Royal FloraHolland - S/4 Finance

RFH is the largest flower auction in the world (cooperative structure) that does over 90% of the Dutch trade in cut flowers and plants.

Why Royal FloraHolland chose McCoy

Strategic objectives

The ambition to belong to the top 10 'Best in Finance' with their financial processes. Due to the quick turnaround of trade and large volumes, an optimally streamlined invoicing process and 0% downtime is essential. Also, by being Best In Finance, RFH wants to attract financial talent.
Quality and timely financial reports.
Work more efficiently by reducing the amount of customization in the existing landscape.

RFH chose us because of our out-of-the-box implementation strategy:

We advised against the initial thought of upgrading the current ERP landscape. Instead, we proposed a standard integration from S4/HANA to the current billing street. In doing so, we were maximizing risk avoidance and securing the crucial progress of the core billing process.
We recommended implementing S4/HANA directly on the cloud (Amazon Web Service - AWS). This makes outsourcing to an external party easier in the long run.

In addition, RFH appreciated the fact that at McCoy all the knowledge for procurement and finance can be found under one roof.

With this project, RFH won 2nd prize in the 2017 SAP Quality Awards for most successful implementations. The results were accordingly:

'Customization is fraud', is now a winged phrase within RFH. We rigorously standardized the processes, allowing RFH to focus on other things and requiring fewer FTEs.
Strong improvement in real-time insight into financial results through, among other things, the link between invoicing and procurement.
Better financial planning and assurance of the realization of the planning.
A go-live within 6 months, including year-end closing that took time.
0% downtime of the core process in the first 3 years after delivery.

Two success factors were crucial in achieving the results mentioned above:

Addressing each other positively and critically in the bi-weekly steering committee meetings. This enabled us to keep a grip on this far-reaching and large project and to keep an eye on the business objectives for which we started the project.
Avoiding customization. We focused on complete standardization, which contributed greatly to the manageability of the delivered result. Programming in SAP is tempting for IT, but our consultants always tested the relevance of this to the business goals.