Anglo American

Driving a comprehensive finance transformation with SAP S/4HANA

Having a well-designed, implemented and strategically-aligned finance transformation will not only deliver process efficiency, operational modernisation and assured compliance, but also provide the insight finance teams need to be effective business partners and drivers of stand-out performance. 

After seeing our success in delivering large scale, complex transformation for other organisations, mining giant Anglo American came to us to develop the blueprint for, and lead the implementation of, its enterprise-wide finance programme.

With over 95,000 employees operating across 15 countries and 56 sites, Anglo American was keen to standardise, modernise and integrate finance systems and processes, while ironing out duplication and inconsistencies across a dispersed patchwork of federated finance teams.  

The combination of UK SOX compliance and deployment of the latest SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform not only provided Anglo American with a catalyst for strengthening operational efficiency, but also sharpening business intelligence, targeting resources more effectively and optimising financial performance.

Leveraging these opportunities, our job was to help Anglo American understand its target state for finance, define how they will get there, build advocacy for the changes and lead their transformation journey. 

Mobilising a global finance programme

Anglo American initially came to us to assess and develop the business case for change, establish an effective programme structure and mobilise the required delivery portfolios (including ERP, financial compliance, management accounting and tax projects). We subsequently worked with the Group to develop a global multi-year transformation roadmap, before being asked to lead the delivery of several major projects and the deployment of all programme changes into the business. 

The ‘spine’ of the programme was the standard finance solution initiative, standardising core finance processes and migrating the disparate business units onto a common SAP S/4HANA platform, alongside deployments of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management and Blackline for financial control automation. From a business partnering perspective, the spearhead was the management accounting initiative, which was designed to transform how Anglo American managed its costs across the mining value chain and create a more incisive basis for strategic decision-making. 

Given the scale and ambition of the programme, this was a hugely exciting challenge. Key to successful delivery was building the right programme structures and ensuring controlled scalability in the programme organisation, through the different phases of the transformation roadmap. Working alongside finance and programme leadership, we mobilised a diverse set of teams across the globe, including client resources, contractors and external suppliers. By making key business people part of the programme team, we were able to build strong advocacy in the business and drive positive adoption of the changes as they were deployed. We also helped establish sustainable functional and technical capabilities that could support programme delivery, as well as maintain the solutions as part of business as usual.

Our ability to address the various strategic and technical challenges was centred around our pragmatic, systematic and adaptable transformation model. This brings together the key foundations of ambition and objectives, leadership and commitment, skills and experience, and a realisable delivery approach. One of the key differentiators for our transformation model is its focus on the art of the possible, aligning the leadership’s ambition with the overall programme budget, and the business’ capacity and appetite for change.

Delivering four successful ERP releases

As a result of the team’s significant mobilisation and delivery efforts, Anglo American was able to implement its transformation roadmap as planned, establishing a global solution upfront and deploying changes into the business via a series of tightly controlled change windows.

We led the successful implementation of four major ERP releases, delivering new technology, standardised processes and critical financial controls to the Group and Marketing functions, along with core business units and shared service centres in South Africa, Australia, Chile, Brazil and Peru. 

Working with Group finance, we directed several global dry runs of the attestation process for UK SOX compliance, ensuring the organisation sustained high financial reporting standards and retained the right to operate when the legislation becomes law.  

To support an overall client objective of better cost control for the operations, we led a programme that developed a Management Accounting Standard, a functional specification that detailed how that standard should be implemented in SAP and then piloted this solution with one of the assets.