White Papers

Reducing costs is the major strategic focus for most companies. An often-overlooked cost is the general operation of financial operations. This paper details a methodology for calculating the costs of running financial modules in ERP systems.

The costs are compared against both internal and external benchmarks. After calculating the costs, the paper shows how to reduce costs in two ways: first, by eliminating work that is duplicated across different business units or divisions, and second by determining which operations that are currently distributed across the organization can be consolidated into a shared services center. Together these changes, both to the organization and the ERP system, can generate significant cost savings.

The paper discusses how a $4 billion company using Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) consolidated its distributed accounting departments, one for each European country, into a shared services organization supporting all European operations.  The cost savings realized and the streamlining of operations prepared for the organization for a major ERP software upgrade.