Companies often associate financial planning and closing books with a challenge. The more entities an organization has, the more difficulties it сauses. Nevertheless, the limitations encourage companies to develop their capabilities and technical facilities.
One of the key factors affecting success is the right software solution. The SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) addresses this kind of issues. The system allows to gain tight control and reporting flexibility in multi-entities organizations.
In the article, Pavel Romanovski, the head of the BPC department in ACBaltica, makes an overview of the software's advantages and its variations.
Preconditions
At first, let’s consider what difficulties businesses face in terms of financial planning and consolidation. One of the ACBaltica's clients shared its issues:
Inaccuracy
Accountants collected actual data by phone calls. So, they had to trust the given information. Then they manually entered data that increased the potential for errors.
Non-transparency
The units provided budget reports in MS Excel on a specific date. As a result, the finance department couldn’t get a real-time picture of actual data.
Time-consuming activity
Manual operations (data entry, copying, tracking) took a lot of time that could be spent on analysis and review.
To cope with the challenges, the company implemented SAP Business Planning and Consolidation solution.
Solution
SAP BPC is a unified platform that enables to manage financial and operational enterprise-wide data. It delivers planning, reporting, consolidation and forecasting capabilities. SAP BPC allows to adjust financial plans and forecasts and also to speed up the budget and closing cycles.
Our clients that relied upon SAP BPC represent the following industries:
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finance,
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transport,
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food manufacturing,
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oil and gas,
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metallurgy.
The solution is applicable to any sector. Companies choose SAP BPC because of its universal functionality. Below are the key benefits of the software:
Planning
SAP BPC is seamlessly integrated with an ERP. It enables to retract planning data from BPC to ERP for analysis with the actuals.
The solution aligns strategic objectives with operational plans.
Reporting
The granularity of data in reports enables to drill down on various drivers of profitability (segment, product category, geography and channel).
The software provides templates that simplify report writing.
Consolidation
SAP BPC automatically consolidates data and thus increases accuracy and reduces budget cycle time.
Forecasting
SAP BPC enables to identify trends and get better forecasted results.
Implementation
If you plan to implement the system, you need to go behind its variations:
SAP BPC Optimized for S/4HANA runs directly on S/4HANA. It includes all planning functionality of SAP BPC Embedded, but also eliminates the main weaknesses of the embedded solution:
- In SAP BPC Embedded a user can’t get actual data and compare it with plans in real-time.
- Data gets duplicated, so the cost of ownership increases.
- The embedded solution doesn’t have pre-defined planning models (also known as Business Content). That increases implementation costs.
To choose the right alternative, you also need to take into account other factors:
1. Your current performance management processes,
2. Data sources,
3. Your IT Roadmap.
The checklist below will help you to choose SAP BPC Embedded between SAP BPC Optimized.
1. Your current performance management processes,
2. Data sources,
3. Your IT Roadmap.
The checklist below will help you to choose SAP BPC Embedded between SAP BPC Optimized.
1. Performance Management Processes
1.1. You want your planning and reporting data to be very detailed.
You need to choose SAP BPC Optimized for S/4HANA. But also consider whether your data is financial or not.
1.2. You plan to manage not only financial data.
Choose SAP BPC Embedded.
You need to choose SAP BPC Optimized for S/4HANA. But also consider whether your data is financial or not.
1.2. You plan to manage not only financial data.
Choose SAP BPC Embedded.
2. Data sources
2.1. You have many unintegrated sources of data.
You need to choose SAP BPC Embedded.
2.2. You have a good data source that implies unified data dictionaries for planning and actual recording.
You can choose SAP BPC Optimized.
2.3. More than 20% of data are out of S/4HANA.
You need to choose SAP BPC Embedded.
You need to choose SAP BPC Embedded.
2.2. You have a good data source that implies unified data dictionaries for planning and actual recording.
You can choose SAP BPC Optimized.
2.3. More than 20% of data are out of S/4HANA.
You need to choose SAP BPC Embedded.
3. Your IT Roadmap
3.1. Currently, you don’t have any SAP solutions, but plan to move to SAP.
You need to choose SAP BPC Embedded.
3.2. You have a large SAP landscape.
You need to choose SAP BPC Optimized.
Before deciding on SAP BPC implementation, revise once again your business needs. If you’re ready to spend more time on your business growth and less time on closing the books, SAP BPC is the right solution for you.
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