Rebuilding Cost Budgeting in SAP Analytics Cloud for a Global Manufacturer

ACBaltica helped a global manufacturing group move its cost budgeting from an aging planning platform to SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). The client already ran part of its planning in SAC, so this project carried that work forward – taking a large, heavily used piece of functionality across and redesigning it on the way. Today, more than 500 users plan and report in one system, and the calculations that once ran overnight during period close now finish within an hour.

Customer

The customer is a large manufacturing business, part of a wider global group that it reports up to. Some time before this project, the client had already put personnel cost planning live in SAP Analytics Cloud, so the platform was familiar to their teams before ACBaltica came on board.

Challenge

Cost budgeting was one of the last major processes still running outside SAP. It sat on a legacy IBM Team One planning system implemented years earlier and extended many times since, with layers of new functionality on top of a strong core. By the time this project began, the system had grown slow and hard to maintain. The customer used the system to close the actual period and prepare reports for headquarters. On top of that, it ran the planning process.

Everywhere else, the customer's accounting and reporting already lived in SAP. That left data moving out of SAP into Team One and back again before anyone could report on it. Bringing budgeting onto SAP would take that round trip out of the picture.

The build was a demanding one – with over 500 users involved in the process and firm requirements from the headquarters that didn't sit neatly on SAP standard. A fit-gap analysis confirmed the distance was too wide for a standard implementation, so a custom design was the sensible route.

Solution

ACBaltica was engaged in this project by the customer’s SAP partner, bringing our SAP Analytics Cloud expertise where it was needed. The customer's own consultants handled the SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) tasks and also worked on the SAP Analytics Cloud side, where ACBaltica contributed the data flow architecture and the most complex calculations.

ACBaltica’s team rebuilt the data flow architecture from the ground up as a custom solution, mapping it to how the business already worked and to what headquarters expected. That redesign happened together with the client, which mattered for a process used this widely.

What the solution does

• Puts configuration in the users' hands. Key users can set up business rules, planning processes, and reports themselves. Even end users can build their own reports, either through an Excel add-on or directly in SAP Analytics Cloud.

• Keeps actuals and plan in one place. Planning and reporting now draw on a single set of data. Teams run prebuilt reports or shape their own, without pulling figures from one system into another.

• Handles complex calculations. ACBaltica took on the data architecture and the most complex calculations behind the budgeting model.

Project team

The customer's own team included three SAP BW consultants and two SAP S/4HANA consultants. On the SAP Analytics Cloud side, six consultants worked on the project – two of them from ACBaltica. 

Results and benefits

• Period close runs in minutes. Calculations performed during the close used to take more than a day. The longest of them now finishes in about 20 minutes.

• No functionality was lost. Everything the old system did carried over into the new one, so faster performance didn't come at the cost of what users could do.

• One system for planning and reporting. Actual and plan data now sit together, feeding both prebuilt and self-service reporting.

• A simpler landscape. With budgeting on SAP next to accounting and reporting, the customer no longer moves data back and forth between platforms – saving time, effort, and ensuring the data is reliable and up to date.

Why ACBaltica?

The customer's partner brought ACBaltica in because the two had worked together before and knew the team could take on hard problems. ACBaltica's experience in operating and capital expenditure (OpEx and CapEx) planning fit the work closely.

Our competitive edge:

• Deep expertise in SAP Analytics Cloud planning and reporting.

• A track record of custom SAC solutions for large, complex user bases.

• Experience designing OpEx and CapEx budgeting systems.

• A reliable partner for other consultancies on the hardest parts of a project.