Customer case Southco

Z Option Speeds SAP File Conversion at Southco

“We’ve had to reduce headcount, and GLSU has helped us manage with limited resources.”

Customer Profile

Southco believes first impressions are critical. They have built an unmatched portfolio of access hardware solutions, through innovation and strategic acquisitions. Southco offerings include over 25,000 standard catalog products and more than 50,000 custom products that have been created to meet customers’ design needs. In order to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers, Southco has built and invested in a strong global footprint of technical sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing operations throughout the world.

Challenges

Southco processed large external file uploads, such as outsourced payroll files, as well as vendor files and more traditional finance Journal Entries. Excel was their preferred software for data manipulation and they needed a way to easily and accurately upload that data into their newly implemented SAP system.

They desired a financial spreadsheet loader similar in function to their previous customized spreadsheet loader. Prior to learning about Z Option’s GLSU solution, Southco had already built an LSMW program to convert legacy AR and AP data files and work had begun with a contractor to custom build another program to convert legacy General Ledger account balances into SAP. However, they were eager to avoid another internal customized software which was expensive and time-consuming to program.

Solution

At an SAP User Conference, an attendee from Southco noticed that Z Option was well-referenced and decided to take a closer look at GLSU. “We liked the fact that GLSU let us do things ourselves rather than having to work with a developer,” says Southco’s SAP Business Analyst. “After speaking to other users and examining Z Option and GLSU, we found GLSU to be extremely user-friendly out of the box. While other programs required a high level of technical knowledge, Z Option’s Excel-based GLSU perfectly fit our needs. After testing GLSU successfully, we told the developer to stop what he was doing, and we would just take it from there with GLSU.”

While their previous spreadsheet loader required a programmer to make changes, GLSU has flexible templates that enable users to quickly and securely modify templates without having to rely on IT. “That saves us the money spent on the developer’s time and resources,” Southco notes.

“I haven’t seen or heard of anything better than GLSU for loading financial data into SAP. At a class last year, a gentleman from another company could not stop talking about Z Option – and he had some really complex formulas going on. There is simply no limit to how you can use GLSU, if you’re familiar with Excel.”

- SAP Business Analyst, Southco

Results

Easy to Customize

Southco uses GLSU in a variety of ways, including processing payroll, Visa card expenditures, vendor invoices, and profitability analysis adjustments. The Finance department frequently uses the dropped header functionality to process multiple documents within one template – often as many as 20 to 30 documents are included in one template. In addition, plans are in place to build additional custom warning messages when running GLSU pre-validations for AP invoices.

Efficient

GLSU eliminates the need for a custom LSMW program and the associated time and effort of engaging a developer. More workload can be handled by fewer people. Instead of repeatedly keying in the same data, they reuse templates, save them and rename them to the current month.

Multiple Uses

Initially, GLSU simplified the large legacy data file conversions from their previous system. Southco estimates that they loaded about 15,000-20,000 data lines, without ever encountering any issues with resources or response times.

Business Benefits

GLSU fully complements the validation capabilities in SAP and contributes to better analytics. Entering data is now easier and much more accurate, which has delivered increased productivity. Secure sign-on through SAP ensures that the same robust security features of SAP are found in GLSU.

GLSU has also helped control costs. “In the recent economic turmoil, we’ve had to reduce headcount, and GLSU has helped us manage with limited resources.”

To continue to save time and effort, Southco’s uses for the GLSU software, include:

Processing freight invoices from various carriers
Processing of travel and expense reports, now done manually
Processing of invoices from relocation service agency

Additional GL legacy data conversions for European and Asia Pacific SAP implementations carriers
Day-to-day financial process uploads in other geographies