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:  

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

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.