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SAP Analytics
Thought Leadership

Comparing SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)

Posted by Hunter Moore on Mon, Jul 15, 2024 @ 08:07 AM

Choosing the right Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) tool is crucial for organizations aiming to optimize their planning, reporting, and analytics processes. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) are two leading solutions from SAP, each offering unique capabilities tailored to different business needs. Let's examine some key considerations and comparisons regarding how well SAC can meet the evolving needs of businesses accustomed to BPC. We will focus on four key areas: Technical, Administration, User Interface, and AI capabilities. 

Topics: BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), SAC, SAP Analytics Cloud, Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A)

[TECH ALERT] How to fix the top 10 issues for BPC Microsoft Environments

Posted by Column5 Consulting on Mon, Mar 13, 2023 @ 18:03 PM

Over the past 6 months, we’ve seen a lot of our clients experience stubborn errors and issues that have surfaced in BPC for Microsoft environments. It’s important to understand that these issues are mostly related to user errors or updates not being performed correctly.

The Technical Team at Column5 has performed in-depth troubleshooting and continues to provide various technical solutions for our customers. Today, we have compiled a list of the top 10 issues including root cause and a simple solution. Continue reading to discover how you can tackle these issues and improve your performance!

Topics: Performance, Microsoft, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), Technical, User Experience

The Top 5 Critical Success Factors for Your EPM Project

Posted by Column5 Consulting on Tue, Jan 31, 2023 @ 12:01 PM

How do you ensure your Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC) or Business Intelligence (BI) project will start out positioned for success? You've gone through the RFP process, completed the vendor evaluation, and have decided on the technology. But before diving into requirements and design, you also need to spend time in the project initiation phase--ensuring the project's critical success factors (CSFs) are defined and socialized, and that a plan for implementation is developed. Be sure there is a common understanding of the importance of the CSFs and how they differ from project objectives and success criteria.

Topics: Best Practices, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Project Management, Performance, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

The Top 5 Things to Consider When Selecting a Consulting Partner

Posted by Column5 Consulting on Sat, Dec 10, 2022 @ 08:12 AM

As with most specialized software programs, it is usually not suggested to implement SAP BPC without the assistance of a consulting partner.  Many projects require expertise that most EPM administrators do not have, and so it is recommended to find a partner that can ensure success.  Choosing this partner is an important decision.  Here are a few of the top things a company should look at when deciding on an appropriate organization. 

Topics: Best Practices, Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Project Management, Training, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

EPM Project Management Success: The 3 Lines of Defense to Reducing Risk on an SAP BPC EPM Project

Posted by Column5 Consulting on Wed, Nov 02, 2022 @ 13:11 PM

A risk is the possibility of an event or a condition that could negatively impact a project. There are many events or conditions in any EPM BPC implementation that can derail the project, because BPC is a complex tool that touches many areas of your organization. This article is intended to help mitigate risk.

Topics: Process Improvement, Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Project Management, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

How To: Drill Through from SAP BPC

Posted by Mike Sullivan on Thu, Aug 24, 2017 @ 08:08 AM

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

Topics: Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), BPC, Functional, reporting

[TECH ALERT] BPC 10.x Microsoft with EPM Add-in SP29

Posted by Darko Kavazovic on Wed, Jul 12, 2017 @ 09:07 AM

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.

Topics: BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), BPC, Services Focused, Technical, EPM Add-in, EPM

BREXIT and the Benefits of Constant Currency Reporting

Posted by Martin Lloyd on Thu, Oct 13, 2016 @ 05:10 AM

As many of you know, a properly implemented EPM solution can help model changing market conditions. Such
conditions may be commodity prices, competitive pressure in certain product and geographical markets, interest rates, or currency exchange rates. The thinking is, the better the ability to understand the impact to your organization of such volatility drivers, the more time you will have to craft a strategy to react. However, this task is not very simple as you will have all of those influences (and likely many more) nudging your company’s performance indicators up and down simultaneously.

Topics: BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), reporting

Integrated Planning with SAP BPC 10.1 Standard

Posted by Richard Hynes on Tue, Apr 19, 2016 @ 08:04 AM


SAP BPC is a tool that can be customised to facilitate planning, budgeting and forecasting processes for different
 functional areas such as Revenue, Human Capital Management, Operating Expenses, and Capital Expenditure. In this blog we will talk about how to integrate these functional areas into one unified BPC reporting model, for fully integrated planning.

The different functional areas require different data structures and consequently we  will need to use a separate BPC model for each area. To give some common examples:

The Revenue model may, depending on the modelling requirements, need to have Product dimensionality in order to plan the sales volumes and calculate planned revenue according to the price by product, and a Customer dimension to plan sales and analyse the outstanding payments by customer or channel.

The Labour planning, or HCM model may need to include a role dimension, in order to plan the salary by role or grade, or an Employee dimension to enable planning by employee or job grade.

The Operating Expenses or OPEX model should enable the user to plan the expense related General Ledger accounts at the required level of detail, for example, by collecting the number of flights and hotel nights and using forecast unit costs to calculate travel expenses.

The Capital Expenditure or CAPEX model should include an asset dimension which will include the company’s asset list and allow the user to plan new asset purchases and the corresponding depreciation for the planning period.

Topics: Thought Leadership, Financial Information Management, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), Forecasting, sap

EPM Execute API - SAP BPC

Posted by Deb Silverman on Wed, Apr 13, 2016 @ 11:04 AM


When comparing BPC to other products, a big factor to consider is the user interface experience. SaaS based
EPM solutions often have significant constraints to the available options when designing the experience users will 
interact with, due to the inherent design limitations of those solutions. BPC’s robust Excel interface has an unlimited ability to meet any user experience requirement. In addition to the significant numbers of Excel functions included in the EPM Add-in that can be applied creatively to meet any need, sometimes it is necessary to leverage Visual Basic to create highly specific behavior in the interface.

Topics: Excel, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), best practices for epm, API, VB

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