Company Background
- 3rd largest captive finance company in US
- 7th largest finance company in US
- Currently employs over 3,000 associates nationwide
- Managed assets totaling $50 billion
- Offers financial services to support purchase of Forklifts and commercial truck dealers across the USA
- Forklift Market Share 50.58%, Truck Market Share 46.47%
- Electric and alternative fuel vehicle financing
- Fleet Financing for National Account customers
- Financing for industrial Warehouse products
Objective
To enable the customer’s Commercial Finance Group to support Distributors, Dealers, and end customers, provide quality service, reduce risks, grow the business, and pursue new opportunities by replacing current legacy systems (Origination: Web-based, Back-End: Mainframe)
Pain Points
- (A) Legacy Systems Environment
- Mainframe based processing application – Inflexible, expensive to enhance and maintain and no longer supported by the software vendor. Huge customization on top of the delivered product
- Web based Origination system – Inflexible, expensive to support and enhance and not integrated with any other system
- (B) Operational Environment
- Inordinate number of manual, labor-intensive processes to support system deficiencies
- Dealers send business elsewhere due to frustrations with legacy systems
- Credit process is completely manual and unable to support projected growth (over 100% in 5 years)
- (C) Risks and Exposure
- Legal risks in manual processes and limited system controls
- Financial risks due to limited business intelligence
- Satisfaction risk in not being able to meet brand commitment
Proposed Solution
Implement SAP Leasing (Asset Financing and Leasing)
Benefits Summary
- Increased efficiencies will enable the Commercial Finance department to support the forecasted increased volumes
- Improved data accuracy and reduced legal exposure
- Improved decision making
- End-to-End electronic integration with peripheral systems
- Ability to quickly enhance and introduce products
Strategic Blueprinting
- § Visualize “future-value” through multi-level Policy Objective (PO) Matrix (see Fig. 1)
- § Facilitate contentious business decisions through Structure for Enhancing Daily Activities through Creativity (SEDAC) Tool (see Fig. 2)
- § Agile blueprinting process (see Fig. 3)
- foundation of AS-IS system documentation
- TO-BE process definition aligned to PO Matrix
- Strategy definition for build (listed below)
- Demonstrate vanilla E2E scenarios
- § Build Strategies:
- Organization Change Management Strategy
- Scope and Change Management Strategy
- Portal Strategy
- BI and Reporting Strategy
- Data Conversion Strategy
- Functional Training and Documentation Strategy
- Interface Strategy
- Master Data Strategy
- Security and Controls Strategy
- Technology Strategy
- Testing Strategy
- Third Party Tools Strategy
- Technical Knowledge Transfer Strategy
- Release Strategy
Functionality Scope
- Operating Lease
- Direct Finance Lease
- Loan
High Level BPML
- Operational processes:
- § Origination and Credit Check
- § Finalize Contract
- § Invoicing and Payment processing
- § Default contract processing
- § Contract Changes (Customer Call Center)
- § End of Term Actions
- § Liquidate Inventory (Remarketing)
- Master Data Maintenance
- § Setup Business Partner
- § Setup Products – Physical and Financing
- § Setup Pricing
- § Setup Financing Products & Programs
Product Architecture
- § Quotation / Origination: Legacy application (outside SAP)
- § Front-End (SAP CRM 7.0 UI)
- Contract Creation / Validation
- Tax Call (Vertex)
- Inception
- Billing
- Customer Service (Customer Interaction Center)
- Change Processes
- Remarketing
- § Back-End (ECC 6.0)
- FI-LA (Lease Accounting Engine)
- Inception Accounting
- Classifications (US GAAP)
- Accrual / Deferral
- Revenue Recognition
- Payable creation
- Periodic Postings
- Asset creation
- FI-AA (Asset Accounting)
- Asset management
- Depreciation postings
- FI-CA (Contract Accounting)
- Receivables Management
- Dunning
- Payables Management
- Payment Hierarchy
- Incoming Payments
- Outgoing Payments
Financing Product
- Relationship with the Physical Product
- Define Payment Structure
- Cash flows with due dates
- Financed Amount
- Residual Value
- Annuity
- Fees
- Payment Frequency
- Monthly in Advance / Arrears
- Quarterly in Advance / Arrears
- Financing Options
- EOT Purchase Options (Buyout)
- FLEX Lease (3/2)
Change Processes
- Mid Term Changes
- Payment Deferral
- Change of Ownership
- End of Term Changes
- Evergreen Lease
- Extensions / Renewal
- Buyouts
- Termination with Return
- Balloon Loan Rollover
- Repossession – Voluntary or Involuntary
Lessons Learnt during Integration Testing
Integration Testing
- Test for processes Focus is not to test every single configuration which should be done at unit level
- Don’t test for exceptions Empirical analysis of high-volume critical processes to be done prior to scenario selection
- Business owns testing Business should own testing and SI to support
- Expected results are mandatory Without expected results defined for all test cases, Offshore cannot be leveraged
- Test interfaces for correctness Interfaces should be tested not only or communication but also for all process variations
- Test Customer touch-points repeatedly Special focus on all customer communications with multiple cycle testing
- Multiple clients for testing Rigorous planning to be done if testing is done on multiple clients
- Involve End-Users early Involve future Power-Users early in testing cycles
- Accounting periods Special attention on Accounting periods for testing G/L
- Tax processing Test Tax processes standalone as well as integrated with E2E processes
Product Highlights
- Supports Lease / Loan / Full Service Leasing Contracts
- Dealer Financing Programs – Subsidy (Subvention) / Participation
- Complex Pricing conditions can be created
- FiMa (Financial Mathematics) provides wide flexibility to create payment structures, cash flows, financing views
- Lease Accounting Engine (FI-LA) is very strong from financial mathematics standpoint
- A wide variety of built-in contract change processes such as Renewal, Rollover, Early Buyout, Change of ownership, Change of Location etc.
- SAP FI-CA supports a flexible payment hierarchy
- FCC – Financial customer care integrates call center with accounts receivables system
Project Highlights
- Unique 4000+ task level requirements documented
- All requirements linked for future traceability and Change Impact
- Baseline Configuration of 3 critical business scenarios on Sandbox after Blueprint
- BPML created to Level 4 processes
- Total 14 Roadmap Strategy documents created to form basis of Realization
- Defining KPI’s for each L4 process to tie back to P/O Matrix objectives
- Rapid Implementation : Quick learning and implementation – Technical : CRM UI and Functional : Leasing updates
- Migration: First ever Leasing successful migration – super complex financial balancing
- Sales Tax integration: First CRM UI integration with Vertex ‘O’ Series
- Alternate solutioning: Fill Leasing ‘White Space’ with minimum and flexible enhancement (Pass Through, Financing of Tax, etc.)
- Fast-Tracking training: Over 90 BPPs (Business Process Procures) created which quickly translated into training materials with minimum effort by Training Vendor (RWD)
- SAP Development: Unique development relationship with SAP – exchange of resources
- SAP Relationship: Multiple SAP liaisons – Strategic (External SteCo), Tactical (Weekly Status call), Operational (OSS/Daily call)
- Post-Implementation: No Severity 1 tickets logged since July 2008 and <30 Severity 2 tickets
