Transition of the on-premise based travel cost (accounting) process to the cloud

SAP Concur as global Travel and Expense Management at RATIONAL AG

Company / Branch
RATIONAL AG / Industrie

Range of Services
RATIONAL Group is the global market and technology leader for thermal food preparation in professional kitchens. Founded in 1973, the company employs more than 2,200 people, over 1,100 of them in Germany. Since its IPO in 2000, RATIONAL has been listed in the Prime Standard of the German Stock Exchange and is now included in the MDAX. With over 1,000,000 appliances on the market, RATIONAL cooking systems have become the standard in professional kitchens around the world.

Website

www.rational-online.com/en

As the world market leader for professional kitchen equipment, RATIONAL AG is constantly faced with major challenges and decisions regarding the future direction of its corporate strategy. By switching from the previous on-premise solution to cloud-based SAP Concur solutions, the company has taken a decisive step towards digital realignment on a global scale.

With its certified SAP Concur implementation partner, projekt0708, RATIONAL has already succeeded in fully automating its expense management for the first rolled-out sites and seamlessly integrating it with its existing financial system in just a few months. The switch from the previously used on-premise application to cloud-based SAP Concur solutions also led to several positive changes: Simplified expense reports are now just as much a part of everyday life at RATIONAL as secure compliance with international guidelines and the certainty of being able to act securely and quickly at a global level. In the future, the greatest advantage of the cloud for RATIONAL will be the integration of the solution into a holistic, overall global strategy. Business areas such as finance, sales, and HR can benefit worldwide from the insights provided by digital SAP Concur solutions—for greater profitability and resilience.

RATIONAL relies on these SAP Concur solutions

Concur Expense

Capture, analyze, and report travel expenses: all with Expense.

ExpenseIt

Photographed receipts are used to automatically record expenses and allocate them to the correct cost centers.

Audit

External audit of travel expense reports according to company specifications.

Intelligence

Combined analysis of travel, expense, invoice, and credit card data in a single business intelligence system provides a clear overview of all expenses.

Transformation from
on-premise in
Cloud

Locations
worldwide

Integration in existing
SAP ERP solution

The starting point

With more than 1,500 business trips and 300 invoices per month, an on-premise solution for RATIONAL means an enormous amount of time and effort in the travel backend and high additional costs due to unclear expense management. Moreover, different solutions in different countries around the world create limitations in the global process.

The consequences:

• High, manual time input

• Incorrect statements

• No unified expense solution

• No central administration possible

„By switching from the on-premise solution to the cloud, RATIONAL is now much more flexible in terms of further roll-outs.”

Anton Novac, Managing Consultant at projekt0708

A Change Project full of Benefits

Implementation

The experienced Munich-based IT service and consulting company projekt0708 was unceremoniously commissioned to plan and execute the entire RATIONAL implementation process. A roll-out plan was developed following a joint definition of specific requirements—with Germany as the pilot project.

Roll-out

Just eight months after the decision to go digital, the roll-out in Germany took place following successful implementation and ongoing support from SAP Concur and implementation partner projekt0708.

Impact

By linking intelligent travel expense management with its financial system, RATIONAL AG is increasing its data transparency even in the difficult Corona year of 2020, gaining an overview of all costs in real-time, improving compliance, and strengthening its corporate flexibility to be able to respond quickly and securely to the special challenges during the Corona crisis—and beyond.

SAP Concur Solutions - That´s why

„With SAP Concur and the support of projekt0708, we were able to automate travel expense transactions while complying with tax regulations.”

Florian Vogg, Team Leader SAP Fi Projects at RATIONAL AG

After successfully switching to SAP Concur solutions and moving to the cloud, a lot has changed at RATIONAL within a short time:

Optimized processes

By harmonizing all processes across all sites, it is possible to define company-wide output guidelines and centrally manage uniform output types in the system. Stored VAT rates for foodstuffs simplify data entry and reduce the risk of errors in billing to a minimum.

High user-friendliness

While the on-premise solution was only web-based, travelers can now use the SAP Concur app to virtually photograph receipts on the go and submit invoices. With the introduction of the more intuitive user interface for SAP Concur solutions, RATIONAL improves user-friendliness and increases employee motivation.

Profound reporting

While evaluations were previously only possible based on cost centers, it is now possible to create detailed reports and analyses for each country. This makes it possible to track not only expenses but also how many trips were actually made. The reportings also simplify the tax audit enormously.

Intelligent roll-outs

The roll-outs at the first sites provided important early insights for the rest of the change process. For the upcoming implementations, the initial situations at the individual sites are analyzed in detail, country-specific features are defined, and system requirements are specified.

Looking into the future

RATIONAL is planning a fully integrated, intelligent expenditure management system that is uniform across all sites based on the successful change. The following figures prove that the transformation will be completed quickly: Just twelve months after the successful pilot project, seven more sites have already been rolled out with forward-looking expense management from SAP Concur solutions. This means that RATIONAL is taking a more solid step into the future. RATIONAL is also looking into integrating Concur Travel to connect business travel booking directly to the financial system, making travel expense reporting even easier.

Experience Report of the project participants

Pai Arndt, Project Manager SAP Concur at RATIONAL AG, and Anton Novac, Managing Consultant at projekt0708, presented the transition of the on-premise based travel expense (accounting) system to the cloud at RATIONAL AG at the SAP Concur Partner Speed Dating!

The course of the project at the world market leader for professional kitchen equipment, the initial situation for the implementation, the special challenges of the international implementation, and the experiences gathered on both sides will be presented in 25 minutes! (Video is in German)

The professionalism of the SAP Concur solutions made the biggest difference for us. It was the decisive factor for our migration to the cloud.

Pia Arndt, People Partner Sales & Supporting Processes/ Projektleitung SAP Concur at RATIONAL AG