2
Hanse Orga International - Success Story Facts Number of company codes: 187 Number of bank items per day: approx. 1,500 per day Go live: March 2011 Project specification: SAP: ECC 6.0 AutoBank: 4.2.3 „For us as a global company the Hanse Orga product proved to be the perfect solution: the FinanceSuite AutoBank Automatic Cash Application is a very flexible and simple tool that allows us to achieve top automatic matching rates and to manage all types of payments worldwide. Therefore, we no longer need to chase the dol- lars, but instead we know exactly where they are.“ Hans Hartman, Finance Director, Dow Netherlands © Copyright 01/2012 Hanse Orga AG. All rights reserved. SAP ® is a registered trademark of SAP AG. All other products are trademarks of the respective companies. About The Dow Chemical: Dow’s diversified industry-leading portfolio of specialty che- mical, advanced materials, agro sciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 160 countries and in high growth sectors such as electronics, water, energy, coatings and agriculture. In 2010, Dow had annual sales of $53.7 billion and employed approximately 50,000 people worldwide. The Company’s more than 5,000 products are manufactured at 188 sites in 35 countries across the globe. The challenges for Dow: Being a globalised company, Dow faced challenges for its finance departments on a global scale. “We at Dow have entered into the Next Enterprise Architecture (NEA) programme to support the business model for the company. In the NEA programme we support our various Business Units, our functional work processes including our end users - the businesses, functions and Shared Service Centres. Our objective for the finance function, which supports the various business processes in recording and reporting the financial data flows, was to integrate the finance processes in the overall Dow business processes that would enable us to standardise the procedures in our entities across the globe within our new Information Technology Architecture” explains Hans Hartman, Finance Director The Dow Chemical Company and the NEA Finance Business Process Architect responsible for the NEA Finance Team within the NEA program. The decision-making process: As Dow receives and effects payments via many diffe- rent local methods, the first of the key requirements for a new software solution was the acceptance of all known payment types. Secondly, a new solution should enable top auto- mation levels for the A/R processes, and thirdly, strong internal controls were required for the manual post processing. Based on these key requirements, Dow carried out a business study to evaluate the most cost-effective ways to deal with A/R across its international busi- nesses and focused on three options: Enable the standard SAP capabilities for Accounts Receivable, develop own enhanced capabilities based on the existing SAP R2 system or get the Hanse Orga Autobank solution. Standard SAP was not providing the automation that was required, as Dow wanted to improve its services. Own additions to the SAP system would have turned out to be the least cost-effective option due to high IT-development as well as training costs for staff. As a logical consequence, Dow chose the Hanse Orga solu- tion as it proved to be the most favourable in terms of costs and processes: Flexible mat- ching rules easy to implement by finance staff would save time and money. Moreover, full integration in SAP, standardised processes ensuring SOX compliance and acceptance of all types of payment methods were convincing key features of Hanse Orga’s FinanceSuite AutoBank Automatic Cash Application. Project implementation: Dow first introduced the FinanceSuite AutoBank Automatic Cash Application in its subsidiaries in Latin America where the automatic matching rates in the A/R process were very low. After only one month of implementation, automatic hit rates of 57 % were achieved across Latin America on average while peaking in Brazil with a rate of 95 %. “We started in a specific geographic area where we could learn lessons that would help us with the further roll-out in the Asia-Pacific region and subsequently in Europe, North America and other areas” so Hartman. “By the end of 2011, we will have integrated 39 countries and 200 legal entities into the programme, followed by 24 more countries and 600 legal entities in 2012 and afterwards.” One of the lessons learned included the different types of invoices issued and payments received: In Mexico and Columbia, for example, Dow How Dow uses Hanse Orga’s FinanceSuite AutoBank Automatic Cash Application to accelerate the Elect- ronic Bank Statement processing. Dow Headquarters, Midland, Michigan
