Business Evolution: Standardizing business processes and accelerating innovation with a swift move to the cloud
Spearheading its own transformation
IT consultancy firm Business Evolution has seen firsthand how cloud ERP helps clients cut infrastructure costs, enhance scalability, and become more agile. Having speedily deployed an SAP Cloud ERP solution using the SAP Activate methodology, the IT company has experienced these benefits and more, setting the stage for sustainable growth.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Professional services | Ternopil, Ukraine | 50 employees |
reduction in financial closing time, to four days.
automation of client-account processing.
client projects integrated into one financial model.
CEO, Business Evolution LLC
Standardizing ERP to enhance visibility and responsiveness
Achieving Partner Center of Expertise certification from SAP, Business Evolution LLC has more than 20 years of experience in deploying and supporting SAP solutions that help clients improve business processes, achieve transparency, and, as its motto explains, “enhance the value.” The firm sees itself not just as an integrator but as a digital transformation partner.
Having seen many of these customers migrate to the cloud, Business Evolution decided it was time to replace its own on-premises ERP solution. Management reporting at the firm was largely manual, while data was siloed—with hours needed to transfer client-project data to ERP. The firm calculated revenue only when a project closed, so it lacked current data on profitability. And additional IT resources or customization was needed to scale up new roles, accounts, and projects, hindering growth.
Business Evolution wanted to replace this disparate, complicated ERP system with an integrated, holistic cloud solution. This would help the firm not only optimize core operational, management, and financial processes but also enhance scalability and responsiveness to change.
Specific goals included centralizing management of client projects by combining finance, resource management, planning, and reporting in a single environment. The firm also wanted to create a more transparent and efficient finance and billing system and use ERP as a springboard for innovation.
CEO, Business Evolution LLC
Rethinking processes based on best practices
Business Evolution had seen its own clients kick-start their digital transformation in a matter of weeks with an SAP Cloud ERP solution. As a result, it understood the logical next step was to deploy the solution through the GROW with SAP journey.
The firm knew the solution’s preconfigured processes based on best practices would aid a smooth implementation and speedy go-live. In the longer term, the cloud ERP solution would help reduce system maintenance costs while harmonizing and standardizing business processes to enable growth. Indeed, it quickly became clear that more than 40% of the firm’s business processes would be subject to change, opening up new opportunities to boost efficiency and productivity.
Also attractive was the potential to tap into preconfigured AI, machine learning, and real-time analytics and to use services on SAP Business Technology Platform to extend and complement the solution’s capabilities.
Business Evolution gave itself a short 90 days to replace legacy ERP systems across functions spanning finance and controlling, procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, logistics and supply chain management, and service operations. GROW with SAP supported this short time frame, as did the firm’s use of the SAP Activate methodology.
Fostering growth with flexible, efficient, and transparent operations
Having implemented SAP Cloud ERP in 90 days as planned, Business Evolution now has a single platform for comprehensively managing and monitoring client services. The firm benefits from reduced IT customization, standardized processes, and continuous innovation through quarterly updates that help it react more quickly to change. It can scale up more quickly, adding new roles, accounts, and projects without additional IT resources. Labor costs have fallen by around 30% thanks to automated processing of financial documents, centralized data, and unified systems.
Teams from sales to finance can collaborate more easily using shared current data, and diverse business users have access to tools that help them build applications without developer involvement, including SAP Build solutions.
On the client-project side, by combining all projects into one financial model and using plan-actual analysis, Business Evolution can monitor deviations in real time and respond quickly to budget or load issues. The firm has improved both resource scheduling and compliance with service-level agreements while increasing visibility of service profitability and technician performance. More-transparent planning and better control also help improve project and service management. The firm can use employee performance analytics to evaluate consultants’ and developers’ performance. Expense management is enhanced too, with approval time cut from three days to less than one day.
For finance teams, automated revenue and expense recognition and accounting processing have slashed financial closing time and reduced the burden on the financial team by 20% to 30%. Built-in field checks have cut the frequency of accounting errors from 5% to less than 2%. Invoices are now issued just a day after a project closes, and monthly recognition of income and expenses enables ongoing visibility of project profitability.
Meanwhile, in terms of IT operations, infrastructure costs are down by 70% and support costs by 40%, while downtime is practically zero. The firm can also more easily track and improve KPIs, including period-end closing, time to issue invoices, ROI from process automation, and time to launch new functions and capabilities.
Building on the confidence gained through a successful deployment
Business Evolution now intends to leverage the experience gained through its implementation of SAP Cloud ERP through measures such as examining how it can best use SAP BTP to extend the cloud ERP solution. Other next steps include exploring the potential of AI and visual test and repair services, including using SAP Build solutions.
The firm also plans to look at the capabilities and benefits of software such as SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Business Data Cloud solutions.
As Business Evolution delves into how it can best use SAP Business Suite to enhance the value of its growing business, the possibilities are endless.
Want to know more about Business Evolution?
Business Evolution: Standardizing Business Processes and Accelerating Innovation with a Swift Move to the Cloud (SAP Video)