The Challenge.

 

Fulton County Schools (FCS) is an urban school District which enrolls over 94,400 students in public primary and secondary schools from Pre-K through 12th grade and employs over 6,900 teachers and 4,000 support staff. Located in the Greater Atlanta area, FCS is the state’s fourth largest school District by enrollment and has a public-school budget over $1 Billion. The District administers around 100 public schools in total, including 59 elementary schools, 19 middle schools, 19 high schools, 1 virtual school and 10 charter schools. 

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FCS and Genesis engaged in a RoadMap/Strategy session a couple of years before the projects started to help FCS determine pain points and areas of focus with their current process and systems landscape.  A large-scale effort was identified with both systems and process modernization.  As part of this effort, implementation of SAP Concur was identified as a key implementation; FCS sought to implement an Expense Management solution that eliminated paper receipts, manual workflows, and recoding/billing by accounting specialists’ post-trip.

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The Solution.

 

Genesis and FCS successfully implemented the Concur Request and Expense products as part of a larger project implementing the SAP Product suite including S/4 HANA, Ariba, and SuccessFactors as part of business transformation efforts.

SAP Concur Systems Integration

After a careful analysis of the current release and infrastructure of the SAP systems at FCS and the upgrade goals and infrastructure requirements of the target releases of the various SAP systems, Genesis recommended FCS not only implement SAP Concur but also recommended that FCS use a systems integration architecture using SAP Integration Center and SAP ICS (Concur to S/4 HANA/Payroll Connector) for robust and maintenance free integrations.  Using these products allowed Genesis and FCS to develop integrations with no coding and simplified data mapping between SAP Concur and SuccessFactors, S/4 HANA, and S/4 Payroll.  These integrations are low maintenance and help keep support and maintenance costs of FCS to a minimum.

 

User Experience and Interface Design Services 

With the implementation SAP Concur, Genesis recommended going live with the Concur Next Gen UI since FCS requirements were all satisfied with this new UI.  Since SAP Concur can be configured multiple ways to satisfy business requirements, Genesis held design sessions to understand the user population and the tools they use to perform their required functions and recommended a Concur Design focused on ease of use by the employees but also capture required data attributes for cross charging and billing to Grants.  Genesis also recommended Workflow settings to minimize the approval cycle times. 

Business Analysis and Requirements Support

Genesis led the sessions with FCS to understand how Pre-Trip Request approvals and Post-Trip Expense reports worked in the current state.  Using these requirements sessions and existing process & system design documents, Genesis recommended SAP Concur as the solution for FCS.  Using SAP Concur eliminated over 95% of the pain points at the time.  Genesis also configured workflows and systems design that allowed for routing of Requests and Expense reports when additional authorization was required due to Funding source.  Systems design also took into consideration the proliferation of tablets and phones for report development and approval. 

Analytics and Reporting 

As a public sector entity, FCS must be compliant with State and Federal requirements regarding Travel related spend on Funds and Grants.  To meet these requirements, Genesis implemented Concur Request to obtain pre-trip approvals from the Grant/Fund custodian at FCS prior to the trip.  Genesis also worked with FCS to develop Reports required for the review and approval of Travel as appropriate by the FCS Board of Education.  Using Concur Reporting and Analytics allows FCS to more effectively monitor the Expense Processing to allow for timely reimbursements and perform necessary changes to reports while they are still in process rather than have to post updates after data has posted in S/4.

 

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The Results.

 

With the implementation of SAP Concur solutions and services, FCS has experienced a dramatic decrease in the approval time for Travel Requests and Expense Reports.  Eliminating manual data entry & post-trip adjustments has resulted in a drastic reduction in errors.  Resources are freed from having to do all post-report rebilling and accounting adjustments allowing them to focus more time and efforts on improving the education experience for students.  FCS has also experience increased user satisfaction due to the mobile products, and reduced time to generate and submit expense reports for approval.  Reporting has kept them compliant with Federal and State guidelines, and the integration of data from Concur to S/4 Payroll and HANA is hands free allowing FCS to focus on more effective spend resources time and efforts.  By utilizing the SAP ICS connector to manage the integration between SAP Concur and S/4 HANA & Payroll this eliminates the need for separate accounts payable processes to generate reimbursements and ensures timely and accurate posting of Accounting data to appropriate General Ledger Accounts.

 

Together with FCS, Genesis continues to look at ways to improve operations efficiencies using the SAP Concur product suite.