CPI Property Group: Harmonizing and streamlining international financial management in the real estate sector
Meeting the complex needs of international real estate with SAP Cloud ERP
CPI Property Group needed to harmonize legacy ERP solutions across multiple countries to achieve consistency and reduce upgrade costs. By using SAP Cloud ERP capabilities—extending the standard solution and integrating it with third-party software—the organization is meeting the complex needs of the real estate sector. As a result, it is seeing improvements in treasury, cash management, and other financial processes.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Real estate | Central Europe | €20 billion total assets |
Company codes in SAP Cloud ERP
Banks connected via the SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity solution
Integration scenarios supported by cloud integration capabilities within SAP Integration Suite
Business Architect, CPI Property Group
Moving from highly tailored legacy solutions to cloud ERP
CPI Property Group is a family-owned, publicly listed company founded 40 years ago, which specializes in owning and managing income-generating real estate. It owns over 600 office, retail, hotel, and residential properties across Europe, with concentrations in Berlin, Prague, and Warsaw. The company prides itself on its local support teams, prudent capital structure, and its focus on green energy. Operating in multiple jurisdictions, it has to comply with diverse regulations concerning international financial consolidation and reporting.
Up until 2022, it had been using multiple on-premises ERP solutions configured differently for each country, which made financial consolidation and reporting very labor-intensive. These legacy solutions also lacked scalability and were subject to highly disruptive upgrades every few years. To improve shareholder value, the company needed to move to a consolidated ERP solution. When CPI compared its requirements to the capabilities of SAP Cloud ERP, the company found a good fit and chose it as a strategic ERP for the planned transformation.
When standard functionality isn’t enough, extend and integrate
In 2022, CPI Property Group initiated a pilot implementation of SAP Cloud ERP using a greenfield approach and relying exclusively on standard functionality. During the rollout, it became evident that the standard solution could not fully address the specific needs of the company’s real estate operations. A clearer process separation emerged: financial and controlling processes, as well as procurement and treasury, needed to be embedded directly within SAP S/4HANA, while property and asset management processes required integration with SAP S/4HANA rather than being implemented natively. As a result, the project was restarted with an adjusted scope, incorporating third‑party applications better suited to managing these specialized real estate processes.
The platform also facilitated seamless integration between the SAP landscape and industry‑specific applications, such as property management systems operating on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Furthermore, CPI adopted a combined use of the SAP Cloud ALM solution and SAP Integration Suite to enable comprehensive and sophisticated monitoring of its system environments and interface architectures.
As CPI was new to SAP, it decided to take advantage of the SAP Preferred Success service. This helped it navigate the SAP portfolio and facilitate communications with SAP experts to advise on multiple topics, such as licensing best practices and role-based authorizations.
Business Architect, CPI Property Group
Positive results in treasury processes, user satisfaction, and ESG goals
The main benefit of SAP Cloud ERP has been in the treasury function, where it was very positively received. The treasury team really liked the multi-bank connectivity, which made it much faster to prepare accounts payable and approve bank payments to suppliers, a process that had been very tedious in the past. The treasury team also appreciated the multi-bank connectivity because it made it very easy to connect the SAP system to the SWIFT payment network.
The solution also streamlined the preparation of VAT and other reports, reducing errors and the need to submit corrections. There have also been improvements in the financial reporting processes, both thanks to the standard functionalities of SAP Cloud ERP and the possibility of utilizing the structured data for the creation of custom reports in the SAP Analytics Cloud solution. Procure-to-pay processes have been streamlined by converting previously email- and paper-based processes into easily auditable digital workflows.
End-user feedback has been positive, with users praising the modern user interface built with the SAP Fiori user experience. Using SAP Cloud ERP also helps CPI govern user access, approval rights, and the proper segregation of duties, thanks to the role-based authorization approach. Overall, CPI was able to transition to SAP Cloud ERP with no adverse impact on the business.
Business Architect, CPI Property Group
Standardizing across Europe on future-proofed SAP Cloud ERP
By January 2025, CPI had rolled out SAP Cloud ERP in Luxembourg, Czechia, and Slovakia. It will have implemented it in Poland, Hungary, and Romania by July 2026, and aims to complete rollouts in Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia by January 2027. The ultimate intention is to deploy SAP Cloud ERP in every country where CPI operates.
CPI is also considering adopting other SAP offerings in the future, such as SAP Signavio solutions for process mapping and mining, SAP Ariba solutions for procurement, and SAP SuccessFactors solutions for people management.
With more countries going live across Europe using a solution set that is both standardized and customized to the specific needs of the real estate sector, CPI is on course to further enhance the value of its business while focusing on its sustainability goals.