Fresenius Medical Care

Fresenius Medical Care is the world’s largest provider of kidney care products and services, operating across more than 150 countries with tens of thousands of employees. Its Accounts Payable (AP) function spans four global regions, NA, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC, processing around 800k invoices annually through Basware across multiple ERP environments. At that scale, AP uptime is not just an operational concern. It is also a financial imperative.

One owner, four regions, full accountability

Running AP across four regions means running four sets of workflows, identity platforms, ERP configurations, and approval structures, all at once. For Fresenius, that complexity was compounded by an ongoing platform transition from Okta to Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) for single sign-on, multiple Basware tenants, and shared service centers operating across time zones. Standard support models were not designed for this kind of environment.

Fresenius needed a support relationship with a single point of ownership, technical depth across the full Basware stack, and the governance structure to manage change without disruption. Basware Diamond Support provided exactly that, assigning a dedicated Support Account Manager as the primary owner of Fresenius’s global support engagement.

From the start, the Diamond Support engagement was structured around predictability. The dedicated Support Account Manager led regular proactive reviews with Fresenius stakeholders, tracked open change requests, and coordinated resolution timelines against Basware product release schedules. When issues arose, the team already had context. There was no ramp-up, no retelling of history.

The SSO migration from Okta to Microsoft Entra tested that model directly. Enterprise-wide SSO migrations across four regions and multiple identity platforms are among the most disruptive incidents in AP operations.

The Basware team:

• Resolved critical access and identity incidents across regions, restoring SSO functionality across the full Fresenius user base.
• Collected and analyzed SAML logs to diagnose authentication failures at source.
• Ran live troubleshooting sessions with Fresenius IT and coordinated with cloud and production teams to restore stable access.
• Identified duplicate user-profile conflicts and recommended corrective actions on the ERP side.
• Provided clear guidance on ERP versus Basware ownership boundaries to prevent the same issues recurring after the fix.

“Basware Support has been a true partner in helping us maintain system stability and process efficiency,” said Mara Cacabilos, P2P Supervisor at Fresenius Medical Care. “Even when complex issues came up, the team worked with us to find practical and lasting fixes.”

Every change tested, validated, and timed before it touched production

In a global AP environment, a misconfigured workflow or a failed deployment does not affect one team. It affects every approver in every region. Fresenius and Basware addressed this with a structured change governance process:

• All updates were first enabled in test environments, monitored for stability, and then promoted to production only after sign-off.
• Delegation of Authority updates, approval workflow changes, and user interface communications all followed this path.
• Before any process change went live, the Basware team validated layout, wording, and links with Fresenius stakeholders.
• Resolution timing was coordinated against Basware product release schedules so permanent fixes landed with the right version, not as workarounds.

Measured outcomes

Accelerated incident resolution: Resolved critical access and identity incidents across regions, restoring SSO functionality. Resolution time reduced from ~40 hours to 5-6 hours. Result: ~85% faster resolution and significantly reduced business disruption.

Configuration optimization and cost avoidance: Eliminated recurring configuration issues through clear ERP-to-Basware ownership alignment. Deep system expertise allowed the team to optimize configurations before raising change requests, reducing dependency on effort-heavy CR cycles and converting multi-day efforts into few-hour targeted fixes. Result: estimated $20K-$30K in cost avoidance.

Improved workflow predictability and efficiency: Stabilized approval workflows and Delegation of Authority processes. Shared expertise was applied to optimize approval logic and routing. Result: reduced invoice processing delays, improved consistency across approval cycles, and enhanced downstream AP efficiency.

Shift from reactive support to proactive risk management: Identified and resolved operational risks before they escalated into incidents, preventing last-minute disruptions in critical AP operations. Result: reduced firefighting, fewer high-priority escalations, and improved overall system reliability and business confidence.

Turnaround time reduction through proactive stabilization: Proactively stabilized system performance before issues reached end users, addressing bottlenecks in advance. Result: turnaround time reduced by approximately one day per incident, achieved five to six times annually, delivering ~5-6 cumulative business days saved each year.

Why they chose Basware and the Diamond Support Service

• A single, dedicated support owner with global accountability across four regions and multiple Basware tenants.
• Proven technical depth across SAP and identity platform integrations in enterprise-scale environments.
• A structured governance model that manages change proactively, reducing risk during a period of significant organizational restructuring.

Built for today’s complexity. Ready for what’s next.

Fresenius has operated through a period of significant internal change: organizational restructuring, platform rationalization, and ongoing roadmap planning across a global AP footprint. Throughout, the Basware partnership has remained constant. The result is an AP function that is not simply stable but actively improving.

The team has the confidence to delegate more, knowing the platform and the support model behind it are working. Fresenius enters the next phase of its finance transformation with a clear foundation and a partner that already knows the environment.