SAP Analytics
Thought Leadership

The Process is King

Posted by Richard Hynes on Tue, Jul 07, 2015 @ 07:07 AM

How to Get the Most from Business Process Flows in SAP BPC

Overview

The Process Flow Design is an integral part of any SAP BPC implementation project.  As a stage in the project it should come immediately after the Conceptual Design phase and before the essential Blueprinting step, as shown in the diagram, below which outlines the ten basic project stages.

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

This is part two of a blog on utilizing the BPC Restore Journal and Export Journal Data Manager Packages.  In the first installment we covered how to setup BPC to use the packages and a few of the reasons why a business team might utilize mass journal updates.  In the second installment, we will walk through a working example of how a team might use the packages to seed budget journals from actuals.  See part 1 for a refresher on how to setup BPC for importing and exporting journals.

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

Analytics, EPM, and Managed Service

Posted by Jonathon Pause on Tue, Jun 23, 2015 @ 10:06 AM

Analytics?  Analytics.  Analytics!  Let us simply get it out there – analytics are the newest, hottest technology that everyone is talking about.  “The CFO’s Technology Imperatives for 2015” by Financial Executives International (FEI) and Gartner states, “many IT organizations have made initial investments, but these tend to be tactically focused and do not address the more fundamental issues of data quality and consistency.”  The market is in such a fervor over the promise of analytics that we often lose sight of our greater IT goals, and we do not effectively outline a strategy that can move us toward the new promised land.  

Surveys from Gartner reaffirm these assertions in a study on Top Big Data Challenges.  The top three challenges include how to derive value, how to define strategy, and how to obtain the skills and capabilities needed related to a big data initiative.

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

Has your team ever had the need to consolidate history, including journals, when moving to a new consolidation solution?  How about detailed consolidated budgets that use journals?  Or detailed reporting on journal activity?   What about the need to move journals between development, quality, and production environments?  All of this can be accomplished using BPC’s Restore Journals and Export Journals package that comes standard with BPC. Today’s discussion will outline some of the key concepts with using BPC Restore Journal and Export Journal Data Manager Packages.   In the second installment, the discussion will continue with a couple of use cases explaining the different ways to use the functionality.  As a primer, it’s important to review the standard BPC EPM documentation on how to use Journals and Data Manager Packages.

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

Mind the Gap!

Posted by David Den Boer on Tue, Jun 09, 2015 @ 08:06 AM

The traditional IT vs. Finance gap and why it is essential to overcome that for EPM success.

Everyone loves a rivalry, at least when it comes to sports teams. It seems that the bitterer and longer running the rivalry, the better. When it comes to corporate politics, there can be few rivalries as legendary or potent as that between IT and Finance.

No one knows when it all started, but make no mistake, this can be trench warfare that started long before computers were even used in business. I can imagine the conflict raging so long, that there may have been a dialog like this in ancient times, “I simply can’t let you operate the wheel on your own, you don’t have the technical skills. Why don’t you tell me what you need the wheel to do, and I will operate it for you…just so there aren’t any mistakes?” “What? It’s just a stupid wheel; surely I am qualified to figure this out. Let me try it and we’ll see how it goes.”

Topics: Best Practices, Process Improvement, Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Information Management

EPM and the Wisdom of Sun Tzu

Posted by David Den Boer on Tue, May 26, 2015 @ 14:05 PM

Inspired by my colleague from Column5 EMEA’s use of a military reference, I’d like to discuss some of the parallels of 2500 year old military tactics to EPM strategic objectives.

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

5 Things You Can Do to Get the Best Performance from Your BPC MS 10/10.1 Server Environment, Part 2

Posted by Charles Dagaev on Tue, May 12, 2015 @ 08:05 AM

If you have not read part one of this blog, read it here!

Topics: Best Practices, Thought Leadership, EPM 10, Performance, Microsoft, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

5 Things You Can Do to Get the Best Performance from Your BPC MS 10/10.1 Server Environment, Part 1

Posted by Charles Dagaev on Tue, Apr 28, 2015 @ 10:04 AM

1. Landscape Design

I have been working with the BPC product since its inception in 2000. I am always surprised when clients have skipped or are not interested in what we refer to as a System Landscape Design. We take the functional design and/or what you are currently doing in the product to properly size the servers and client machines for the future use of BPC. If you skip this step, I believe there is no way you will get good performance!

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

What exactly is SAP EPM? It’s much more than a few random letters to be sure. Let’s first understand what the second set of letters is before we understand all of them as a whole.

Topics: Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Performance

“What is your BPC upgrade strategy?” or “what is the best plan to migrate BPC?” are the most common questions I am asked by clients looking to upgrade to the latest version of SAP BPC.  Even though clients' landscapes come in all shapes and sizes, the overall strategy for a BPC upgrade is not very different from one client to the next.  

Topics: Best Practices, Thought Leadership, NetWeaver, Performance, Microsoft, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)