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Why implement SAP TDF before S/4HANA?

As we plan for the future, many companies that run SAP will migrate to S/4HANA in the coming years for a simplified and innovative structure of finance, accounting, procurement, and other key business areas. This new version of SAP connects your business operations across all business units providing real-time data when and where you need it and, above all, helps maintain governance, which is vital for proactive and accurate decision-making.

Does your company also want to migrate to S/4HANA?

As every company will be part of this digital transformation in the near future, we have some tips below about how to plan for a smoother migration if you implement SAP TDF and our Origen Certified SAP TDF Partner solution component.

SAP TDF is a HANA-based solution that was built to help companies manage the complex Brazilian tax and fiscal reporting environment and stay in compliance with the submission of legal obligations through a single repository of organized and updated information.

Here are some tips on how you can add value right away to your digital transformation initiatives by implementing the SAP TDF solution for your Brazil operations:

– By streamlining the legal reporting submission process for Brazil, tax areas become much more productive, information becomes more secure, and tax optimization programs are capitalized upon making it easier to justify the move to S/4HANA. With the implementation of SAP TDF, you not only ensure that the short-term fiscal needs of your company are met but also address long term needs by implementing a platform for agility and speed using a HANA-based solution for fiscal compliance.

– Many people that run SAP for their Brazil operations are still not aware that as of Q4 2016, SAP is no longer providing support for legal reporting upgrades since the time of the release of SAP S/4HANA on-premise edition 1511. See https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2195701. Essentially, if you intend to stay on the SAP roadmap for legal compliance for Brazil, SAP is only providing current updates on the SAP TDF platform.

We have found when undergoing an SAP TDF implementation, an effort is made to promote a “back to standard” review of localization processes which helps you save on “throw-away” project hours that you would be spending on program maintenance that you would keep investing in ECC development to pay your taxes.

Consider this, when you migrate to the S/4HANA, you will be forced to reconfigure localization processes for Brazil regardless so why not upgrade to SAP TDF and take advantage of the benefits now and optimize your spend on the S/4 migration?

It is important to understand that S/4HANA has completely new table structures and this requires a reconfiguration effort during an ECC to S/4HANA migration.

– Brazil has one of the most complex tax regimes in the world. An average company in Brazil spends 2,600 hours/year to prepare and pay taxes, the next most complex country is China where an average company spends 504 hours- that is 5 times less complex! One needs to anticipate the hours that you will spend during a typical S/4HANA migration project and then consider the potential impact this can have on a Brazil rollout/deployment such as overloading your project team, increasing the risk of mistakes, and compromising the migration project as a whole is part of a global Implementation schedule.

Here are some points to consider specifically for Brazil when undergoing a S/4HANA Migration project:

– The reality is that regardless of whatever fiscal reporting management software you are using today (SAP or 3^rd Party), a new version of that software or new software will need to be implemented given the new table structures of S/4. If you are going to go through this recalibration effort regardless, doesn’t it make sense to at least investigate SAP’s standard solution for Brazil fiscal compliance as a potential option? It may also afford you the opportunity to see the benefits of HANA’s speed and agility without having to commit to a deep dive for the whole organization.

– Implementing SAP TDF as an intermediary platform solution between your older SAP architecture and S/4HANA is a great way to reduce migration impacts by enabling you to introduce a new culture and knowledge of HANA environment/tools gradually without the pressure of a project the size and magnitude of a full ERP migration.

– Another great benefit of SAP TDF is in the case of mergers and acquisitions. SAP TDF has the ability to handle data from different SAP systems (ECC and S/4HANA) as well as external systems such as legacy 3^rd party reporting solutions, other ERP’s or other HCM providers. Historical data that is sometimes needed for SPED reporting, the Federal Reporting Bureau for Brazil, can also be aggregated from multiple systems, analyzed and reported within the SAP TDF platform solution.

With a two-step deployment, starting with SAP TDF, many configurations can be anticipated and performed in advance eliminating the need of having to deal with two new systems at once (ERP and FISCAL), which will enable your company to reserve resources for the future to focus fully on implementing S/4 HANA and having the proper background and training in HANA by initially participating in an SAP TDF project.

This approach of first implementing SAP TDF will also allow you to  learn more about SAP technologies that have been introduced in conjunction with S/4 such as SAP UI5 to run on browsers and devices based on HTML 5; SAP Fiori for a more work-friendly experience to the end-user, and Messaging Framework, a communication tool to send and return events.

Proper planning and instituting a game plan that takes into account all the implications needed for Brazil can lead to a very successful migration project. You can count on Origen to help you manage your S/4HANA migration and SAP TDF implementation needs creating a Safe Harbor passage for your Brazilian operations.

SAP S/4HANA: the greatest SAP’s innovation solution today is the system that is the evolution of SAP ERP. Where this new ERP uses SAP’s own database with in-memory technology for storing application information. With this greater memory and speed potential, SAP S/4HANA allows significant business processes enhancements such as the improvement of Financial processes, Logistic and material control. Everything can work even better with the technological support of trends like BIG DATA, BlockChain, Cloud computing, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Mobility.

A bit of background

The biggest ERP in the market today, ‘SAP’ has evolved over the past four decades and has been the single most integrated business solution implemented in the market. With companies across the globe in numerous industries utilizing SAP solutions for business and IT functions, has created a vast amount of career opportunities for a number of highly skilled and specialized consultants.

The integrated nature of the SAP S/4HANA offering requires a combined effort from many professionals who come with deep business knowledge and expertise in different business areas (functional consultants) such as procurement, manufacturing, sales & distribution, finance, quality, maintenance, warehouse, service, etc. In addition to these process areas, consultants with deep technical expertise (technical consultants) are also needed to install, maintain, customize and update the SAP solution. Also, there is a need for system administrators and people who administer security (basis and security consultants).

Traditionally, companies hired consulting firms (also called system integrators or SI’s) to understand their business processes and bring in their consultants with specific skill sets who can, design and configure the future SAP system and also train their personnel.

A quick look at how SAP product(s) evolved

The mainframe-based SAP R2 was released in 1979 with a two-tier architecture. The widely popular R3 system was released in 1992 which comprised of a 3 tier architecture (database, application server and the presentation server being the 3 tiers). SAP kept enhancing the product in the form of updated releases. SAP stabilized its product with the name ECC 6.0 released in 2006. SAP kept adding enhancement packs until 2013, the last one being EHP7 released in 2013.

In the last decade, SAP released numerous products that worked in conjunction with core ECC 6.0 (also called as ERP6) to meet specific business needs, a few examples being mySAP CRM, SRM, APO, PLM, EWM, BW/BI, MII, SCM, MRS among many others.

In addition, numerous industry specific versions of SAP ECC6 (ERP) are made available, which catered to specific industry segments such as retail, utilities, public sector, oil & gas, healthcare, banking to name a few.

SAP came up with strategies to stay as a leader in the ERP market with sustaining growth over years to come. SAP’s new mantra to achieve this is by bringing the new S/4 HANA solution into the market.

What is HANA?

SAP traditionally operated on databases that they did not own. All of the SAP installations done prior to HANA were utilized using competitor’s databases. HANA is SAP’s own ‘state-of-the-art’ database which is column oriented and stores data ‘in-memory’. It offers ‘real-time’ analytics.

SAP introduced HANA database to the market in 2011. SAP has issued new HANA releases since then with different names and functionality. ‘BW on HANA’ was released in 2012 which gained a lot of momentum in the world of analytics. In 2013, SAP released ‘Suite-on-HANA (SOH)’ which basically means the entire existing SAP products suite is running on a HANA database. Since the introduction of HANA, SAP is working towards enhancing and optimizing all of the existing products to take advantage of the capabilities of HANA database and eliminate restrictions that the existing relational databases imposed.

SAP continued to expand their product portfolio by acquiring a number of companies and merging the products with their new generation products. A few such examples are SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris, Syclo, etc.

SAP released Simple Finance in 2014, which is an S/4 product and also runs on HANA. Simple Finance saw a big change in terms of how financial data is stored in the SAP system. Numerous tables that traditionally stored SAP Finance and Costing (FI/CO) data have been condensed into a handful of HANA tables which reduces complexity in data storage and increases reporting speed.

Moving ahead on the same path, SAP intends to “HANA-ize” all the traditional modules in the ERP. SAP release 1511 S/4HANA covers the latest suite of SAP products including SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management.

What is Fiori?

SAP also addressed the age-old complaint that the SAP screens are not user-friendly and non-intuitive, by releasing what is called ‘Fiori’ user interface (Ux). Fiori is based on UI5 technology and contains a set of front end templates called ’tiles’ that users can pick and choose from the applications they intend to run on SAP. One other key feature of Fiori is mobility integration. All the new generation SAP products are web enabled, persona-based and configurable.

It appears like future SAP implementations will typically comprise of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management application running on Fiori front-ends and will be mobility enabled. Since the table structures will be simplified, there will probably be a limited need for RICEF (custom developments). Reports would be generated using the in-memory (cloud) capabilities. Just a guess but simple queries might be able to generate complex reports given that the table structures are simple. We may have to wait to see if the new generation of digital analytics might possibly eliminate the need for traditional BW reporting!

What it means to SAP Consultants

While SAP is driving big changes and is on their way to creating new markets for the new generation products, customers are still confused with the fast pace of changes and the array of products available currently with overlapping functionality. They have a hard time making the right choices and need help in understanding what the SAP S/4HANA voyage really means.

This offers a huge challenge as well as a huge opportunity for SAP consultants to catch up with SAP’s pace of innovation to understand the latest products and provide customers with right information to guide them in making the right choices. Good news is that the core business processes are driven by the industry solution and more or less will remain the same irrespective of the technology advancements. So, the need of the hour for SAP consultants is to invest the proper time in upgrading their skills, after all, consultants are the ones that need to understand the new products, features, and functionality to make themselves valuable and marketable for the future!

Demand for SAP Consultants

The number of SAP consultants has increased steadily as the number of SAP implementations has increased from the late 80s until now. Depending on the demand for certain skills, consulting companies, and independent consultants can charge premium rates for specialized skillsets and expertise. However, the demand for certain skillsets is varied based on the industry trends, the number of ongoing implementations, support requirements, and the pace of innovation being released by SAP. Seasoned SAP consultants will v understand quickly that they need to constantly upgrade their skills with newer product releases and acquire newer skills that are in demand constantly so that they can stay in high demand as well.

Latin America is one of the fastest growing and challenging markets for Invoicing

For some time now, several Latin American countries have mandated electronic invoicing compliance regulations that are dictated by taxation or government authorities for each specific country.

Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Chile’s E-Factura follows Brazil’s Nota Fiscal Eletrônica, where local government entities have required companies to replace standard paper invoices with electronic invoices, as you can see below here are some of the unique mandates as listed per country specific requirements.

Mexico
• Electronic Invoice (PI and eDocument)
• Foreign Trade Complement
• Payment Complement
• Electronic Accounting
• DIOT report
• Deferred taxes process and report

Argentina
• Electronic Invoice (PI)
• Provinces perceptions regimes
• Sales and Purchase regime reports
• VAT report
• Withholdings report

Colombia
• Electronic Invoice (eDocument full solution)(for outbound and inbound e-invoice)
(New adopters for 2018 and mandatory for 2019)
• Magnetic Media reports.

Chile
• Electronic Invoice (eDocument full solution and basic solution) (for outcoming and incoming DTE)

Peru
• Electronic Invoice (eDocument full solution and basic solution) (for outcoming e-invoice)
• eDocument Solution covers the electronic transmission of the XML files for these processes for Peru:
o Transmission of Single Invoice/Debit Note/Credit Note.
o Transmission of Boletas Daily Summary.
o Void Document (cancellation).
o Withholding certificate.

The primary drivers for implementing e-invoicing compliance in these Latin American countries are as follows:

• Promoting a more transparent relationship between tax authorities and taxpayers to ensure that tax authorities can maximize their respective tax revenue
• Eliminating tax evasion and preventing unfair competition
• Speeding up and improving the tax inspection processes
• Rationalizing, standardizing and consolidating the accessory obligations required of taxpayers
• Reducing the cost of taxpayers’ accessory obligations
• Protecting the environment by reducing the use of paper

Each of these Latin American countries has unique processes that are defined by the respective local government authorities. Non-compliance can have severe consequences such as penalties, fines, interruption/halt of supply chain activities, and in rare cases, even jail time for company representatives.

eDocument Solution for LATAM Countries

The eDocument Framework is a SAP solution for managing electronic documents that have legal compliance aspects. The eDocument country-specific solutions are built on top of a global framework that is provided by SAP.

SAP harmonizes the increasing number of country specific approaches that are considered “country specific” into a uniform framework lowering overall complexity and day to day management.

The SAP eDocument Framework has been developed by SAP Globalization Services and helps to transform documents created in various SAP applications into predefined exchange formats and transfer it electronically to external systems, such as legal entities or tax authorities.

The SAP eDocument Framework facilitates the realization of different local requirements by:

• Leveraging their similarities
• Ensuring high standards
• Providing consistent user experience and reduce operational costs

Origen e-Invoice Solutions: reduce operational costs in Latam countries

As an e-Invoicing innovator and integrator for companies that run SAP for Latin American operations, Origen has experience with implementing e-Document Framework for companies that operate in Latin America and have to manage different mandates across the region. With the growing demands of e-billing and e-invoicing, Origen enables compliance while maintaining the SAP inherent country version to maximize SAP cross-functional ROI and strategy.

The Origen E-Factura suite simplifies the process of adopting e-Invoicing for the Latin America region and reduces operational costs and efforts to maintain compliance. You can send and receive legally compliant, digitally signed invoices electronically and in the formats your business and partners require.

In addition to connecting you with partners, the solution architecture facilitates compliance and optimizes your internal resources for maximum ROI.

The Tigre Case

One of the cases of e-Document Framework implemented by Origen was from the Brazilian multinational company Tigre in Peru. The company needed an SAP solution to comply with the local electronic billing regulations. The solution implemented by Origen allowed Tigre Peru key users the creation of electronic documents originated in documents previously created in SAP applications (FI and SD).

The system enables the electronic document to be downloaded and subsequently processed within the solution. This electronic document solution required the implementation of a customized development for the purposes of mapping the data legally required by the XML format and to be able to send the electronic document to the system of the tax authorities or a third party.

Tigre obtained several benefits, such as consistency with each country fiscal standards, validation functions, unique communication platform and central data repository. Other benefits were:

• Native system integration / security / potential fiscal platform repository;
• Centralization of data to deliver the legal/fiscal obligations and
• Validation of electronic documents or e-Invoices

As results, the company achieved:

• Customer retains control over mappings
• Validates legal requirements, authenticity and the end-to-end data integrity.
• Offer compliance services such as delivery, long-term archiving, certificate management, etc.
• Country compliance

To learn more about eDocument and how it ensures compliance and reduce operational costs in Latam countries, contact us!

Photo by Beatriz Pérez Moya on Unsplash

On July 2, 2018, the 3.10 version of the NF-e will be deactivated. The changes in the layout of electronic invoices aim to standardize this process, increasing the tax security and control on the goods circulation. They also intend to reduce the maintenance in the systems of NF-e emission for the companies and for the SEFAZ.

See below what changes and which updates are required in GRC-NF-e and ERP:

The NF-e layout change requirements are grouped over a period and end up composing a national annual version, or every two years. The objective is to avoid frequent changes in the NF-e layout, to reduce the need for maintenance in NF-e emission systems for companies and SEFAZ.

The exception to this rule is motivated by the adaptations necessary in the change of legislation, which normally have a smaller size, but which must also comply with a schedule that can be observed by the companies and by the authorizing SEFAZ. The last layout revision was made in 2014. Currently the NF-e layout is in the “3.10” version.

Deadline for implementation

The deadlines for implementing the changes are:

• Homologation Environment (business test environment): 01/15/2018.
• Production Environment: 01/22/2018.
• Deactivation of the previous version: 02/07/18

Technical Upgrade

The scope of this proposal includes the technical upgrade of the new Invoice layout according to:

• Technical follow-up on Upgrade from PI 7.0 to the latest version;
• Upgrade from NF-e to version 4.0;
• Review of current processes and suitability for new requirements;
• Adaptation of XML schemas to version 4.0;
• Technical understanding of changes proposed by SAP and configuration;
• Applying SAP Notes in the ECC environment to tailor the XML Layout;
• Current BADI migration to BADI of consistency;
• Development of new validations in BADI;
• Monitoring of functional and user tests;
• Documentation of changes;
• Training for Key-User and IT department regarding changes made by the project;
• Follow-up go-live and post-production.

Origen Technologies has substantial experience in deploying NF-e and can help you with this update.

Contact us: info@homolog.online.

Origen Technologies, a global partner of SAP products and services specializing in Latin American localization and compliance projects, has participated of ASUG’s SUBSIG TDF event, an event targeted to companies in Brazil that run SAP on May 16^th, 2018.

The event brought together interested clients and SAP partners interested in learning more about SAP’s Tax Declaration Framework, SAP’s solution for handling Brazil’s complex fiscal reporting and best practices implementation approaches. The objective of the event was to show news, success stories and create discussions around the broad and comprehensive fiscal theme in Brazil.

Origen participated in the event to talk about the SAP TDF SaaS offering using Telefónica’s OpenCloud hosting platform. By using SAP’s PMC (Partner Managed Cloud) partnership model, Origen can resell the SAP TDF solution to end-users and also deploy a certified SAP HANA TDF solution hosted on Telefónica Open Cloud representing a unique offering in the market.

Origen, together with Telefonica, offers a  cost-effective, flexible and evolutionary pathway for companies with Brazil operations to enable real time processing for their Fiscal Reporting needs using SAP’s Tax Delcaration Framework Solution.

Talk to us: info@homolog.online

Many Latin American countries have strict billing and tax filing regulations for companies operating in the region.  The newest country with upcoming e-invoicing requirements is Colombia.

The country is preparing to mandate its own specific requirements. With these new regulations, companies that declare and pay VAT in Colombia must issue electronic invoices, which means that organizations doing business will need to implement new processes and technologies to avoid fines and penalties. Colombia has outlined the following for companies that need to comply with this mandate:

Due Date:

• Companies that requested numbering ranges (folios) for e-invoicing during the last five years and invoice less than 3M invoices per month will have to adopt e-invoicing compliance by June 29^th, 2018.
• Any company within the list of big contributors (grandes contribuyentes) will have to adopt e-invoicing compliance by September 1^st, 2018.
• Companies that requested numbering ranges (folios) for e-invoicing during the last five years and generate more than 3M invoices per month, e-invoicing compliance is mandatory as of September 29^th, 2018.
• e-invoicing compliance is mandatory as of January 1st, 2019 for all taxpayers who declare and pay VAT in Colombia

These requirements will affect various organizational areas, including accounting, logistics and human resources, making it potentially complex to comply with given the impact in can have on your organization.

Origen Tech: implementation of SAP e-Document Framework

Origen Tech can help with the implementation of SAP’s e-Document Framework solution to handle electronic invoicing and fiscal reporting in Colombia and throughout Latin America to meet the region’s regulatory demands for companies that run SAP.

Origen Tech can help you:

• Overcome the impact of this legislation on your internal finance and IT teams
• Learn how multinationals can start preparing in advance to meet the deadline
• Avoid potential risk for fines, audits, operational disruptions and IT challenges to comply with this requirement
• Implement electronic billing procedures that can help you save money by automating processes and creating efficiencies streamlining your business environment

Would you like to learn more? Please contact us: info@homolog.online

SAP has announced an important update to SAP’s Integration Road Map in the Cloud. Let’s take a look at the highlights?

• Updated timelines for key processes for the intelligent enterprise — recruit to retire, lead to cash, design to operate, and source to pay — along our suite qualities. This provides customers with a clear road map for their transitions into intelligent enterprises;
• SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, the open and modular iPaaS supporting a comprehensive set of enterprise-wide integration scenarios, has been enhanced with further integration templates. Adding to already more than 1,500 prepackaged integrations and over 160 open connectors for SAP to non-SAP applications, these templates for example include SAP S/4HANA to Salesforce integration;
• The integration suite offering is completed by SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology, which helps customers to define and execute an integration strategy for cloud and hybrid landscapes by providing proven integration patterns and architecture blueprints that have recently enhanced by SAP in close collaboration with customers.
• To guide customers on their journey to become intelligent enterprises, SAP also offers integration services — from strategy and planning through implementing to operating and optimizing such an intelligent enterprise.

Interested? Visit origentech.com, get in touch and meet our solution experts to go deeper!

Mail to info@origentech.com or Call to 1-855-ORIGENT (1-855-674-4368)

Read on to learn the top 10 business priorities shared by midsize companies and tips on how to achieve them.

Source of the list is the IDC survey “Becoming a Best-Run Midsize Company: How Growing Companies Benefit from Intelligent Capabilities”. The survey was done in 2019, sponsored by SAP and heard 1,957 business professionals within companies with between 10 and 999 employees in 13 different countries.

SAP for Midsize Companies? Check it out below:

Interested? Visit origentech.com, get in touch and meet our solution experts to go deeper!

Mail to info@origentech.com or Call to 1-855-ORIGENT (1-855-674-4368)

Origen and SAP have worked closely together to be able to provide the most current version of world-class SAP software faster without the dedicated staffing requirements and up-front capital expenditure of an on-premise deployment.

Origen is an official partner of SAP to provide solutions through a well-structured Hyperscale cloud program.

SMB global firms with operations in US, Brazil and LATAM, have long been looking for help on how to deal with increased complexity for doing business such as:

• Regulations driven by fiscal control of government entities
• Digitalization of tax administration offices resulting in statutory mandates for submission of electronic invoices and financial reporting to local tax authorities
• High cost of maintaining on-premises applications, custom developments and the impact of a high degree of local enhancements especially for companies with global operations outside of the US
• Constant need to reduce and optimize TCO and are top-level priorities for sustainable and affordable IT management
• Initial CAPEX expenditure for purchasing up-front licenses and on-premise infrastructure using a traditional approach becoming harder to justify to the C-Suite
• Prohibitive on-going management costs and fixed cost contracts that do not add continual value and improvement to the ERP environment
• Digital transformation enablement and de-risking the move to the Cloud.

According to a research of Aberdeen¹, businesses that have taken advantage of the SAP Partner Managed Cloud program are two times more likely to see reductions in CapEx spending.

The Origen SOLaaS (Solution as a Service)-based offering powered by the S/4HANA is built on the most powerful ERP solution platform available for small to medium sized firms that are growing rapidly and need flexibility and agility for their business model. The solution is typically used by companies seeking a comprehensive solution for managing every aspect of their business – from financials to sales, order management, procurement, inventory-handling, and manufacturing. SAP S/4HANA automates your end-to-end business processes and improves decision-making with real-time insights, with the ability to maintain compliance of respective country laws and taxes.

The Origen’s S/4HANA Solution as a Service (SOLaaS) package contains all the localizations needed to do business in the following countries: USA, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Chile and Argentina.

The benefits are as follows:

• The simplicity of one vendor, one contract, one point of contact
• Origen takes care of the deployment, application and infrastructure management, ongoing maintenance and support, and upgrades
• Further cost savings by reducing or redeploying in-house IT resources for more critical internal tasks to run the business more effectively
• Proven expertise of a full-service SAP systems integration firm for global corporations with business operations in Latin America
• Lower TCO and improved cash flow
• Reduced risk and accelerated time to value
• Ability to run the most current software and bring scalability for future needs.

All costs associated with purchasing and managing your SAP software are combined in a single subscription fee, giving you greater predictability and control over monthly and quarterly operating expenses.

The Origen S/4HANA Solution SaaS offering is a revolutionary approach that helps you determine the right solution and configuration for your business requirements so that you can get started quickly and only pay for the software you need to run your business effectively. As your needs change, you can adapt your SAP instance with add-on solutions that have been built by SAP technology partners to fulfill industry-specific and other critical business needs.

Interested? Please contact us info@origentech.com  or Call to 1-855-ORIGENT (1-855-674-4368) in order run a quick pricing exercise to right size your SAP ERP requirements and see if Origen’s S/4 Solution as a Service can meet your budgetary requirements!