Ibrahim helps to set up S/4HANA at Aedifica

The 32-year-old Ibrahim has been working for the Brussels Blue Chip Boutique Transition & Support since October 2019. After his studies in Commercial Engineering at the ‘Vrije Universiteit Brussel’, he worked for several companies. One of his assignments was a nine-month project in the hotel sector in Dubai.

The day after he began to work at TriFinance, he started his project at Aedifica. The listed company has a special focus on seniors with a care need. Its portfolio in six European countries - Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom - is worth €3.5 billion and includes 473 locations housing a total of 33.000 people.

Backbone of the organization

Needless to say, Aedifica is in a booming business due to Europe's ageing population. To help manage its growth, the company is implementing the latest version of SAP: S/4HANA. The centralisation of its business support activities, such as accounting and auditing, brings operational benefits. "It will be the backbone of our organisation, supporting the European growth of our portfolio", emphasises Aedifica’s CFO Ingrid Daerden.

Aedifica chose to work with TriFinance because we have a pragmatic approach - no purely theoretical exercises for us - and because we were able to deploy Ibrahim immediately. "He doesn't just bring us his technical skills. He succeeds in taking our specificity fully into account in the solutions we come up with," Ingrid Daerden emphasises. Ibrahim indicates that he focuses mainly on the challenges of data migration and on bookkeeping and tax reporting requirements. He says he learns a lot about the operational part of the business and about bookkeeping.

S/4HANA makes it possible to streamline and standardise processes. One of its important novelties is its ability to proactively identify any problems and propose solutions. This solving ability reduces the tasks that have to be done manually. S/4HANA has many possibilities for improvement: more automation, better processes end-to-end, data integration, predictive thinking... All in one system.

The introduction of S/4HANA is much more a Business Project than an IT issue. At Aedifica, it's about switching from the BOB accounting software to the latest ERP system from SAP. Ibrahim explains that he started by working out the processes, reviewing a blueprint and validating that the document meets all requirements. Preparing the master data, testing the chosen solutions and training the employees are also part of his assignment.

"The project is organised around four domains: introducing standardised bookkeeping processes and new analytical dimensions, setting up an integrated Purchase to Pay process, managing the Rental Accounting and Service Charge Settlement activities, monitoring the development and maintenance projects", Ibrahim explains.

He clarifies: "We successfully completed Phase 1 of the project last July. The most important impact on the daily work is undoubtedly the new integrated Purchase to Pay solution. The end users will work with the new SAP Fiori user interface and a corresponding approval workflow to place a purchase order (order form), while the accounting department will be able to automatically link the order (receipt) to the invoice in SAP".

Meanwhile, phase 2 of the project is underway: the full implementation of the new system in the organisation's foreign branches. Aedifica is now also calling on two additional Project Consultants from TriFinance to assist its accounting team in its day-to-day activities and during the transition period.