Functional Expertise
SAP Financials and SAP Logistics are the two major functional areas of expertise at Frontem. In our opinion, these are the foundation pillars of a solid SAP ERP Solution for any industry. The true business benefit driver is to leverage on the SAP Integration between these areas.
SAP Financials
- Financial Accounting
- Management Accounting
- Financial Supply Chain Management
- Project Systems
- Travel Management
SAP Logistics
- Sales and Distribution
- Materials and Inventory Management
- Logistics Execution
- Production Planning and Execution
- Customer Service
We also have solid integration experience for key application areas like Integration
Financial Accounting
Expertise Area: General Ledger
Implemented simple and with consistency, the GL functionalities can prove that integration is truly the main asset of the SAP ERP package; in all our implementations the G/L was delivered as cornerstone of the Financial Accounting.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Multiple chart of accounts: alternative and group
- Parallel valuation using parallel currencies in both New GL and previous versions
- Handling inflation according to IAS 29
- New GL implementation including enhancements with custom fields
- Currency denomination and translations
- Solution to cover IFRS adoption including Segment reporting, business consolidation/mergers
- Automated allocations used for Segment and Profit Center reporting
- Flexible, drill down reporting for Financial results presentation under different Accounting Principles: Country GAAP, IFRS, Group Reporting
Client Benefits:
- Dramatically reduced the number of manual journal entries, by using SAP standard automatic posting engine from sub-systems (MM, HR, PUR, AA, FI-TV, Tax), thus ensuring consistency and accuracy of reported financial results
- 100% GL reconciliation with sub-ledgers (AP,AR,AA) and Controlling (CO)
- Faster closing periods and easier reconciliation
Expertise Area: Accounts Payables and Receivables
Special Solutions Delivered:
Client Benefits:
Expertise Area: Asset Accounting
Traditionally residing in the SAP Financials area, Asset Accounting has grown to be the foundation of a highly integrated functionality for companies with asset-intense business models. The integration into the SAP Service and Asset Management now covers an end-to-end life-cycle model: from investment planning, procurement, maintenace to retirement and disposal.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Integrated approach for all assets relevant transactions originated within: purchasing, material management, accounts payable, receivable and general ledger
- Subsequent assets capitalization triggered by maintenance activities or overheads accumulation
- Parallel valuations based on Canadian / US GAAP and IFRS standards, including changeover processes for companies in Canada or Europe
- Simulation and calculation for: depreciation, interest or replacement values based on various criteria, including inflation impact
- Reporting design and implementation for companies with large asset database
- Financial Planning and Budgeting processes and integration with Investment Management
Client Benefits:
- Speed up the implementation process, by leveraging our experience in implementing SAP Asset Accounting and integrating it with Supply Chain, Plant Maintenance and Investment Management functionalities
- Leverage our expertise and experience in parallel valuation and IFRS migrations, when such topic becomes a “sine qua non” condition
Expertise Area: Taxes in SAP
Handled with precision, as they should be, all the way through: from calculation and postings to reporting.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- US Sales and Use taxes in SAP for more than 56 000 jurisdictions based on CCH data feeds
- 100% automated US Sales and Use Tax solution with SAP Sales, Purchasing and AP and Vertex products
- Tax calculation at jurisdictions, regional or national level
- Country specific regulations: European VAT, Sales and Used Tax, Withholding; SAP native determined or integrated with external applications
Client Benefits:
- Robust solution, smooth integrated, fair priced and exactly tailored for real needs. If your business is supported by SAP you taxes transactions are as well
- Increased accuracy and reduced tax exposure
Management Accounting
Expertise Area: Product Costing
Designed and implemented in combination with the Production / Project Planning and Execution functionalities, Product Costing enables automation and ensures consistency for both management accounting functions as well as for production oriented managers.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Recipe-based product costing for process industries with process orders, including active ingredient valuation and joint products costing (co-products, by-products, phantom materials)
- Discrete manufacturing costing with production orders, including MTO, MTS, sub-contracting and co-packing
- Repetitive manufacturing product costing
- Cross-plant and cross-company code models
- Work-in-Process calculation, Actual Costing / Material Ledger and variance analysis
Client Benefits:
- Full integration and automation for generating product cost estimates and standard prices, based on recipes, BOMs and routing used in Production planning and execution
- Cost optimization opportunities using complex variance analysis tools to detect the root-cause of production variances
- Accelerated product development cycles using Reference and Simulation Costing
Expertise Area: Profitability Analysis
Designed and implemented in sync with the Sales and Distribution functionality, COPA is one of the most powerful analytical and reporting tool native in the SAP ERP ECC package.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Costing-based and account-based COPA models for Wholesale, Distribution, Consumer Packaged Goods and Manufacturing organizations
- Complex P&L Reporting packages with powerful drill-down capabilities and flexible characteristic selection, including: Customer, Product Hierarchies , Regions, etc.
- Excel-enabled Sales & Revenue Planning with upstream and downstream integrated planning functionality
Client Benefits:
- Enables instant access to Sales and Margin reporting
- “One version of the truth between Sales and Finance” tool, ensured by tight integration with Sales and Billing as well as Overhead Management and Product Costing
- No additional software license costs, as COPA functionality is native in the SAP ERP package
Expertise Area: Advanced Overhead Management Controlling
This specific area in Controlling has important design integration implications across the SAP ERP platform, including Production, Project Systems, Plant maintenance, Customer service, as it defines and controls how resources are costed on these objects.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Direct-cost absorption costing models, using activity types for labor, machine and other direct outputs of Cost Centers
- Automatic calculation of actual activity prices, cost splitting techniques and re-valuation of actual prices on work orders / projects
- Full-absorption costing models for overhead calculation using costing sheets to allocate production or project overheads to work order level
- Automatic periodic cost allocations between SAP cost objects
- Fixed / Variable Cost splitting and reporting
- Cost centers variance analysis and root-cause enablement techniques to determine the source of over-under cost allocations
Client Benefits:
- Empower cost center managers to better manage the use of labour and material resources in their area of responsibility and track plan / budget and actual values.
- Identify, understand and correct causes of variances that can influence the cost of the product or service
Financial Supply Chain Management
Expertise Area: Collections and Disputes Management
As a relatively new application added to the SAP ERP package, FSCM proves to be a highly flexible, modular solution for companies dealing with high volume of receivables.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Credit and Collection shared services center designed to support multiple companies in a group, dealing with high volume of receivables from retail customers and corporate accounts across US and Canada
- Collection strategies and collection groups defined based on customer segmentation and custom logic of assigning customers to collections specialists
- SAP Business Partner synchronization for AR Customer Master Records
- Integrated Dispute Management, for handling Disputed cases
Client Benefits:
- Increased visibility of AR items for customer centric group of companies
- Flexible, proactive collection strategies enable better collection and can reduce the overall DSO
- Traceability of customer contacts, promises to pay and disputes can mitigate risks and improve relationships with the customers
- Optimized processes and automation for high volume of open items
Project Systems Financials
Expertise Area:Project Accounting
As one of the most integrated and complex SAP ERP functionality, Project Accounting goes beyond defining project structures and tasks that collect costs and revenues. The type of business the project can handle and the project durations, being either a customer project or a capital investment one, has important implications on how the accounting treatment of project results must be reported and booked.
Special Solutions Delivered:
- Fully integrated Project Costing models, with multilevel work breakdown structures and various work order types: network activities, PM orders, internal orders, production and CS orders
- Complex multi-level project and order settlement scenarios, including revenue deferral settlement, WIP calculation and settlement as well as capitalization to AuC
- Flexible Results Analysis-based revenue recognition methods, including cost-based PoC and Completed Contract methods
- Resource Related Billing integrated with Results Analysis for Time and Material projects
- SD-based Revenue recognition for Time-related or Service-Delivery related events
- Inter-company billing scenarios
Client Benefits:
- Achieved a high degree of integration between reported project results and project execution activities, thus reducing the duration of the reconciliation process at month-ends
- Enabled Manufacturing, Service & Maintenance collaboration as well as full Asset Management integration
Travel Management
Expertise Area: Travel Planning and Expense Management
Special Solutions Delivered: Client Benefits: Expertise Area:Integrated SD solutions Special Solutions Delivered: Expertise Area: Materials Valuation This is a critical knowledge area that can make or break a successful SAP ERP implementation, as it supports the Logistics processes while having deep implications in SAP Financials. Special Solutions Delivered: Client Benefits: Expertise Area: Transportation Part of the overall Logistics Execution solution from SAP ERP, transportation provides flexible, integrated process solutions for both inbound and outbound shipments in the business logistics chain. Special Solutions Delivered: Client Benefits: Expertise Area:Integrated Production planning and execution with Controlling While the undelying production and operational processes are industry-dependent, the PP-PI functionalities in SAP can model virtually any production planning and execution business process and integrate this with Product Costing and Advanced Overhead Cost Controlling Special Solutions Delivered: Client Benefits: Expertise Area: MRO Processes Special Solutions Delivered: Client Benefits: Special Solutions Delivered:
Sales and Distribution
Materials and Inventory Management
Logistics Execution
Production Planning and Execution
Customer Service
Integration