Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate vs. SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

Sage is not at all well suited for small companies who want an agile, nimble setup for quick moving situations and mobile use. These type of companies should look elsewhere such as a SaaS offering from another vendor. In addition Sage is very expensive both in its initial outlay and ongoing support. Medium and larger sized companies benefit from a Sage install much more than the smaller constructor. Having the modules all work in unison is important when a company is of a certain size as is having the long tenured support structure. In addition Sage requires the terminals services setup to use it remotely and the larger companies are more likely to have the infrastructure and support for that type of setup

Incentivized

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

• There are a lot of ways to drill down into information. The ability to run inquiries that can be easily exported into Excel is incredibly useful.
• The help desk is very helpful. There are multiple ways to get a hold of someone and it is extremely useful.
• The knowledgebase articles are very helpful and provide a lot of great detail.

Incentivized

• 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

• Lack of data validation and controls
• Extremely limited report configuration without significant customization
• Too many arbitrary limits like vendor name that forced partial names into the address
• Very outdated UI
• Very siloed forcing users to open different applications for different functions

Incentivized

• 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

Sage is somewhat easy to use as far as its simplicity, however, when I first started using it I really wished there were more training materials available. As I did research to figure out what resources were there to learn how to use the paid software, all I found were courses you have to pay for. In my personal opinion, I don't think you should have to pay to learn how to use a software you bought.

Incentivized

Unlike other SAP traditional products, SAP BPC was meant to be simple and familiar to financial users

Incentivized

They have a very quick, responsive team that assists. They also have great higher-level engineers who assist in more complicated matters and all in all, you need a support team that is quick to respond when you are in the middle of business crises.

Incentivized

We need a big support team with various skillset like BPC, ABAP, BW, HANA, FICO etc

Incentivized

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

SAP Training contents are very good, informative and exhaustive.

Incentivized

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

We currently have Sage in place which handles the majority of our business needs on the back end, but compared to some others that are on the market like Builder Trend, it does lack the client facing side of the house. To make it a better product, a client facing portal would be best so they can be up to date.

Incentivized

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

• The accounting functions (AP, AR, GL) are mature so it does a great job with core financials. The reports are flexible so it does a good job of providing flexibility in report writing. The application is written for a workgroup so multiple people can use it at the same time. The transaction detail is strong so that a transaction can be rolled back if necessary.

Incentivized

• 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