SAP Analytics
Thought Leadership

The question of how to perform change management for BPC NetWeaver comes up often from customers. With three ways to move items between landscapes this leaves customers with the question of what is the best method?  We’ll go over the pros and cons of each method.

Topics: Process Improvement, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), NetWeaver, Performance, Microsoft, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Searching the Web for SAP EPM & BPC Answers - Part I

Posted by Charles Dagaev on Wed, Jul 31, 2013 @ 12:07 PM

It seems every day we are always searching for something on the Internet. A good recipe for pea soup, the cheapest hotel in Oakland, California or the difference between an Aardvark and an Armadillo. We are creatures of habit.  You most likely get your news or local forecast from the same source on line each morning, the same way you probably go to the same coffee house.  Although there are thousands of similar sites, we find a website that provides us with the information we are looking for and we stick with it. I have found over the years that these habits cover not only one’s personal searches but their professional as well.

Topics: Best Practices, Performance, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Rolling Forecasts – Effecting EPM Techniques

Posted by Martin Lloyd on Wed, Jul 17, 2013 @ 11:07 AM

In a previous blog I examined the trend away from the traditional annual budget and periodic reforecasting regime and towards the rolling forecast. I’d now like to examine the particular factors which are driving companies towards rolling forecasts and the implications that this has on the required tools and methodologies.

Topics: Best Practices, Process Improvement, Excel, Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Information Management, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), Forecasting

Organizational Change Management in EPM and BPC Implementations

Posted by Connie Folk on Wed, Jul 10, 2013 @ 12:07 PM

Previously I discussed the top five critical success factors for a project.  Remember the word of caution mentioned in that blog – “slick, leading-edge technology alone will not guarantee project success.”  So what factor from that list must be coupled with the technology to ensure a successful adoption of your EPM or SAP BPC solution?  The Human Factor, or quite simply, the people that will be involved in using the system once deployed can make or break your project.  I’ll discuss in this blog why Organizational Change Management (OCM) should be one of your Top 5 Critical Success Factors for your EPM or SAP implementation.

Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Project Management, Value, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

3 Reasons Why EPM Unwired Will Add Value to Your Organization

Posted by Will Leonard on Fri, May 31, 2013 @ 11:05 AM

The SAP EPM Mobility suite continues to gain momentum, most recently with the addition of Planning and Consolidation (BPC) to the SAP EPM Unwired app. SAP announced a mobile version of BPC in October 2012, and demonstrated the mobile app at SAP Financials 2013 in Las Vegas. 

Topics: HANA, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Cloud, Value, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Spilled Beer and the Key to EPM Value

Posted by David Den Boer on Wed, May 22, 2013 @ 12:05 PM

"They spill more beer than we make in a year!" That line was from a great beer commercial for a small brewery that claimed small, handmade batches (or microbrews) were superior to the huge commercial operations of the beer manufacturing kings. Consequently, sales of "microbrews" took off, with consumers deciding that selecting a personal favorite from a market rich with a variety of choices was superior to buying beer from the monolith that had "regular" and "light" to choose from.

Topics: Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Roadmap, Value, Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

HANA: Improving SAP One Customer At A Time

Posted by Martin Lloyd on Mon, May 13, 2013 @ 12:05 PM

If you’ve read anything which has come from SAP in the last few months you will have heard of HANA. I understood that SAP thought it was very important but didn’t really understand what it was and how it was going to affect me. After some reading, attending a couple of courses and being involved in some discussions with SAP I know a little more and would like to share it with you.

Topics: HANA, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Consolidation, Cloud, Roadmap, Value, Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

EPM Project Management Methodologies Untangled

Posted by Connie Folk on Tue, Apr 30, 2013 @ 08:04 AM

Do you ever wonder if you are keeping up with the plethora of project management methodologies? Waterfall, Scrum, Agile, Lean, ASAP,  Agile Waterfall and Sprints form just a handful of concepts. What is a project management methodology anyway and how do you choose the most appropriate one for your Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC) or Business Intelligence (BI) SAP project?

Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Business Intelligence (BI), Project Management, Value, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Service Pack 9 for Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) 10, Netweaver version, has some notable enhancements that are worth discussing.  There are three that we are speaking of specifically:

• Support for Time Dependent Hierarchy
• Parallel execution framework is implemented
• MDX on HANA

Topics: HANA, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

This is Part 2 of 2 dealing with EPM Integration and Financial Information Management. If you have not read Part 1 discussing Installation, please read it first. For me, there are two components to configuration.  First there are systematic configurations to bring the environment up and running.  And then there is usability configuration to setup user & groups (although it’s part of environment configuration...), but most importantly creating and configuring data store connections.

Topics: Process Improvement, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Cloud, Financial Information Management, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)