Bain & Company now successfully running all its core financials in 40 countries on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
Having seen significant growth over two decades, Bain & Company (Bain), one of the world’s leading management consultancies, made the choice to migrate to the cloud with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
The system is now successfully running all of Bain’s core financials in 40 countries, marking a milestone for Bain since the firm embarked on an enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization project in 2020.
Given the extent of growth over decades, both organically and through acquisitions, Bain experienced a rise in manual and localized back-end processes – in addition to the challenges of integrating acquired businesses into the wider company.
For these reasons, Bain made the choice to migrate to the cloud with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
“SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition was the best ERP option to meet our needs because of its standard processes, latest industry best practices and continuously delivered innovation, and I believe that adopting an SaaS solution will help future-proof our technology stack as we continue to grow,” Bain CIO Ramesh Razdan said.
“We’ve already completed our first year-end close on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and are very pleased with the results we’ve seen. I’m confident that we’re on course to deliver significant value from this implementation in the coming years.”
A Strategic Opportunity to Optimize Business Operations
In implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition across its global business in 40 countries, Bain was determined to realize the full potential of its new ERP system. From the outset, the program was owned by stakeholders from across both business and technology functions with the goal of fully standardizing core processes end to end and enabling its global users to deliver desired business outcomes with the new technology.
Using its own ERP transformation teams and digital transformation expertise to deliver a “business-led” technology transformation of this magnitude, Bain worked together with SAP to design and deliver its end-to-end “SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition modernization program.” Additionally, Bain also invested in significant change management and training efforts to ensure global users were ready to harness the full value of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
“We treated this as a business-led transformation in the same way we advise our clients,” Bain CFO Steve McLaughlin said. “We standardized many processes to create real business value and execution efficiency. For example, we simplified and standardized our chart of accounts enabling us to utilize SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, group reporting to provide the management reporting our leaders need to make timely decisions. Our business leaders and finance team have owned our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition journey from day one, which was a real key to our initial success and knowing we have more to do.”
Successful “Big Bang” Implementation Across the Globe
Bain is now live globally with fully standard processes following a big-bang implementation across 40 countries. Today, it has a system built around a standardized core, which has enabled faster and better-informed decision-making, automated processes that will lead to reduced manual work, quicker onboarding of acquisitions and seamless ERP upgrades and innovation.
“Bain & Company and SAP have been long-standing partners,” said Scott Russell, Chief Revenue Officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.
“We are delighted to support them in their journey to the cloud so that they are poised to continue transforming their business as well as the businesses of our joint customers. I look forward to seeing Bain & Company fully utilize all the latest innovations, including industry best practices and new technologies like generative AI, available to them through SAP solutions.”
