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Last month in Las Vegas the spectacular Wynn Hotel was the scene for what some industry experts dubbed, “the arrival of the future of finance.” The warm desert air was a welcome relief for many of the 1,700 attendees who had flown in from areas that were still in the throes of a long winter. The world’s leading finance professionals were also quickly electrified by Celina Rogers of CFO Magazine as she delivered the keynote address around what “simple finance” means to a modern finance organization.


After the keynote, finance professionals from companies that included Nike, Nestlé, Estée Lauder, American Airlines and Bristol Meyers Squibb, learned firsthand about the value that the SAP Simple Finance solution delivers to the market. They were joined by Thack Brown, General Manager and Global Head of LoB Finance at SAP, who delivered a compelling keynote address titled “Simplifying Finance in an Increasingly Complex World.” Thack shared SAP’s vision of the modern finance department and how SAP Simple Finance helps CFOs and finance leaders begin their journey to business transformation with real-time financial processes.


He also took the opportunity to announce the general availability of SAP Cash Management powered by SAP HANA. This software solution simplifies finance by automating daily cash operations, while delivering in-memory driven instant insight. The solution can be implemented as a component of SAP Simple Finance, either on premise or in the cloud, and is designed to be user friendly. Speaking of simple finance, SAP recently introduced its next-generation simplified business suite offered exclusively on the SAP HANA platform – SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA) – which includes features that promote greater innovation within very sensitive areas of finance.

CFO’s in attendance at The Wynn had the opportunity to join their peers and share their experiences within this rapidly evolving financial landscape. During breakout sessions they discussed the current challenges and offered questions that included:

                          .   How can I empower finance departments to be more strategic to their business?

                          .   How can we continue to lead the drive for ongoing innovation?

                          .   How do we provide decision makers with actionable, real-time data?

Among the business advice offered was that SAP Simple Finance and SAP S/4HANA can preserve the functional strength of current portfolios, while simultaneously enabling nondisruptive migration.

Jan Waals, Principal and Global Practice leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, offered this insight: “The role of the CFO and the CFO’s team continues to evolve, and this new wave of innovation will allow finance professionals to access information in new ways enabled by the speed and power of the SAP HANA platform. This will help drive ongoing finance transformation as we see it at Deloitte.”

As its name implies, SAP Simple Finance powered by SAP HANA helps companies meet the specific challenges of the CFO. The solution also affords finance professionals the ability to simplify and automate their operations by offering:

                              .  One common view of financial and operational data

                              .  The ability to evaluate the financial implications of multiple business options

                               . On-premise, hybrid, and cloud deployment options

The tremendous value of improved efficiency can be applied to other lines of businesses and processes as well. Furthermore, there is still a great potential for finance professionals to discover how complexity can be reduced while enabling an innovation-driven enterprise.

So if you somehow missed Financials 2015 and GRC 2015 in Las Vegas, not to worry. You have another chance to experience simple finance and it’s all happening soon in grand style in Orlando, Florida at this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW conference.

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