JBS Contributes to the Stable Operation of MonotaRO’s EC Accounts Processing through the Implementation of SAP S/4HANA®

Japan Business Systems, Inc. (Headquarters: Minato Ward, Tokyo; President: Yukihiro Makita; hereinafter, “JBS” securities code: 5036) announces that MonotaRO Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Osaka City, Osaka; Director, Chairman, and CEO: Masaya Suzuki; hereinafter, “MonotaRO” securities code: 3064), a company that runs a B2B online store handling indirect materials such as tools, office consumables, and office supplies, has implemented and started using ERP SAP S/4HANA®, provided by SAP Japan Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; President and CEO: Hirofumi Suzuki, hereinafter, “SAP”). Looking ahead towards further growth of JBS, SAP, and MonotaRO, worked as a co-creation team revamped the system to establish a foundation for stable operation in EC accounting (transactions).

The accounting system that MonotaRO had been using until now was experiencing increasing systemic load, due to increases in the volume of accounts processing such as expanding numbers of clearing and closing of accounts receivable that have accompanied business growth. Sales had doubled from FY2019 to FY2023 and MonotaRO had been dealing with increased accounts processing by replacing servers, etc. However, they decided that a fundamental solution to process increasing transactions without stress going forward would be required and started consideration of a new accounting system in 2020.

Decisive factors in the selection of SAP were its reliability in processing transaction volumes accompanying expanding sales volumes and its scalability in handling changes in business, coupled with the fact that it has a stable track record both in Japan and overseas. Additionally, the reason for JBS being selected as a partner can be attributed to trust being fostered as a partner that could implement SAP with MonotaRO through the course of discussions spanning several months before the decision to implement was made.

Understanding MonotaRO’s code of conduct to “appreciate time of customers, of other stakeholders, and of ourselves, ” JBS held many consultations with MonotaRO and SAP to define requirements with Fit to Standard*1 in mind, which would be important in the implementation and use of a cloud system. Additionally, JBS further scrutinized about 100 add-on candidates at the time of finalizing decisions on the requirements definition with MonotaRO to ultimately narrow them down to about 30. In engaging in this work, JBS took into account MonotaRO’s current systems and workflows without clinging to them, focusing on “how to smoothly realize what is necessary for business operation.” The new system realizes simpler closing of accounts receivable, digitization of paper documents to become paperless and linking them to accounting slips. As one example, the closing of accounts receivable for one customer, which used to take approximately two hours, was reduced by 92% to take just over 10 minutes.

Going forward, respecting MonotaRO’s code of conduct to “appreciate time of customers, of other stakeholders, and of ourselves,” to “continue to make corporate efforts so that our customers can save time and spend their limited time on their core business ,” JBS will continue to collaborate with SAP to provide proposals for improvements to respond to the increasing volume of accounting and in so doing support MonotaRO to transform their accounting processes. JBS will continue to strive to be a company that can contribute to the sustainable growth of companies and society through technological innovations in strong partnership with SAP.

In general, it is said that Fit to Standard is essential for the implementation of ERP, but not all work can be covered by existing packages. For example, taking just the one task of closing accounts receivable, not all of this can be completed as per the principles. In the operations from a customer’s order to payment, the various processes branch out and crossing the payment methods and the data linked to them makes handling accounting even more complex. For this reason, we first visualized and organized all current task flows as much as possible. Having done that, we reviewed the tasks anew while comparing them to the functions and specifications of SAP to apply them to our system requirements. From there, we reconfirmed what we could do with SAP’s standard specifications and scrutinized add-on candidates with JBS while taking into consideration cost effectiveness and narrowed them down to the optimal solution. The project encountered difficulties, including putting the finishing touches to documents to connect them to subsequent phases such as data flow in defining requirements and linkage between systems, as well as quality issues faced in the test phase. However, JBS and the MonotaRO project management team members discussed how to create an environment that would make the development side produce outcomes more positively and engaged in realizing that goal. All the members who were involved on both the JBS and MonotaRO sides each made it to through to the end while struggling to meet their own deadlines, completing the implementation project and for that I am truly grateful. Additionally, I expect that we will be able to make further effective use of SAP S/4HANA® as a stable accounting foundation to support future growth and continued business improvement, which was our company’s objective.

*1 A way to implement ERP without additional add-on development and adjusting work contents to standard ERP functions.

会計システム刷新事例 株式会社MonotaRO｜JBS 日本ビジネスシステムズ株式会社