SAP Analytics
Thought Leadership

Summer brings days at the beach and the inevitable sunburn, while winter delivers snow and shoveling. Budget season? Well, that can mean a scramble to make sure your EPM software is 100% ready when entering a planning cycle. If your organization is like most, updating your EPM system is a priority during the off-season—especially if major improvements are on the punch list. The following five steps can ensure the smoothest possible experience—and keep the drama to a minimum:  

Two things are certain in life: death and taxes. An EPM user might add “struggling with EPM software” to the list of unavoidable challenges. In the case of taxes, one could (and absolutely should) hire an experienced tax services provider to craft a tax minimizing strategy. You will still pay taxes, but the difference between paying a lot, or a little, lies in the expertise of who you hire.

The number of SAP BPC users evaluating SAP BPC Embedded and SAP BPC Optimized is growing. In many ways SAP BPC Embedded is an exciting option because it is fast performing and highly integrated with core SAP financials (S/4HANA Finance). We think Embedded is an option well worth exploring for all SAP BPC users, but we also want those users to be well informed, particularly if they don’t have a strong SAP BW and SAP BW-IP background. This article is the first in a series of blogs where we take our experiences of all flavours of SAP BPC and apply the learnings for those looking at Embedded.

The ability to drill through from BPC to more detailed information is a high value exercise for a relatively low investment - yet it continues to be one of BPC’s most overlooked features. 

The typical use cases are as follows:

• Lower level connection with details
  • Exact, accurate actuals for run rates, deconstructing numbersDetails necessary to calculate drivers that drive the accurate plan
  • Ability to link to transactional systems at the lowest level of detail for drill through
  • Time definition is the frequent axis for alignment
• Automate time to explain variances & identify anomalies
  • Understand exactly what transaction drives variance (if applicable)
  • For close, audits, and other reconciliation exercises, spot suspect numbers
• Convenience builds user adoption Adds functionality like drill through to details, even possibly images
  • “One stop shopping” user experience
  • No need to switch tools wholesale as data gets lower in details

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is delivered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.  SAC combines multiple EPM, BI and Analytics features/benefits into one product.  This allows users to plan with robust collaboration features while using Predictive Analytics as well as Business Intelligence, and robust, state of the art Analytics. Currently, SAP BPC remains the default approach for Enterprise-wide Planning, Forecasting and Consolidations, while SAP Analytics Cloud fulfills relatively straightforward requirements from a planning and forecasting perspective.  

Our Technical Services team has received an influx of service tickets regarding issues with the recently released SAP BPC EPM Add-in Service Pack 29.

Problem

With EPM Add-in SP29 installed, we noticed that none of the built-in reports or report templates are working when trying to refresh with BPC 10.1 Microsoft (MS). When attempting to refresh, it keeps prompting to login to SAP NetWeaver (NW) system, instead of BPC 10.1 Microsoft.  Please see example below:

ldcie3f.wdf.sap.corp EPMAddin_ODBOSP3 Consolidation

We are connected to the Planning model for BPC MS but it is trying to login to BPC NW Consolidation.

Long term BPC customers know that one of the tool’s key strengths, its powerful and easy to use reporting  interface, can also be a challenge at inconvenient times. Over
the history of BPC’s reporting interface, dating back to OutlookSoft with venerable EvGet functions, relatively few changes have been made to the system.

At Column5 we always advocate the approach to EPM that yields the highest value returned to our clients and EPM users in general. One emerging best practice in EPM is adopting packaged content in lieu of custom developed solutions for your EPM functionality. The advantages are legion: faster time to value, more robust functionality, enhanced performance, improved supportability, lower project cost and total cost of ownership over time. Packaged content is most applicable when facing standard requirements that are consistent across customers.

This blog will present a comparison of BW-IP, BPC NW 10.1 Standard and BPC NW 10.1 Embedded. Each of these products is currently offered by SAP as planning solutions, but each has characteristics and functionality which will influence the decision to use one rather than another. This article aims to clarify the differences between each of the products and aid in the decision as to which of them to implement.  Each product will be better suited to a given company’s needs according to certain criteria, and this blog will set out to identify which product is best in each case.