transformed their annual salary review process with Microsoft Power Platform. With this new technology, a process that once took four months now takes only two. The solution uses Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and SQL and is connected to SharePoint online. Read more here.
In addition, together with Microsoft Unified support experts, EY Nordics created an enterprise application to automate HR hiring processes and reduce manual administrative tasks. With many such fruitful collaborations, EY and Microsoft teams continue to transform the working world by combining the best of both worlds.
As PowerPost continues to redefine the general ledger process for finance teams, read more about it here.
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