Rabobank: Co-innovation for a more efficient financial close

Goal

Consolidate all financial close
processes on a single platform.

Products used

Financial control

Setting the scene

Rabobank is a cooperative bank set up 125 years ago by farmers in Netherlands. Today, their ambitions remain the same: be the number one choice bank for people and companies in food and agriculture focusing on excellent customer experience and empowered employees. But now, on a global scale.

As they’ve grown, Rabobank recognised their global footprint meant they needed to keep functionality streamlined more than ever in order to become the rock-solid bank they set out to be. As they continued to evolve and grow across multiple international jurisdictions that have different reporting standards and thus more complexity, maintaining control of the business while keeping costs low was key. Ultimately, this meant transformation was needed.

To get to their desired end state, Rabobank had specific, extensive but well-considered requirements. They also needed a partner with the same agile mindset and collaborative approach to make this happen.

The problem

Finding the balance between the niche and cost management

While knowing where they wanted to get to was one thing, making it happen was another. Rabobank needed minimal interruption to their day-to-day while big changes for complexity reduction were happening in the background.

Rabobank wanted to decommission legacy systems that were causing inefficiencies in reporting and to move to a more unified strategy based on a single-source of truth for data. By having this in place, they could gain more speed, clarity and reliability without implementation taking multiple years. One product, one global ledger and standardised checks and balances was the aim.

With this tech overhaul, Rabobank also expected to gain real-time access to high quality data. This would allow them to stay in control when it came to reconciliation and reporting for the regulators, and to have the freedom to explore and experiment with new technology like AI, machine learning and no-code solutions.

Rabobank’s desire for a complete digital transformation needed to be cost efficient in the short- and long-term, with the understandable focus to avoid any snowballing cost impacts as the project was underway and they built towards their future. This was a key priority for not only the project but to their larger business strategy. However, from the start, they knew that an out-of-the-box solution wouldn’t work to meet all their requirements.

The solution

Design and build, together

Harnessing agility to create and achieve multi-goals

As SAP Fioneer became its own entity, Rabobank was introduced to a more agile branch of the SAP family that could help them design what they needed. While separating contracts and arranging new ones took a little time at the start, Rabobank’s OnePSL Application design was underway shortly after.

OnePSL is made up of four different software solutions including SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), S/4 HANA, SAP Fioneer’s Financial Product Subledger (FPSL) and Financial Control. Together, these hit the key markers that Rabobank had set out for success: one data source, a cloud solution, strong close processes and automation for these services.

The priority of having a single data foundation as well as stronger reconciliation, reporting and usability, co-innovating the Financial Control product with SAP Fioneer became the top choice. By working with SAP Fioneer, Rabobank had an active participation in the design while being able to keep to the necessary financial parameters that fit with their budget.

Working together: The process and results

To achieve a standardized product that fit with their needs, Rabobank met and discussed with SAP Fioneer regularly for the ongoing requirements throughout the project.

They found that their own business banking knowledge and SAP Fioneer’s IT and software expertise created a unique partnership that was built on open, transparent collaboration from the start.

This allowed for the best of both worlds to come together to create a solution that can be used more broadly – for example, both reconciliation and flow reports – but still fulfil the strict requirements set by both the regulators and Rabobank’s ambitions and technology.

The key to co-innovation success: trust and communication

Rabobank recognised that trust was crucial to the development of Financial Control and communication was key to this. Being unafraid of conflict in the development stage and setting expectations with the understanding that you are both working towards the same goal meant that progress and platform changes could be made quickly and thoughtfully.

The continuous honest reviews on the latest iterations as well as swift action throughout instilled confidence in Rabobank that SAP Fioneer are just as invested in innovation as they are. In other words, a perfect partner to create and build with.

Additionally, having visuals from SAP Fioneer allowed their team to fully interrogate the usability and conceptualise the product in action, even if the design was rudimentary. In place of pages of documents, SAP Fioneer’s high-quality mock-ups reduced the amount of rework needed as no effort was wasted on writing code only for it be changed again later. This differentiated process also meant stakeholders were involved, and invested, right from the beginning.

You both have to be willing to share insight and knowledge to build a strong product together.

Erik-Jan Romijn, Product Control Manager, Rabobank

The outcome

Enabling the present for ambitious future plans

Experiencing reliability and efficiency every day

Rabobank’s input for Financial Control has meant that they start their day in the portal, where they can immediately identify mismatches between source data and FPSL, and make the manual corrections needed on the spot. When it comes to trade investigations too, Rabobank is also able to better and more quickly find the accounting lines that have been produced for each transaction.

With data integrity between sources, the subledger and general ledger taken care of, account substantiation is achieved confidently and harmoniously. So where they process around 300 million transactions a day, there is a heightened efficiency not only saving time but putting them in greater control of the entire business.

Rabobank are also the first in the world to have established a connection to push the data forward from the cloud and into FPSL, that can then feed forward into Financial Control.

Looking ahead with confidence and a solid foundation

With greater control over the business underway, the robust technology behind them means Rabobank will start migrating more business domains in the coming months. Alongside this move, they can continue to identify how to streamline processes and reduce complexity further. For example, integrating checks and balances and designing customised procedures that make sense for them, for example, intradepartmental daily P&L statements being signed off.

Additionally, as AI access is a possibility for them now, further automation such as identifying patterns, then detecting and fixing breaks is becoming more of a reality.

Rabobank’s input into Financial Control has given them greater freedom and capability to meet their business goals now and in the future.