For years, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) customers have dutifully paid their 20–22% annual maintenance fees—expecting updates, innovation, and support. In 2025, it’s time to ask a hard question: What are you really getting in return?
For years, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) customers have dutifully paid their 20–22% annual maintenance fees—expecting updates, innovation, and support. In 2025, it’s time to ask a hard question: What are you really getting in return?
Topics: HANA, Analytics, Cloud, BPC, SAP HANA, Analytics Cloud, SaaS, SAC, BPC Lifeline
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) has been a trusted financial planning and consolidation solution for years, but the landscape is shifting. With SAP’s end-of-maintenance timelines approaching and cloud-based EPM solutions gaining traction, many BPC customers are facing a critical decision:
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.
Topics: HANA, Analytics, Cloud, BPC, SAP HANA, Analytics Cloud, SaaS, SAC
In 2007, OutlookSoft bought BPC and ten years later, SAP group reporting was released. Several versions of BPC have been released since its first debut in May 2017 including: Standard, Embedded, Optimized, and a Microsoft version. This article will compare the functionalities of BPC Standard (the most frequently used version) to the 2022 version of Group Reporting on-premise and will discuss some of the main aspects of the consolidation process.
Topics: BPC, sap bpc, group reporting
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:
Topics: Roadmap, BPC v10 upgrade, BPC, Product Focused, reporting, sap bpc, SO - BPC v7.x, SO - BPC v10.x, SO - BPC v11.x, SAP Analytics Cloud, User Experience, tuneup, analytics tune up
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.
Topics: Thought Leadership, BPC, Executive, EPM
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.
Topics: BPC, BPC NW – Embedded, Embedded, BW
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:
Topics: Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), BPC, Functional, reporting
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
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.
Topics: BPC, Analysis Office
1.Get Your Ultimate Guide to Improving SAP EPM Performance
Learn what could be contributing to your poor performance and how to diagnose common problems. Get tips that will empower you and your team to improve the performance of your system in order to get the most out of your SAP EPM Investment.
2. Test Your BPC Performance
Get a BPC performance report card and custom report to identify performance issues you may not even know you have.
3. Get Your EPM Assessment
Our assessment delivers a complete, best practice roadmap for you to follow. We’ll work together to assess what you need to pivot your financial forecasting, planning, reporting and analysis to handle the compressed requirements from the volatile COVID-19 environment.
Column5 Consulting Group, LLC
2820 S Alma School Rd
Suite 18-645
Chandler, AZ 85286
Toll Free: +1.800.360.7839
Email: info@column5.com
Column5 Consulting UK
19 Highfield Rd, Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 3BH
Phone: +44 20 7183 0760
Email: info@column5.com