Replacing a Finance Legacy ERP System with a Modern ERP For Wakanow

The finance department faced challenges with its legacy system, which could not be upgraded, incurring rising maintenance costs while suffering from data incompatibility; hindering collaboration with other business units.

Year
2024

Role
Business Analyst

Context (Business Case)

The finance department is at a crossroads with its current legacy system; the system cannot be upgraded to a latest version (latest versions are unavailable), the cost of maintaining the system increases with each maintenance cycle and there is a data incompatibility between the system and other data processing systems, therefore leading to a lack of collaboration between the finance team and other core business units.

Problem Statement

A major part of financial operations is effectively managing accounts receivables and this requires real time collaboration with the sales team, the finance legacy system has been a huge hindrance in this aspect as well as in other financial operations due to data silos.

The finance team is unsure of how to proceed, the only objective currently is a change of the system. As the business analyst, I was tasked with helping stakeholders achieve clarity and determine the best course of action for the team.

My Process

Current State Analysis

In order to get clarity, my first point of action was a current state analysis (as-is process). My analysis revealed the following: 

  • The strength and weakness of the existing ERP.

  • Pain points of our internal users, inefficiencies, and regulatory compliance risks.

  • Maintenance costs, vendor support, and scalability of the system.

Current Process

Finance team prints a physical sheet of the account receivables from its legacy erp —-> finance team member has to meet sales team to confirm if the data is correct/if customer has paid up yet or not —----> sales team says yes and pulls up their separate erp to show this —------> finance team member goes back to office to manually check accounts to confirm these sales —-------> if not confirmed —--> a different retrieval process for the money is started —---> if confirmed, after confirmation, s/he can proceed to balancing ledger and bank statements. 

Finance team prints a physical sheet of account rec doc —----> accounts rec doc contains date of sale, expected sales date and sales person —---> accounts rec. member checks google sheets that is updated by a different finance team member to check if payment has been made —----> finance team member also has to double check bank statements to avoid any errors that could have happened on the google sheets —-----> after confirmation, s/he can proceed to balancing ledger and bank statements.

Stakeholder Communication and Elicitation

The next step was the engagement of stakeholders through workshops and brainstorming sessions to elicit their requirements and understand their expectations for a new system. I facilitated these sessions with probing questions and we were able to generate and clarify ideas for a new system.

Stakeholders: Finance, Sales, IT, and HR teams.

Business Needs

The current legacy system, though currently cost-beneficial, is a huge risk to the finance team and organization as a whole. The goal of the finance team is to be able to effectively balance the accounts receivables ledger at the end of the month and reconcile bank statements, this requires data collaboration between the accounts and sales team as a result of the finance data silos. This leads to a manual balancing off accounts which is inefficient and leaves staff working for way longer hours to avoid internal control and compliance issues. 

The team has decided that they would like the following: 

  • A consolidated software that allows financial data to be shared among the core business units in real time (HR/Payroll, Sales, and Finance)

  • A system that can scale as rapidly as the business grows with the latest versions and updates

Proposed Business Solution

Based on the clarity/brainstorming sessions, the business decided to proceed with replacing the legacy ERP with a modern ERP system (Microsoft Dynamics 365). My role as the business analyst involved gathering the functional requirements, participating in data migration, creating automation flows within the new process and documenting the process.

My Role as Business Analyst

Documenting Functional/Systems requirements

In replacing the legacy system, I was responsible for creating an SRS (software requirements document) that details the functionality, constraints, and every action that the new software must meet to be regarded as successful for the team. I also analysed requirements gathered from stakeholders at the beginning of this project, validated and prioritized these requirements in alignment with the proposed solution.

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Data Migration & Data Mapping

One of the key parts of this project was migrating data from the legacy erp to the new system. This involved days of data cleaning, mapping, implementation of translation rules, amongst others. I worked with the technical team to clarify questions regarding the moving data. 

User Testing & Validation

As part of the completion of the project, I participated in designing test cases and implementing UATs.

Project Review

  • Reduction by 98% of inaccurate and inconsistent data. 

  • Faster and more efficient financial decision making.

  • Implementation of rule-based(workflow) automation to complete routine finance & operations tasks.

Performance Metrics for Improved State

  • Reduction in Data Request Turnaround Time

  • Increased ability to harness data frequently

  • Cost savings on maintaining the old system

  • Improved scalability as the organization’s needs increased 

  • Reduced monthly reconciliation process by a total of 4.5 hours.