An older SAP version with limited integration capabilities. Several business applications, each managing its own payments to SAP with varying levels of integration. A legal requirement for dual validation on every payment order. And no way to see, in one place, what was being paid across the organization.
That was the situation a Belgian public service institution asked 5th floor to address. The institution processes a large volume of payments tied to several business processes: subsidies, exceptional bonuses, expense reimbursements, ad-hoc payments. SAP sat at the centre of all of it, but every business application had to integrate with SAP on its own terms. The result was uneven coverage, a heavy compliance burden, and no consolidated view of payment flows.
5th floor designed and built the Finance hub: an intermediary platform that sits between the business applications and SAP, centralizes payment flows, and enforces compliance once instead of in each application. The Hub processes around 30 million euros in payments a month, roughly 350 payment orders a day. SAP is still there as the accounting system of record. The rest of the application portfolio no longer depends on it directly.
The four problems the Hub was built to solve
The scoping phase identified four structural blockers:
- An outdated SAP version with limited integration capabilities, which made every new connection a custom project.
- Decentralized payment handling. Each business application carried its own integration with SAP, with coverage that varied from one to the next.
- A compliance burden. The four-eyes principle (dual validation on payment liquidation) is a legal requirement, but enforcing it consistently across applications was difficult.
- No consolidated view of financial flows transiting through the organization.
These four constraints shaped four strategic objectives: centralize financial and accounting data, simplify daily operations for finance teams and budget owners, secure and automate controls with fine-grained access management, and reduce direct SAP dependency across the rest of the portfolio.
The Finance Hub: a platform between business apps and SAP
The Hub acts as a strategic intermediary between business applications and SAP. It exposes a standardized, business-oriented API on one side, and handles all SAP interactions on the other. Business applications no longer speak SAP. They speak Hub.
The platform is built around four functional bricks:
- Reception and validation. All payment orders, whatever their business origin, come in through a single entry point. The Hub validates structure, business rules, and budgetary references before anything else happens.
- Liquidation workflow with dual validation. The four-eyes principle is enforced inside the Hub, with a complete audit trail.
- Transfer to SAP. Once an order is validated, the Hub automatically generates the ordonnancement report and transfers it to SAP.
- Real-time tracking. Any business application can check the status of a payment at any moment, through the API.
Around these four bricks, the Hub also centralizes the financial reference data that used to be configured in SAP: general accounts, budget items, programmes, commitments. Finance agents manage this data through a unified interface, directly in the Hub. The dependency on SAP for day-to-day configuration is drastically reduced.
Every transaction transiting through the Hub is traced and available for analysis. That consolidated history feeds the institution’s reporting and business intelligence, giving decision-makers a view of financial flows that did not exist before.
How 5th floor delivered it
The Hub was built with an agile, iterative approach.
Discovery and design. Collaborative workshops with the business and finance teams mapped the existing payment processes in depth. The goal was to design a solution that fit the operational context, not to impose a template.
MVP starting with the highest-volume flow. The first production release covered subsidies, the largest payment type by financial volume. Shipping that flow first delivered visible value quickly and reduced risk on the rest of the roadmap.
Progressive deployment in four phases.
- Phase 1: Core liquidation and validation features, with SAP report generation.
- Phase 2: Extension to other payment types (reimbursements, bonuses, exceptional payments).
- Phase 3: Search and order history functionality.
- Phase 4: Management and configuration modules for financial reference data.
UX co-creation. Each screen was designed alongside the finance agents and business experts who would use it. The result is an interface that users adopted without a formal training programme.
DevOps and continuous delivery. Short development cycles, regular user testing, and frequent production releases were paired with close support from the 5th floor team at each go-live. Feedback collected after each release fed directly into the next iteration.
Technical architecture
| Component | Technologies |
| Backend | Java / REST microservices |
| Frontend | Angular |
| DevOps | CI/CD pipelines |
| Architecture | Modular, evolvable microservices |
The microservices are organized by business domain, which keeps each module maintainable on its own. The Hub also integrates with the institution’s broader digital environment: document management (GED) for supporting documents, the centralized beneficiary and organisation chart reference, and the BI tooling that consumes the consolidated payment data.
Results
| 30M€ / month | 350 orders / day | Four-eyes | SAP dependency |
| in payment volume routed through the Hub | processed with full traceability | enforced systematically, with audit trail | drastically reduced for business applications |
Beyond the volume metrics, the operational benefits are tangible:
- Regulatory compliance is now systematic, with a complete audit trail rather than application-by-application implementations.
- Operational efficiency. Validation and liquidation are streamlined and accelerated.
- Business team autonomy. Applications no longer require SAP expertise to handle their payments.
- Visibility. A real-time, consolidated view of every financial flow, available to decision-makers.
- Risk reduction. Control automation removes the manual errors that used to slip through.
Adoption was broad. The co-construction with end users translated into a minimal learning curve and quick uptake across stakeholders.
Where the project stands
The Finance Hub is a mature product. The major functional scope is covered, and the platform is stable. 5th floor continues the partnership through corrective maintenance, minor functional evolutions when new needs emerge, technology upgrades on frameworks (Angular and others) and dependencies, and day-to-day user support to keep teams productive.
What this project demonstrates
The Finance Hub shows how 5th floor approaches complex business and regulatory environments:
- Deeply understand the business and compliance constraints before writing code.
- Design robust solutions for critical financial volumes.
- Apply an agile method with real co-creation and short iterations.
- Integrate cleanly into existing ecosystems rather than replacing them.
- Stay involved long after go-live, so the solution keeps delivering.
Beyond the technology, the project is a case study in collaboration. Users sat at the centre of the design process throughout. The success of the Hub rests as much on the working relationship with the client as on the technical execution.
Want to know more?
Get in touch via sales@5thfloor.be
