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Microsoft Access vs. SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Microsoft Access

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.

    $139.99

    per PC

    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AThe SAP BPC software is designed to help users plan and achieve a faster, more accurate close. The SAP BPC software aims to help users spend more time growing their business and less time closing books. The vendor’s value proposition is that their software delivers planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidation capabilities in a single application. This, in turn, enables them to easily adjust plans and forecasts, speed up budget and closing cycles, and ensure compliance with…N/A
    Pricing
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Editions & Modules
    Microsoft Access
    $139.99
    per PC
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    SAP
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    29 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    29 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    21 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Relational Databases
    Comparison of Relational Databases features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    7.7
    3 Ratings
    5% below category average
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    -
    Ratings
    ACID compliance7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Database monitoring8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Database locking8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Encryption7.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Disaster recovery7.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Flexible deployment8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple datatypes8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
    Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    7.8
    41 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Long-term financial planning00 Ratings7.535 Ratings
    Financial budgeting00 Ratings8.137 Ratings
    Forecasting00 Ratings7.840 Ratings
    Scenario modeling00 Ratings7.336 Ratings
    Management reporting00 Ratings8.140 Ratings
    Consolidation and Close
    Comparison of Consolidation and Close features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    7.3
    40 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Financial data consolidation00 Ratings8.436 Ratings
    Journal entries and reports00 Ratings7.330 Ratings
    Multi-currency management00 Ratings6.928 Ratings
    Intercompany Eliminations00 Ratings6.930 Ratings
    Minority Ownership00 Ratings7.020 Ratings
    Local and consolidated reporting00 Ratings6.433 Ratings
    Detailed Audit Trails00 Ratings8.227 Ratings
    Financial Reporting and Compliance
    Comparison of Financial Reporting and Compliance features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    7.3
    40 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Financial Statement Reporting00 Ratings8.035 Ratings
    Management Reporting00 Ratings7.240 Ratings
    Excel-based Reporting00 Ratings7.539 Ratings
    Automated board and financial reporting00 Ratings6.430 Ratings
    Analytics and Reporting
    Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    5.6
    36 Ratings
    30% below category average
    Personalized dashboards00 Ratings5.024 Ratings
    Color-coded scorecards00 Ratings6.922 Ratings
    KPIs00 Ratings3.031 Ratings
    Cost and profitability analysis00 Ratings7.628 Ratings
    Key Performance Indicator setting00 Ratings4.024 Ratings
    Benchmarking with external data00 Ratings7.018 Ratings
    Integration
    Comparison of Integration features of Microsoft Access and SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Feature
    Microsoft Access
    -
    Ratings
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    6.4
    39 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Flat file integration00 Ratings6.935 Ratings
    Excel data integration00 Ratings6.837 Ratings
    Direct links to 3rd-party data sources00 Ratings5.425 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Small Businesses
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    IBM Planning Analytics
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP IQ
    Score5.4 out of 10
    Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
    Score7.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.4
    (102 ratings)
    7.4
    (41 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (15 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.6
    (8 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.4
    (5 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.7
    (39 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Microsoft AccessSAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    As a Material Purchasing/Planning/inventory tracking application, Microsoft Access serves its purpose well. It's presentation is clean, data entry is simple and the ability to customize search fields is welcome. It does, however, come with some caveats; namely, when setting search filters and the need arises to back up a step or two, with Microsoft Access you have to reset, or "clear all", adding extra steps/time to a query.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SAP
    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) overall is a good package and has helped improve our reporting a lot whilst also making it more efficient due to the reliability of data input / output. There are limitations like graphs being so limited in functionality and reports failing when too much data being processed however i would recommend to others.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts.
    • Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite.
    • It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join.
    • Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SAP
    • SAP BPC is real time data. You can send information into the system and see it reflected in your reports immediately. Other systems may require a manual push into a reporting system.
    • SAP BPC is a shared reporting tool, so multiple users can be working in a model/environment at the same time, real time. This is especially helpful if your workbooks incorporated multiple processes requiring multiple users to get into the same model.
    • SAP BPC is a powerful tool designed to help all facets of the company, from cash flow to capital expenditures to headcount management to financial planning to consolidation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes.
    • The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things.
    • Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names.
    • I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SAP
    • SAP should focus on delivering one single product for planning, consolidation and budgeting needs rather than providing a large list of options to choose from.
    • The product is not very user-friendly compared to other cloud competitors. There is a heavy dependency on IT teams.
    • SAP BPC should come up a pure cloud option.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
    Read full review
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
    Incentivized
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    SAP
    Unlike other SAP traditional products, SAP BPC was meant to be simple and familiar to financial users
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SAP
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
    Incentivized
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    SAP
    We need a big support team with various skillset like BPC, ABAP, BW, HANA, FICO etc
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SAP
    SAP BPC training content and trainers are very good. The training is structured and provides a very good understanding of the product features and functionalities. I attended 6 separate training sessions of week-long or more. I had very good experience in all the sessions. The training is organized very well.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    SAP
    SAP Training contents are very good, informative and exhaustive.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
    Read full review
    SAP
    The implementation was carried out in two phases spread over a period of 4 years with 2 upgrades in between. We also had multiple upgrades to HANA.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    Excel is a fantastic - robust application that can do so much so easily. Its easy to train and understand. However - excel does not provide a reporting function and that is typically where we will suggest a move to [Microsoft] Access. [Microsoft] Access requires a little more knowledge of data manipulation.
    Incentivized
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    SAP
    With Hyperion we struggled as it didn’t have integrated planning and consolidation, whereas BPC does have it. BPC is easier for reporting as it is Excel-based. Also BPC has prepackaged business process flows that helped a lot. Hyperion on the other hand has a faster response time for user queries or report generation.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Not having to recreate queries or reports every time you want to use them.
    • Once an item is created and saved as part of the database, you save manpower by not having to recreate them.
    • ROI from a usability standpoint is great. Solid product with great functionality that requires low maintenance usually.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SAP
    • When originally implemented (as the predecessor product Outlooksoft) BPC took ASU from trying to budget and forecast for a 2B enterprise out of spreadsheets and into a far more consolidated tool. It has saved us considerable time over the years and paid for itself several times over.
    • BPC also allows us to present our budget in multiple different views to support management, board and departmental reporting.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Screenshots

    Screenshot of SAP BPC Home ScreenScreenshot of SAP BPC Web ClientScreenshot of SAP BPC DashboardScreenshot of SAP BPC Web Report