Yokogawa Electric Corporation

Yokogawa Electric Corporation is based in Musashino City, Tokyo, and was founded in 1915. Its core business is controls, centering on control systems and services for plant and infrastructure. In accordance with the corporate philosophy—“As a company, our goal is to contribute to the realization of a sustainable society through broad-ranging activities in the areas of measurement, control, and information,” in the industrial automation and control business the company offers solutions in three industry segments: Energy & Sustainability, Materials, and Life. Reflecting Yokogawa’s longstanding commitment to global business development, it has 110 affiliated companies overseas compared to 11 in Japan, production sites in 13 countries, and its overseas sales account for almost 70% of total sales.
Under Transformation 2020, the mid-term business plan for the period from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2020, Yokogawa sought to grow existing businesses and improve their profitability, create new businesses and establish new frontiers for growth, and improve productivity through optimization of the business foundation. The company endeavored to establish a firm foundation for growth through business process reengineering by digital transformation (DX) and strengthening of IT infrastructure. Furthermore, under Accelerate Growth 2023, its mid-term business plan for the period from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2023, Yokogawa is emphasizing “Optimize internal operations and transform mindsets” as one of four basic strategies and promoting Internal DX (utilization of IT/DX in the company) as a key measure.
One of the initiatives planned is standardization of business processes and unification of applications for expense management, whereas such processes and applications have hitherto been operated separately by each overseas affiliated company.
“We started initiatives for company-wide workstyle reform to enable employees to work seamlessly anywhere in the world. To achieve this, it is essential to go paperless, and in 2019, the accounting department began consideration on making expense management at overseas affiliated companies paperless,” says Koji Yamada, Department Manager, Accounting Department, Accounting & Treasury Headquarters of Yokogawa.

Launched in October 2020, the SAP Concur global implementation project has three objectives. The first objective is to construct a system supporting workstyle reform and remote working and to accelerate the shift to a remote working environment and paperless operations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second objective is to unify applications and standardize and visualize business processes, and the third objective is to consolidate operations and reduce costs globally. Through standardization, the company decided to promote business process outsourcing (BPO) in accounting operations and shift man-hours to operations that add value.
The target operations are reimbursement of expenses and advance application for use of expenses and approval. Yokogawa decided to introduce a suite comprising Concur Expense for expense management, Concur Request for advance application, and Concur Business Intelligence for expense analysis, all of which are highly compatible in terms of operations and systems with SAP, the common management platform. Yokogawa aimed to implement SAP Concur for approximately 7,300 users at 56 sites in 7 regions, creating templates fully utilizing the system’s standard functions, while adapting the system and operations to meet the legal requirements of the countries where affiliated companies are located.
Yokogawa experienced difficulty in coordinating meetings with overseas affiliated companies for agreements and definition of requirements in order to implement SAP Concur in multiple countries in a short period of time. A project manager for overseas sites was assigned to clarify the requirements by coordinating the regions. However, the project manager alone could not fully grasp all aspects. Therefore, online meetings were held attended by everyone involved in the project, including accounting personnel and IT personnel. “It was difficult to coordinate the schedules of all the participants. The accounting department has a busy period each quarter and we needed to have meetings with multiple sites. For example, Singapore oversees the Asia-Pacific region and meetings were large scale, with almost 30 participants from 15 companies, including explanation of the concept of standardization and the policy on the templates and a Q&A session.” (Mr. Ikemizu)
When it came to the complicated legal requirements of each country, it was difficult to fully understand the intentions of the participants just through the common session materials prepared in advance and e-mail exchanges. Therefore, additional hearings and review meetings were held individually with each regional headquarters and each company. All these meetings were held online. Yokogawa proceeded with the project while having ABeam confirm the legal requirements for each country.