A.S.R. Insurance drives data efficiency with SAP S/4HANA

Through its partnership with Capgemini, a.s.r. Insurance migrates from legacy systems to the SAP S/4HANA platform in order to achieve more efficient practices while expanding its capacity for data-based decision-making and future transformation

Client Challenges: a.s.r. Insurance wanted to lower the amount of time needed to maintain the infrastructure of its database, consolidate its infrastructure, and lower the associated costs while ensuring that it maintained a SEPA-compliant system
Solution: In partnership with Capgemini, a.s.r. Insurance migrated to the SAP S/4HANA platform to introduce a unified master data source that facilitated real-time data processing and lowered the time and money needed to maintain the system
Benefits:
• Reduction of monthly closure performance time from 12 to 4 hours
• Reduction of monthly renewal performance from 24 to 6 hours
• Decrease in time associated with morning batches performance from 4 to 2 hours
• 30% reduction in RAM consumption
• Simplified data model, reduced process complexity, and improved, faster financial reporting

A record of success

a.s.r. Insurance was formed in 1997 after the merger of Amersfoortse and Stad Rotterdam insurance companies. The organization operates within three primary segments: life insurance, non-life insurance, and others, such as real estate. As of today, a.s.r. Insurance is the third largest insurance company in the Netherlands with an average market share of about 10%.

Back in 2011, the organization realized that it needed to consolidate its payment system to standardize processes and ensure that the company could operate more efficiently. To accomplish these goals, a.s.r. Insurance partnered with Capgemini to implement the SAP FS-CD module and a more efficient data management strategy that saw the number of servers and the amount of digital storage space needed reduced substantially. When the success of this project resulted in a massive increase of payment transactions and financial documents, the organization experienced an exponential growth in the size of its database and storage costs. In response, a.s.r. Insurance chose to expand its engagement with Capgemini and, together, the partners set up a data archival program for the SAP FICO and FSCD modules, leading to a 50% reduction in the database’s size, storage costs, and overall performance.

The partnership transitions to migration

However, continuing success requires an ongoing commitment to innovation as technology continues to advance. With this in mind, a.s.r. Insurance made the decision in 2019 to transition from its existing SAP ECC application to SAP S/4HANA, which would improve efficiency and better prepare the organization for the future. Working in collaboration, a.s.r. Insurance and Capgemini launched another extension of the partnership that was broken up into two stages.

The first stage focused on converting the organization’s database from Oracle to SAP S/4HANA 2.0, which made it more capable of handling the real-time processing of high volumes of transactions. Once this was completed, the partners launched the second phase of the migration, during which a.s.r. Insurance and Capgemini converted the ECC application to the SAP S/4HANA platform. With this complex financial data model in place, the partners simplified the complex data model with a universal journal, all while ensuring that SAP compliance was met.

Through careful planning and a truly collaborative, “One Team” approach, the partners completed a complex migration quickly and effectively. The transition to the SAP S/4HANA platform occurred in a timeline fit to a.s.r. Insurance’s needs and fulfilled the initial objectives.

A foundation for further innovation

With the transition to the SAP S/4HANA platform, the partners substantially reduced the amount of time that was needed to manage the company’s infrastructure. This led to a decrease in the length of monthly closure processes from 12 hours to four hours, monthly renewal performance from 24 hours to six hours, and morning batches performance from four hours to two hours. In addition, the new platform resulted in a 30% reduction in the amount of RAM consumed while also simplifying the company’s data model and reducing overall process complexity. The introduction of realtime data processing meant that a.s.r. Insurance could more effectively generate analytical insights while the speed and quality of financial reporting was substantially improved.

Going forward, the organization now plans to build upon its newly unified data model. This simplified structure will make further migration and transformation simpler and enable a.s.r. Insurance to pursue additional innovation. Together, the organization and Capgemini will continue to provide new benefits both for employees and customers through the efficiency gained from digital transformation.

I’m happy to give the highest possible score of 5/5 for a successful implementation of S/4 Hana conversion under difficult circumstances (Covid 19). The conversion was implemented smoothly on time and without any problems.
a.s.r. Insurance spokesperson