SAP SE announced recently the completion of the SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting solution implementation for PLDT, Inc., the country’s largest telecommunications company.
This implementation makes PLDT the first in the Philippines to use RAR as a step in addressing the International Financial Reporting Standards compliance requirements.
Shown here are (from left) Ella Mangubat, SAP Philippines Digital Business Services General Manager; Albert Billones, Head of IT CSS for PLDT; Claus Andresen, President and Managing Director of SAP Southeast Asia; Chaye Cabal-Revilla, SVP and PLDT Group Controller and concurrent Smart CFO; and Edler Panlilio, Managing Director of SAP Philippines.
The project is part of PLDT’s digital finance transformation efforts. It is aimed to continuously improve business processes to adopt to changing market and regulatory requirements. The company first adopted SAP Enterprise Resource Planning in 2006 in order to streamline and standardize finance practices across the group and to change the role of Finance from bookkeeper to enterprise controller, business planner and adviser. This paved the way to increased transparency, improved reporting capabilities and faster decision-making. Over the next few years, PLDT’s Finance Team has initiated additional technology-enabled process enhancements in the area of treasury and cash management, investment management and most recently in the legal and management consolidation functions with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation.
The year 2017 proved to be yet another significant one as PLDT prepared for transformation in financial reporting and compliance. With the adoption of SAP RAR, PLDT’s SAP system is able to generate reports that helped the company towards the adoption of IFRS 15, a new revenue recognition standard, mandated by the Philippine Financial Reporting Standards Council and the Board of Accountancy, which took effect last January 2018.
The new IFRS 15 revenue recognition standard eliminates the transaction and industry-specific revenue recognition guidance under current U.S. GAAP and replaces it with a principle-based approach for determining revenue recognition. The change can affect companies’ reported revenue, how and when they report financial performance, and overall financial decision making.
Chaye Cabal-Revilla, SVP and PLDT Group Controller and concurrent Smart CFO, said: “We are happy to usher in a new digital era in finance within PLDT. As a publicly listed company in the Philippines and in the U.S., it is crucial for us to move forward towards IFRS 15 – both at a country and global standard level.”
Commenting on the completion of the project, Edler Panlilio, SAP Philippines Managing Director, said: “For SAP, it has always been our purpose to help Filipino conglomerates like PLDT to run better. With this strong collaboration, we are extending SAP’s expertise to guide them in their journey towards digital transformation just as SAP has enabled the world’s leading conglomerates to run better.”
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