S/4HANA Public Cloud implementation for a global media company

ACBaltica supported a large-scale SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud rollout for a major international media company operating across multiple European markets. Taking ownership of the order-to-cash and report-to-report streams, the team helped automate complex subscription billing processes, integrate over a dozen external CRM systems, and resolve critical product bugs – enabling a successful go-live despite challenging technical constraints and a highly customized legacy environment.

Customer

The customer is an international media company that sells subscription-based and advertising products across several European markets. With large business operations spread across multiple geographies, the company runs a complex, multi-region technology environment that requires high levels of automation and system interoperability to support its financial workflows. The global system should also comply with legislative requirements that vary in all countries of presence.

To reduce costs and modernize operations, the company moved from an on-premises SAP S/4HANA – heavily customized with legacy code – to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud. A key driver was Public Cloud's native support for subscription billing: automatic periodic payments with the accruals and deferrals logic the company's business model demands, which the previous system could not handle adequately.

Challenge

The migration presented several interconnected challenges across business process design, system integration, and the inherent constraints of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud:

• Complex subscription billing. The company's revenue model relies on periodic billing with specific accruals and deferrals logic. Replicating this accurately in the new system required leveraging S/4HANA Public Cloud's periodic billing capabilities along with custom financial postings.

• Multiple external CRM integrations. 10+ separate CRM systems (including Salesforce)  – each with different data structures and varying data sets – needed to be connected to SAP, with all orders flowing into a unified process.

• Public Cloud customization limits. While the company initially aligned with standard SAP processes, business requirements gradually diverged from out-of-the-box functionality. Working within Public Cloud's constraints required identifying and leveraging available user exits and extension points to implement the required logic.

• Product bugs and limited documentation. The team encountered multiple SAP product bugs during implementation – including a critical payment file format conversion issue that blocked go-live readiness. In several cases, SAP's standard fix timelines did not align with the project schedule, requiring escalation through senior SAP contacts. The go-live date was postponed multiple times while waiting for fixes.

• Sensitive data handling. Payroll data needed to be masked across all system areas. SAP's standard tools did not cover all modules involved, requiring workarounds in specific areas.

• Limited internal SAP capacity. The company's internal SAP team is small. An experienced external partner was needed to cover key functional streams end-to-end.

Solution

ACBaltica joined the project to lead the order-to-cash and report-to-report streams, working alongside the customer's internal team and another SAP partner company. The scope covered roughly half of the overall implementation.

Order-to-cash

The ACBaltica SD consultant took full ownership of the order-to-cash stream, including all cross-process dependencies. The solution centered on SAP's Solution Order object – a flexible entry point for sales processing in Public Cloud – through which all incoming orders from external CRM systems were routed.

• CRM integration via SAP CPI. All 10+ CRM systems were integrated via SAP Cloud Platform Integration (part of SAP Integration Suite). Despite different data structures across systems, standard SAP objects proved compatible with the full range of incoming data.

• Subscription billing with accruals and deferrals. One-time and subscription items are combined into a single invoice, with periodic billing handling the recurring payments. Financial postings for accruals and deferrals – unavailable in the legacy system – are now handled automatically through S/4HANA Public Cloud's periodic billing functionality.

• Third-party billing system integration. The solution was extended to connect with external billing platforms to support the company's full billing and collections workflow. 

• End-to-end automation. The full sales process – from customer creation and order entry to billing – runs with minimal manual intervention. Only the final billing step requires limited manual input.

Report-to-report, cash management, and payment processing

The report-to-report stream covered financial reporting, bank statement processing, multi-bank connectivity, and payment file management. Two senior ACBaltica consultants led this workstream.

• Payment file processing. External systems – including payroll, travel, and refund platforms, and treasury management systems (e.g., Kyriba, Coupa, Nomentia) – generate payment files that are loaded into SAP, processed, and formatted for submission to various banks. Because banks require different payment formats, the team implemented custom logic using available user exit points and SAP extension capabilities to transform and route files correctly.

• Multi-bank connectivity. SAP Public Cloud was configured to connect directly with the customer's banking partners, streamlining payment submission and bank statement import.

• Bug resolution and escalation. The team identified a blocking issue: SAP's standard payment format conversion (e.g., PAIN-to-PAIN, PAIN-to-CFONB (ETEBAC), PAIN-to-MT101) failed in one of the banking environments. The issue was escalated to SAP, and the bug fix was eventually delivered. 

• Custom logic development. Where standard functionality fell short, the team developed user exits and extensions through SAP's Custom Logic application and Eclipse-based tooling – for example, transforming short-format dates in external CSV payment files into the full date format required by SAP.

Project teams

• SD Consultant / Order-to-Cash stream lead (ACBaltica)

• 2 FI Consultants (partner consultancy)

• 2 Senior Report-to-Report and Cash Management consultants (ACBaltica + partner consultancy)

• 1 ABAP Developer

• 2 CPI Consultants (partner consultancy + freelancer)

• Project Manager (partner consultancy)

• Customer side: 3 project managers, key users, and project owners

Results and benefits

• Fully automated order-to-cash. The complete sales process – from customer creation through order management to billing – now runs with minimal manual effort, replacing the heavily customized and labor-intensive legacy workflows.

• Native subscription billing. Periodic billing with accruals and deferrals – previously impossible to implement as required – is now handled automatically, improving financial accuracy and reducing month-end workload.

• Reliable payment processing across banks. Payment files from multiple external systems are automatically loaded, processed, and routed to the correct banking partners in the required formats.

• Scalable foundation for rollout. With the first markets live and processes stabilized, the company is positioned to extend the same solution to additional markets in subsequent project waves. The internal team will manage ongoing cash management operations independently, including SAP support tickets.

Why ACBaltica?

As an SAP Platinum Partner with 20+ years of experience, ACBaltica brings deep expertise in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud implementations, including the most technically demanding scenarios. This engagement is a strong example of what that means in practice: navigating undocumented product behavior, resolving blocking bugs through direct SAP escalation, and delivering a fully automated financial process in a highly complex, multi-system environment.

• Hands-on expertise in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, including complex order-to-cash and cash management implementations.

• Ability to identify and resolve SAP product issues fast, with established escalation paths within SAP.

• Experience integrating SAP with diverse external systems, including multi-CRM environments.

• Custom development capability within Public Cloud constraints, using user exits, extensions, and SAP CPI.

• Proven delivery across industries and geographies, with the resources to support projects at any stage.

Ready to modernize your financial operations with SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud? Whether you're planning a first implementation or expanding an existing rollout, ACBaltica can help you design and deliver a solution that fits your business. Contact us to discuss your project!