Customer Stories
Akkodis: Harnessing the cloud for more-efficient delivery of client services
Explore Akkodis’s journey with SAP
When aging on-premise finance, controlling, and purchasing systems made it difficult for Akkodis, part of Adecco Group AG, to process consultants’ time sheets and invoice clients promptly, it sought another way. Trusting proactive assistance from SAP Preferred Success services and Delaware Consulting SAS, Akkodis reshaped its operations on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
system uptime.
faster time sheet availability for more accurate invoicing.
productivity improvement for sales and controlling team.
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP Concur solutions, we are future ready, digital, and mobile.
Emmanuel Garelli
Cloud ERP Project Director, Akkodis, part of Adecco Group AG
Rethinking time sheet processing for thousands of consultants globally
Part of Adecco Group AG, Akkodis is a global leader in technology and engineering expertise and talent management services in 30 countries, offering cross-sector expertise delivered through its four service lines: consulting, solutions, talent, and academy. Its consultants bring digital and engineering solutions together, creating new innovations that foster human security and sustainability and enhance digital capabilities in global industries, such as aerospace, automotive, transportation, and life sciences.
Combining IT and engineering expertise, Akkodis supports clients in rethinking their product development and business processes, improving productivity, minimizing time to market, and shaping a smarter and more sustainable tomorrow.
When the systems Akkodis used for finance, controlling, and purchasing functions began to hinder its ability to process consultants’ time sheets and invoice clients quickly, the time came for the company to modernize its operations. Needing to meet the high expectations of its digitally attuned consultants who prefer to manage their client engagements using mobile devices, Akkodis envisaged a cloud-first transformation. The goal was to deploy more-reliable, high-performing solutions to deliver a better experience and meet the needs of both clients and consultants.
SAP Preferred Success services and our partner Delaware showed us how to maximize the value of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP Concur solutions to reinvent our finance, controlling, and purchasing processes.
Emmanuel Garelli
Cloud ERP Project Director, Akkodis, part of Adecco Group AG
Reinventing processes across finance, controlling, and purchasing
To bring its cloud-first vision to life, Akkodis teamed up with Delaware Consulting and evaluated a number of solutions before making the decision to transform its operations on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition. The company was impressed by the solution’s robust, scalable, and stable infrastructure for ERP in the cloud that would help it modernize business operations and eliminate the need for on-site maintenance. It also opted to integrate SAP Concur solutions to simplify expense management, SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (SAP Intelligent RPA) technology to automate finance processes, and the SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity solution to improve treasury operations.
To maximize value from the solutions, Akkodis employed SAP Preferred Success services, gaining access to experts, insight-driven recommendations, best practices, targeted learning, in-depth release guidance, and prioritized incident handling. These services allow for faster outcomes and time to value with lower risks and fewer deployment concerns.
Lowering costs by capturing time sheet information more efficiently
Akkodis successfully implemented SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, going live with the solution just 12 months after the initial solution discovery. Project phases involved transforming internal processes, building a model to ease future deployments, migrating data, and training key users.
Having created its new business environment on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, Akkodis is capturing time sheet information more efficiently and has improved invoicing accuracy. Moving to weekly and biweekly instead of monthly time sheets dramatically increased billing visibility, enabling managers to better plan and forecast. In tandem, the use of SAP Concur solutions streamlined travel and expense management.
By eliminating aging on-premise solutions requiring constant manual patching and updates, Akkodis also minimized the time and resources needed to maintain critical systems, while increasing finance system uptime and reliability to nearly 100%. The professional services firm is now closing its books two to three days faster than previously and can respond more quickly to client needs across multiple geographies.
In addition, thanks to SAP Intelligent RPA, the firm’s sales and controlling teams are more efficient. Taking advantage of prebuilt automation bots, or prebots, to automate processes for project staffing and billing output has resulted in productivity gains of 5%, freeing some resources to be deployed elsewhere. Akkodis has also improved the accuracy and timeliness of client invoices and streamlined submission processes. And use of the SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity solution has significantly improved its cash collection activities.
With its new technology foundation built in the cloud, Akkodis now has the flexibility and a future-ready model to ease the integration of acquisitions.
Featured partner
Delaware Consulting SAS is a global company engaged in delivering advanced technology solutions and services and guiding customers through business and digital transformations. Guiding the implementation, Delaware helped Akkodis digitalize its finance, controlling, and purchasing processes and built a future-ready technology infrastructure to ease future acquisitions.