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https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/85/Rn/O7KIDE24JCGS.PNGMake a better decision with SAP BPCThe software is used mainly by the financial department across the organization. I support the implementation and work on further improvements mainly around RPA. SAP BPC allows us to plan, budget and forecast using one tool which is fantastic and helps us to better understand the connections between single pieces of data. To add to this, these financial subjects are captured in a unified system which significantly improves data collection.,Front-end of SAP BPC is Excel-based, so drag and drop functionalities can be enabled to easily analyze figures We can load data from different source systems This software has helped to simplify, streamline and automate the whole budgeting process Simplify data aggregation Comply with changing local and international accounting standards,Protection on data could be better, since creating restrictions based on multiple combinations is quite difficult The license is expensive Performance when using dimensions with many massive data records could be improved,8,Increasing access to information across the organization Improved data quality Business alignment Decision making speed has improved,6,We mainly used our resources, however, there was/is support from an external company.,Host Analytics Cloud EPM Suite,Concur Travel and Expense, UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform, Promapp, Winshuttle, Citrix CloudBridgeReport consolidation via SAP BPCSAP BPC is being used in reporting and financial departments at the customer end. We were also able to do financial consolidation with different parties through SAP BPC.,We have implemented SAP BPC 10 with one of our customers to achieve consolidation with their different vendors and to generate the budgetary reports and fetch the same data within different departments. With the help of SAP BPC, our upper management and financial team are confident with the reports, helping them make business decisions.,So far we have not seen any area where we are stuck or needed improvement, except where the data fetched over the intranet from different sourcing had failed to consolidate on the reports. The data should be fetched from any sourcing without any network leak to avoid missing data.,10,As this is the add-on for a business warehouse system (SAP BW) SAP BPC functionality had a positive ROI, allowing us to consolidate. So far the customer using SAP BPC has not yet faced any negative impact on their ROI as it always gives you accurate and timely reporting with proper consolidation.,10,I have worked with SAP itself to deploy BPC components to achieve the business goals for our US client. It was very easy, friendly and without any hurdles. We were able to configure and setup the functionality and we have generated the finaicial reports to broadcast the data for the internal department of our customer.,SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Business Warehouse,SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform, SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise, SAP Supply Chain ManagementAn excellent system for planning budgets and goalsThe use of BPCs within the organization of one of my clients has been fundamental to allowing highly skilled users in the area of business intelligence (professionals or very practical users in the BI sector) go into detail regarding well-defined processes of cost saving, reorganization of the company budget, and the restructuring and optimization of resources.,Perfect integration with SAP The data, once made available and imported in the SAP environment, allows all users to use them immediately without having to implement any process of ETL or data manipulation Is optimized for SAP S/4HANA , so the finance department has a complete suite available to manage projects at best in a single software that speaks with the same business terms,Working with extremely complex workbooks can have repercussions in terms of performance While certainly suitable for personnel already skilled in using and knowing the whole Sap environment, the documentation regarding the potentialities and above all the functionalities of the product could be slightly improved. Integration with SAP NetWeaver or Microsoft Excel requires good expertise for the implementation,8,Saving costs thanks to a detailed financial analysis "when if" analysis can predict any evaluation errors thanks to the integration with BW \ HANA the data is available to you immediately,8,,SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform, SAP Business Warehouse, IBM CognosComprehensive FeaturesThe user interface is similar. It uses MS Excel so it is very adaptable. Internal and external reporting has been made super easy.,Very useful in analyzing the data. We are using it to compare historical performances month by month to current months. Great customer service. The program is very easy to learn due to its Excel UI. It brings several business units under one system and therefore data presented at the enterprise level is really solid. Well integrated with HANA.,Implementation is very tricky. Make sure you know what you are looking for and what you will be using it for in the long run to be able to get best out of the software. EPM Limitations. Expensive for small and medium-sized companies.,10,We have been blessed by it. As a company where we have multiple hotels with 800+ employees at each, this software has helped us analyze each cent spent.,10,SAP. Great to work with.,,SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle Account Reconciliation Cloud, Oracle Access ManagementSAP BPC is DyingSAP BPC is used to support financial consolidations by Accounting team and for budgeting & forecasting (Capex, Headcount, Opex, Integrated Financial Planning) by FP&A team. It is used across the whole organization.,BPC NW version can use the functionalities of SAP BW for ETL and data warehousing. Complex business requirements and logic can be built using SAP ABAP. Can be scaled and support huge volume of data using SAP HANA capabilities.,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.,7,The total cost of ownership is high Even a simple upgrade project can run into months Unstable roadmap introducing the new product every year adding the ever-growing list of options to choose from,9,Column 5 team is very competent and handled the requirements and deliverables very well.,Anaplan, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP HANA and SAP ERP,Anaplan, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP HANA,400,10,Complex Gross Margin Allocations Automating month-end tasks Automating access provisioning,Automated access provisioning Encrypting NPI's product price and details Automating month-end and QTR-end process,Financial Consolidations Cash Flow Statement Fund Flow Statement,7,Yes,Product Features Prior Experience with the Product Vendor Reputation Analyst Reports,Select a cloud player like Anaplan,Vendor implemented Implemented in-house Professional services company,Yes,Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled,Handling business requirements on web interface without using EPM add-in Performance of logic Automating updates to 70 master data properties during month-end and QTR-end,8,Online training In-person training Self-taught,9,9,We need the training to learn the product functionalities and best use of features.,8,Let the design and architecture be handled by BPC experts from SAP (level 7 consultants).,No - we have not done any customization to the interface,Yes - we have added extensive custom code,There was also customization for SSO on the portal, Automating access provisioning, Encryption for NPI's, Automating month end and qtr-end process.,No,7,Yes,We are in a Mac environment and decided not to use EPM add-in tool. SAP Product team in China helped in adding more features and functionalities for going with a web-only version.,Creating multiple hierarchies for each dimension Scheduling a job Archiving job logs,Creating dashboard Reverting back to a point in time Pushing logic to HANA,Yes, but I don't use it,7,9,9,7,SAP ECC - Transactional System Mulesoft using WSDL Demantra,Already Integrated Already Integrated Already Integrated,File import/export Single Signon API (e.g. SOAP or REST) ETL tools,SAP BPC is fully backed by SAP NW, SAP BW, and SAP HANA. The integration is robust and can be scaled for large implementations. Try to setup EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) and Data Hub.,8,8,Discount on Professional Services,Request for bundling the product with professional services of the platinum level 7 consultants who can lead architecture design and support during the development phase.,Yes,Bug fixes Performance New features,AI & ML features Cloud platform Seem less integration to Big Data and IoT,No,NoSAP BPCSAP BPC is used as Reporting tool of consolidation. It is used for monthly reporting (short Financial Statements) and quarterly reporting, including Intercompany reconciliation. We use also it to retrieve historical data based on different variants: i.e. IFRS/LOCAL GAAP/US GAAP, Local amount, Consolidated amount... etc.,Legal consolidation Detailed reporting package Retrieval of historical data,It's not user friendly Depending on how it is implemented it is not as flexible as it should be, in case of changes in consolidation rules,8,Fast tool. Complicated for non-finance users,5,In the past I sused PwC consultant, very good high professionality,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management,BOARD, Google Analytics, Microsoft Office 2016, Concur Travel and ExpenseBenefits of BPCMy company uses SAP BPC for forecasting and analysis and is now currently undergoing implementation for consolidation. It's currently used by finance departments, and once it's implemented for consolidation will be used by Corporate Reporting and Corporate Accounting. One of the benefits of SAP BPC is that two finance teams (Financial Planning & Analysis and Corporate Reporting and Corporate Accounting) will now be using the same tool for internal and external reporting. This will eliminate the need for reconciling systems, which is currently a manual and many times frustrating task. Like many other companies before SAP BPC, my company currently heavily utilizes Excel for consolidation, which has its flaws including not being able to have multiple users edit the workbook and slow performance. On the Financial Planning & Analysis side, SAP BPC has been instrumental in collaborative work between all business segments and Corporate. It has increased performance and allowed for faster quarter closes.,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.,An easily accessible resource page for quick how-to's and tips, as well as things to avoid (maybe a YouTube page). In 10.1, one thing that was removed was the ability to go into the dimension and select multiple members/parents and copy-paste those into your workbook. Please bring this back. When I have a BPC workbook open and a non-BPC workbook open, it slows down performance because whenever I'm toggling between the two workbooks as it's constantly bringing in the EPM context pane into the non-BPC workbook. Is there any way to disable this easily?,10,The upgrade from BPC 7.5 to BPC 10.1 reduced processing dimensions and load times significantly. Using SAP BPC will allow us to update the Consolidation with the latest data in 10 minutes, rather than hours. Using SAP BPC will allow a user to work in the model immediately, rather than waiting hours for another user to exit an Excel workbook.,8,My company partnered with Column 5 to help deploy SAP BPC for financial planning many years ago, and they helped us upgrade from BPC 7.5 to BPC 10.1 this past year. Now they are helping us deploy SAP BPC for consolidation. My company has had a long relationship with Column 5, which is a testament to their professionalism and good work.,,Box, Cisco Spark, TValueSAP BPC reviewed by a heavy user, but that is new to financial systemsWe use it within our department of Financial Planning and Analysis only. It was initially used solely for its consolidation capabilities in order to better report and analyze data, both actuals and budget, with the budget being done in a separate application and loaded in. We have now implemented the planning cubes and use it to develop or annual budget and an annual reforecast with actuals still being loaded in at the end of each month.,Allows for full integration of data to be analyzed in real time. Although we still load actuals on a delayed basis (2 business days after month end), when developing the budget, we not longer have to do a full loading process from a different application into BPC prior to being able to report and analyze the current budget status to prior budget versions or actuals. It is easy to learn basic report building. The hardest part is learning the available dimensions and the different possible combinations and their results, but that will also vary from company to company depending on the complexity of the industry.,Being from a law firm, the system needed a lot of custom tailoring in order to fit our full needs (although many companies could say the same thing). Although the ability to highly customize the system to the company's needs is a positive, it frequently results in the system responding in unexplainable and unrepeatable ways which negatively impacts and slows the budget process. Because of the sporadic nature and variety of the issues, we are unable to repeat them on cue and therefore cannot nail down a solution.,7,Although I am a regular user, I began after the consolidation cube was in place and during the development and implementation of the planning cubes, so I lack the knowledge of a pre-BPC experience at the firm.,8,Column 5 was used for both implementations (consolidation and planning). Based on my understanding of the initial implementation of consolidation, everything went well and the process was smooth. The development of the planning cubes was a little more difficult as there was a different consultant from C5 than the original implantation, and halfway through the development, the consultant left and had to be replaced. This caused some set backs and confusion as every consultant has their own technique and the new consultant couldn't always follow the rationale of what the original had done. The final consultant was great to work with and knowledgeable, but the turnover caused for some issues and could potentially be (just guessing) the reason for some issues we have experienced post-rollout.,Fine if you are already in the SAP ecosystem, otherwise steer clearBPC is being used as the system in which we develop our yearly budgets, collect quarterly forecast, and do an analysis of the spending and revenues throughout the organization. The FP&A organization is the heaviest user, with extensive reporting and analysis being done on a daily basis. Over 300 users across campus access it during budget season in order to enter their budgets and half that many enter it quarterly to update forecasts.,Dimensional model allows for slicing and dicing of the data in a variety of ways This is a custom tool - it provides an environment but you define what the structures look like, which offers flexibility,Updates are not backward compatible - on the server side they require complete reinstalls. While they suggest the tool is unlimited, in practice, there are substantial performance limitations on the Microsoft Platform if you let the cube get too large The Microsoft platform is legacy from the original tool (Outlooksoft) that SAP purchased. The result is that it gets the least effort in development If you aren't using SAP Business Warehouse, the load process is considerably more complex than it otherwise might be.,6,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.,6,Column 5 - They have been very helpful in both implementing and advising us as we have moved through version updates. Freudenberg IT is our hosting provider and they have been less helpful - if it isn't running on NetWeaver/HANA, they seem confused by the architecture. We've struggled to get things working correctly in that environment and try hard not to make changes that might disrupt a currently working system.,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management, Tidemark, Adaptive Suite and Workday Financial Management,Microsoft Office 365, Tableau Desktop, RapidMiner Studio, IBM SPSSSAP BPC ReviewOur entire organization uses it for budgeting. Departments and offices enter annual expenses. Practice groups use it to track employees with annual billable hours and billable rates. Th finance and accounting department uses it for reporting as well as analyzing variances during the fiscal year. The system also is used for creating and updating revenue and expense forecasts during the year.,Allows for tracking of actual vs budgeted expenses. Can have multiple budgets or forecasts for comparison. Can create reports that can be modified to show either department or office views of the data. Allows for budgeting of production hours, billed hours and collections by individual timekeeper.,Data is not easily moved between modules. Several steps necessary to accomplish this. Users often overwrite data entered by others. Need better controls for this. Better reporting of changes between versions of a budget. In particular, the user who made the changes and what those changes were.,8,Office administrators are able to enter data directly, freeing up accounting staff. Dependent expenses such as taxes and benefits are automatically calculated, saving time for accounting staff. Single source of data for budget information ensures consistency of information when reporting to senior management.,7,Column5 was the partner used for the design and implementation of the system. They have been very helpful and responsive. They have also held conferences and training sessions which have helped educate the users of the system.,DFTech,Chrome River EXPENSE, Fixed Assets Tracking, SAP BusinessObjects BI PlatformBPC Story - Baby Steps to SuccessAt the World Bank Group (WBG), SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) is used as a corporate performance management system to enable financial planning and management and to support the budget processes across IBRD, IFC, and MIGA.,BPC acts as the single source for all budget, revenues, expenses, forecast plans and eliminates the need for budget monitoring staff to maintain their own spreadsheets and legacy systems. Results in substantial time and cost savings due to the reduction of manual errors and data redundancy, enhanced data quality, and data governance, and an expedited planning and monitoring cycle for unit level and corporate planners.,EPM Menu can be simplified. Compatibility issues with MS Office 365 need to be resolved. Single sign on needs to be implemented.,10,BPC now acts as the single source for all budget, revenues, expenses, forecast plans and eliminates the need for budget monitoring staff to maintain their own spreadsheets and legacy systems. This has resulted in substantial time and cost savings due to reduction of manual errors and data redundancy, enhanced data quality and data governance, and an expedited planning and monitoring cycle for unit level and corporate planners.,8,Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),,Oracle PeopleSoft HCM, SAP ERP, SAP Business Warehouse, Collibra, MS SharePointDynamic Tool - BPCWe use BPC for consolidations and eliminations for SEC filings as well for projections and forecasting. It allows for one source of the truth for month end reporting. Only accounting and finance employees have a BPC license. Financial statements and other reporting is pushed to our field users (GMs, VPs, etc).,Accounting and finance users love this tool because reports are built using native Excel. If commands such as EPMCopyRange are utilized it can further the use of native Excel. Compared to BPC 7.5 our elimination and consolidation logic runs in a fraction of the time. Processes that would take multiple days can be accomplished within hours. Powerful and dynamic reports can be built to help business leaders make decisions and see trends.,There is missing functionality on the ability to use the dynamic filter on apply a property when using the excluded members tab of the report editor. We are currently running SP30 BPC 10.1 and the ability existed in previous service packs. We now have to manually exclude some dimensions. We use member exclusions on our income statement tabs to help clean up the multiple total lines that appear when having two dimensions in the row running on member and descendants. In SP 30 and some of the later BPC 10.1 service packs, when a user searches for a dimension member, it displays the dimension member the number of times it shows up in another hierarchy. In previous service packs, when searching for a dimension, it would display the dimension member within the first hierarchy it appears in and then if the user clicked next, it would jump down to show the dimension member within the next hierarchy it is a part of. BPC is not able to handle to calculated member formulas in a report. For example, if a calculated profit center and a calculated datasource are used in a column of the report, BPC is not able to correctly compile and display the correct value for both calculated members.,10,We are able to arrived at our post consolidated/elimination figures much quicker than in years past. We are able to rerun logic packages now rather than book topside entries because the packages run so much faster than BPC 7.5. One area that we are struggling with is the ability to run all of our income statements down to a profit center level and effectively distribute them to non-BPC users.,9,We used VantagePoint and they were some of the most excellent consultants we have used. They truly passed on in-depth knowledge to our team.,,SAP Business WarehouseSK SAP BPC ReviewBPC was used mainly for planning purposes for my previous client. Consolidation implementation started 6 months back where they planned to create a consolidated statement for 20 plus co codes with regions spread across Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia etc. They plan to achieve auto removal of intercompany transactions through this.,Detailed planning Intercompany transaction identification Reporting,None,8,8,Deloitte,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance ManagementBPCWe use BPC for our planning and consolidated financial reports and [we are also] using it for reporting purpose. The biggest challenge is the data integration between the SAP system ECC, BW, and BPC. It's not real-time processing due to the data flow.If it were a real-time data flow then it would be very useful for all kinds of reporting needs.,Real time flow integration between the ECC, BW and BPC systems.,Real time integration,10,Overall it's good = some improvements are required in terms of data points and integration,8,Deloitte,Concur Expense, Vertex CloudSAP Business Planning and Consolidation is worth every cent!SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) is being used as both a planning and reporting system at our organization. It allows us to have control over the financials and allows for systematic driven results. Users like the flexibility of the tool and that it's built right into Microsoft Excel. It lowers the risk of reporting errors and increases the quality of our financials. We can work through many scenarios of [our] annual plan and/or monthly forecast to make sure we achieve the results we want in the business.,Automation of financial processes using a systematic solution. User-friendly Excel Interface to allow for various reporting requirements. Data Integration with your current SAP ERP solution.,The new 10.1 web interface is a little slow when trying to manage a lot of dimensions compared to previous 10.0 web interface. Training tutorials or application demos for various levels of user engagement. Business process flows are really nice to have to organize the flow of a process, but they are more of a maintenance than a help.,9,Decrease the time takes to produce monthly actual reporting, monthly forecast, and annual financial budget. Gained user acceptance for reporting models and standard reporting. Allows users to analyze the business results, which produces better financial performance for the business.,4,TruQua consulting helped us with our BPC upgrade from BPC 10.0 to BPC 10.1 on HANA. They were excellent to work with and provided top enterprise solutions for our BPC performance. We saw a 95% increase in performance in our reporting and input forms after the upgrade to HANA. They were realistic and provided expectations that were exceeded in the end. I would highly recommend them.,DomoBPC worthy of considerationWe use BPC primarily for Planing and Consolidations/financial reporting. In support of Planning, we also have depreciation, resource assignment for projects and Head Count/Cost Center planning models. BPC enables us to group most planing activities within a logical progression. BPC enables us to have the planning detail and financial summary level in one place.,Pushes data from one model to another. This is helpful to have detail in one model, and summary level in another model. Reporting flexibility using formatting, filtering and attributes is good. This offers flexible reporting and input templates by selectively choosing which data sets are relevant to the user.,Scripting language isn't very robust...it is a proprietary language that isn't as capable as VBA or other languages. Sometime ABAP code is needed to supplement the business requirement. Web Templates don't have the same features as the Excel Ad-in. The use of filters and dimension over-rides don't exist.,8,We chose BPC since it was part of the SAP suite. We implemented BPC when we implemented SAP ERP.,9,Macrospect helped us implement. They were fantastic. Full of experience and best practice suggestions.,Hyperion and KhalixKinross Advanced Reporting System (KARS) aka SAP-BPCUsed across the whole organization by approximately 150 users at corporate headquarters, mine sites and regional offices. Used to consolidate actuals and budget for +/- 250 legal entities for quarterly external reporting and monthly internal management reporting.,Timeliness of close process i.e. ledgers are closed on work day 5 and consolidated financial statements are issued on work day 10 (non-quarter end months) and work day 15 (quarter end months). Consolidation completes in 12 minutes across 5 entity hierarchies. The Excel front-end report writer is very user friendly so users are able to create adhoc analysis reports quickly.,From an administration point of view populating the 'Ownership' model is laborious across 5 Entity hierarchies and setting up data access profiles in Security is also tedious i.e. Security interface needs improvement.,10,No ROI measured.,10,Performance Analytics Corporation (previously OutlookSoft Canada) was the only implementation partner back in Feb-07 and therefore the most knowledgeable on the product at that time. Implementation took 6 months and delivered on budget. PAC was also involved when we went from Canadian GAAP to IFRS in 2011 but little assistance has been needed since then.,,Concur Travel and Expense, MS SharePointSAP BPC on HANASAP BPC on HANA is used by the whole finance team for all activities including consolidations, financial planning/forecasting to reporting.,Custom BADIs help with complex forecasting calculations EPM Excel add-in enables the use of complex Excel functions with EPM features,Non BPC users have problem accessing BPC spreadsheets, offline feature does not work well.,8,Helps with quick close,8,Worked with quite a few partners in the early days. Most enhancements were done internally.BPC Planning & Consolidation based on MS ReviewBPC is being used for consolidation purposes. It is being used by Finance Controllers. First all P&L trial balances from all sites are uploaded with a flat file coming from SAP at month-end. Then with input schedules the flows for B/S are being updated. The BPC team analyses if there are no significant variances or changes in mappings and then runs the consolidation process within BPC. A major issue with BPC is that there are still a lot of manual steps done by users and very little script logic is used in BPC to automate month-end process.,The Excel EPM functions are really good BPF functionality with a step by step guidance is a plus Intercompany Eliminations within BPC engine is very straightforward and easy to setup,When a change is needed in the EPM reports it is not very flexible and needs IT intervention Performance sometimes is an issue when consolidating more then 20 entities specially at quarter end Script logic complex to handle and always needs BPC consultant when changes are requiered even if minimal - has very high costs,9,Month-end close process became 25% faster with BPC consolidation Return on investment for BPC planning not really visible yet due to long learning curve for organization Increase in reporting effectiveness (usage) with EPM add-in,8,Internal BPC consultants were hired and ex IBM consultants,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management,SAP Enterprise Portal, Concur Expense, Ariba ProcurementBPC MS general reveiwWe use BPC in our planning and forecasting for FP&A and consolidation for corporate reporting; as far as I know, we also use it for our international distribution.,Running ad-hoc reports Researching on variance explanations Creating standardized reports across the team,It'll be helpful to make the ID/description selection change a stand-alone button in the ribbon Add back the option to select and copy ID's from the dimension dropdown,10,Performance has always been a concern - during busy times the system can get slow for all users, and its report is too large it can get very slow to refresh and update.,9,A consulting company helped us with our system upgrade. They are resourceful and professional.,SAP BPC, it’s OKWe primarily use BPC as the consolidation and external reporting software. We have a basic planning implementation to support reporting. Data entry is primarily integrated from ECC with some topside entries made by corporate at the business level. Plans are entered at a business level directly into BPC via forms or pulled in from ECC.,Use of data sources allows easy identification of data origin. Ex: ECC, manual entry, management adjustment entry, ICC elimination, etc... Reporting is generally fast if best practices are used to avoid performance hits. There are a lot of BPC experts available to implement and provide training.,BPC out of the box is a blank slate and requires system development to be implemented. Generally will need to hire consultants to build and train your organization. Many people are not familiar with multidimensional databases like BPC so there is a learning curve.,8,Our implementation of BPC has successfully met our objective to replace an end of life software package we used previously for consolidations and reporting,5,We used a combination of IBM and independent consultants in conjunction with SAP support. They were all knowledgeable and helpful.,,SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BusinessObjects BI PlatformSAP BPC answers the mailSAP BPC is used by the finance function across the enterprise. It provides a planning solution for finance users for their revenue forecasts for the current year, next year, and five-year planning. BPC allows us to plan, consolidate and report our forecasts internally and externally.,SAP BPC leverages Microsoft Excel well and provides an user interface that is easy to use for finance. SAP BPC integrates with our SAP R/3 to provide a holistic look at our project level data. SAP BPC provides flexibility that is needed in the A&D industry. We are able to customize functionalities for our business needs.,I'd like to see BPC better handle large volumes of data. Our company plans at the contract level and often find ourselves struggling with data volume in terms of system performance. I'd like to see BPC have real-time data from our SAP R/3 system to facilitate a faster closing at month-end.,8,BPC is the first planning solution that has been implemented across the entire enterprise. It has reduced customization between the businesses. Transition of employees between businesses is now easier because everyone is using the same tool. We were hoping for a significant performance improvement with SAP BPC compared to our old legacy tool (SAP BPS). We have not seen an overall improvement of performance for the user base. The performance is about the same.,5,Our local IT took the lead in customizing and deploying SAP BPC to the Finance user base. I am unsure if they worked with a professional services partner initially.,Why BPC?BPC Planning is used as a global financial planning and consolidation tool across all business units. It reduces the cycle time of rolling forecasts and brings accuracy and reliability to the forecast data. It eliminates manual work and the need to deal planning data in Excel. The workflow approval helps to improve the decision-making process.,Real time consolidation One Source of truth for Plan and Actual Powerful Predictive Analytics capabilities,Multiple Architecture Solutions available for BPC could end up with wrong selection of the tool that may not be appropriate for the organization Need to procure additional software to compliment BPC (SAP Analytics for Cloud), the cost associated with additional license requirements Maturity and stability of the latest version,8,Reduced Cycle time to perform Financial Planning and Consolidation Improved confidence on the forecast data Reduction in the cost of Finance Function,7,Multiple partners with large portion of the resources in-house. A successful implementation depends on multiple factors including the buy-in of the top management on the project, focus on the deadlines to complete the project, full engagement of the business users to ensure they are on board from day one of the project.,,Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance ManagementBPC for Financial Forecasting and ConsolidationsWe use BPC for Consolidations and for the monthly financial forecast process. We also use BPC for the annual budgeting process. We plan at a resource and cost object level for expenses. For revenue and COGS, we multiply volumes by average prices or unit costs to calculate Gross Margin.,BPC has an Excel front end, which makes it especially friendly for Finance teams who like to work primarily in spreadsheets. BPC reporting in Excel is easy to learn and it is fast to execute ad hoc reports that pull updated values directly from the database. With minimal training, users can learn how to create and maintain their own reports which can quickly match up and compare forecast and actual values. BPC allows you to use the same system for both actual consolidations and the financial forecast process. This enables users to quickly combine forecast and actual values timely. It is not necessary to wait for transfers of data to/from other systems to combine forecast and actual values in the same report.,BPC should come standard with web functionality that enables the same functionality as the EPM formulas. BPC script logic should run faster for logic which has to reference member properties. When script logic has such programming, it often runs slow as it goes through the dimension information.,10,BPC can enable a company to reduce the number of financial analysts.,9,Tata Consulting Services (TCS) Macrospect The experience was positive with both partners.,,SAP ERPWorking with Business Planning and ConsolidationBusiness Planning and Consolidation is used as a primary tool for business Planning and Consolidation. It is used across the whole organization. Users are from all corners of the world. Specially Managers and Business Analysts. Business Planning and Consolidation helps to plan / outlook across the organization and thus helps the corporate finance team to quickly get the planning number for analysis and any potential corrective action.,Easy to use for business users. Less need for involvement of IT Quickly setup master data and transaction data to simulate any ad-hoc scenario Single version of the truth enable fast, accurate management and statutory reporting.,Web interface (reports and input forms) have limited functionality Difficult to maintain large dimensions For database reads or complex logic, script logic may not be best and need to do ABAP coding,8,Before BPC, planning was done in silos across departments and geographies. BPC combined the planning and removed all silos. Provided a tool for real-time planning and analysis for corporate teams. With work status, BPC is able to control the changes to outlook data and thus able to close the plan as per schedule.,8,Deloitte did the initial design of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation system. Tata Consultancy Services Limited implemented the design and executed the solution across geographies.,SAP Business Warehouse, SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP HANA
  3. SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Reviews
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SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
205 Ratings
Score 7.9 out of 101
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SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Reviews

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
205 Ratings
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Score 7.9 out of 101

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Małgorzata Nitecka-Kubicka profile photo
June 19, 2019

Make a better decision with SAP BPC

Małgorzata Nitecka-Kubicka
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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The software is used mainly by the financial department across the organization. I support the implementation and work on further improvements mainly around RPA. SAP BPC allows us to plan, budget and forecast using one tool which is fantastic and helps us to better understand the connections between single pieces of data. To add to this, these financial subjects are captured in a unified system which significantly improves data collection.
  • Front-end of SAP BPC is Excel-based, so drag and drop functionalities can be enabled to easily analyze figures
  • We can load data from different source systems
  • This software has helped to simplify, streamline and automate the whole budgeting process
  • Simplify data aggregation
  • Comply with changing local and international accounting standards
  • Protection on data could be better, since creating restrictions based on multiple combinations is quite difficult
  • The license is expensive
  • Performance when using dimensions with many massive data records could be improved
If you want your organization to analyze and transform all the data relevant for taking financial and managerial decisions, then SAP BPC will help a lot. you can easily create dashboards which allow one to better understand trends and results. However, one must keep in mind this is not a cheap system, but it is well worth the investment.
Read Małgorzata Nitecka-Kubicka's full review
Pradeep Bele profile photo
January 10, 2019

Report consolidation via SAP BPC

Pradeep Bele
Score 10 out of 10
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SAP BPC is being used in reporting and financial departments at the customer end. We were also able to do financial consolidation with different parties through SAP BPC.
  • We have implemented SAP BPC 10 with one of our customers to achieve consolidation with their different vendors and to generate the budgetary reports and fetch the same data within different departments. With the help of SAP BPC, our upper management and financial team are confident with the reports, helping them make business decisions.
  • So far we have not seen any area where we are stuck or needed improvement, except where the data fetched over the intranet from different sourcing had failed to consolidate on the reports. The data should be fetched from any sourcing without any network leak to avoid missing data.
SAP BPC is well suited when you have many financial and managerial departments who make business decisions and need the same data consolidated. Ultimately, SAP BPC helps organisations consolidate large amounts of data. It is not well suited if the data being fetched is a small amount or has low leverages for the business, and/or it is not feasible to consolidate.
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No photo available
January 17, 2019

An excellent system for planning budgets and goals

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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The use of BPCs within the organization of one of my clients has been fundamental to allowing highly skilled users in the area of business intelligence (professionals or very practical users in the BI sector) go into detail regarding well-defined processes of cost saving, reorganization of the company budget, and the restructuring and optimization of resources.
  • Perfect integration with SAP
  • The data, once made available and imported in the SAP environment, allows all users to use them immediately without having to implement any process of ETL or data manipulation
  • Is optimized for SAP S/4HANA , so the finance department has a complete suite available to manage projects at best in a single software that speaks with the same business terms
  • Working with extremely complex workbooks can have repercussions in terms of performance
  • While certainly suitable for personnel already skilled in using and knowing the whole Sap environment, the documentation regarding the potentialities and above all the functionalities of the product could be slightly improved.
  • Integration with SAP NetWeaver or Microsoft Excel requires good expertise for the implementation
If you are considering the use of SAP BPC you can be sure that you will be able to make appropriate business decisions, have a level of data processing in collaboration with your colleagues, make budgets based on precise predictive analysis, and you can follow different strategic objectives looking for the most appropriate planning.
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April 11, 2019

Comprehensive Features

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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The user interface is similar. It uses MS Excel so it is very adaptable. Internal and external reporting has been made super easy.
  • Very useful in analyzing the data. We are using it to compare historical performances month by month to current months.
  • Great customer service.
  • The program is very easy to learn due to its Excel UI.
  • It brings several business units under one system and therefore data presented at the enterprise level is really solid.
  • Well integrated with HANA.
  • Implementation is very tricky. Make sure you know what you are looking for and what you will be using it for in the long run to be able to get best out of the software.
  • EPM Limitations.
  • Expensive for small and medium-sized companies.
Well suited for reporting and analyzing data.
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May 18, 2018

SAP BPC is Dying

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
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SAP BPC is used to support financial consolidations by Accounting team and for budgeting & forecasting (Capex, Headcount, Opex, Integrated Financial Planning) by FP&A team. It is used across the whole organization.
  • BPC NW version can use the functionalities of SAP BW for ETL and data warehousing.
  • Complex business requirements and logic can be built using SAP ABAP.
  • Can be scaled and support huge volume of data using SAP HANA capabilities.
  • 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.
SAP BPC is well suited for complex planning and consolidations needs where the underlying transactional system is SAP ECC. It suits well if the organization has separate teams with BPC, ABAP, BW, Basis, Hana skillset.

SAP BPC is less appropriate for organizations using Agile methodology. It is not suitable for organizations in a hyper-growth cycle as the installation and implementation is time-consuming. It will not work for organizations where the planning and budgeting needs keep changing frequently. The UI of SAP BPC is not very intuitive and very difficult to set up a dynamic dashboard for senior executives and officials of CxO.
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September 26, 2018

SAP BPC

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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SAP BPC is used as Reporting tool of consolidation. It is used for monthly reporting (short Financial Statements) and quarterly reporting, including Intercompany reconciliation. We use also it to retrieve historical data based on different variants: i.e. IFRS/LOCAL GAAP/US GAAP, Local amount, Consolidated amount... etc.
  • Legal consolidation
  • Detailed reporting package
  • Retrieval of historical data
  • It's not user friendly
  • Depending on how it is implemented it is not as flexible as it should be, in case of changes in consolidation rules
It's well suited in the case of high skilled users. If I would need to use and share information through it with lower skilled person, it would be more difficult. For instance, it's used only by finance people even it contains a lot of operational information, because the operations managers are not able to understand it
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Jeffrey Suk profile photo
March 23, 2018

Benefits of BPC

Jeffrey Suk
Score 10 out of 10
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My company uses SAP BPC for forecasting and analysis and is now currently undergoing implementation for consolidation. It's currently used by finance departments, and once it's implemented for consolidation will be used by Corporate Reporting and Corporate Accounting. One of the benefits of SAP BPC is that two finance teams (Financial Planning & Analysis and Corporate Reporting and Corporate Accounting) will now be using the same tool for internal and external reporting. This will eliminate the need for reconciling systems, which is currently a manual and many times frustrating task. Like many other companies before SAP BPC, my company currently heavily utilizes Excel for consolidation, which has its flaws including not being able to have multiple users edit the workbook and slow performance. On the Financial Planning & Analysis side, SAP BPC has been instrumental in collaborative work between all business segments and Corporate. It has increased performance and allowed for faster quarter closes.
  • 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.
  • An easily accessible resource page for quick how-to's and tips, as well as things to avoid (maybe a YouTube page).
  • In 10.1, one thing that was removed was the ability to go into the dimension and select multiple members/parents and copy-paste those into your workbook. Please bring this back.
  • When I have a BPC workbook open and a non-BPC workbook open, it slows down performance because whenever I'm toggling between the two workbooks as it's constantly bringing in the EPM context pane into the non-BPC workbook. Is there any way to disable this easily?
For a large company trying to bring processes and functions together with one tool, SAP BPC is a great solution. It requires hours of effort to implement and configure, which would not be appropriate for smaller companies. SAP BPC also requires dedicated resources to maintain the system on a day to day basis, as well as an administrator type personnel who can troubleshoot slow performance or issues with the system. You also need users who are willing and exciting to use this system and actually trust that this is a solution.
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Anthony DePasquale profile photo
March 23, 2018

SAP BPC reviewed by a heavy user, but that is new to financial systems

Anthony DePasquale
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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We use it within our department of Financial Planning and Analysis only. It was initially used solely for its consolidation capabilities in order to better report and analyze data, both actuals and budget, with the budget being done in a separate application and loaded in. We have now implemented the planning cubes and use it to develop or annual budget and an annual reforecast with actuals still being loaded in at the end of each month.
  • Allows for full integration of data to be analyzed in real time. Although we still load actuals on a delayed basis (2 business days after month end), when developing the budget, we not longer have to do a full loading process from a different application into BPC prior to being able to report and analyze the current budget status to prior budget versions or actuals.
  • It is easy to learn basic report building. The hardest part is learning the available dimensions and the different possible combinations and their results, but that will also vary from company to company depending on the complexity of the industry.
  • Being from a law firm, the system needed a lot of custom tailoring in order to fit our full needs (although many companies could say the same thing). Although the ability to highly customize the system to the company's needs is a positive, it frequently results in the system responding in unexplainable and unrepeatable ways which negatively impacts and slows the budget process. Because of the sporadic nature and variety of the issues, we are unable to repeat them on cue and therefore cannot nail down a solution.
SAP BPC would be an ideal system for a company that handles budgeting and actuals for any of the expense, revenue, human capital, or capital expenditures areas, and is great for a company needing all of these areas in one place with full integration between them. One downfall that I see is that it can be difficult to start with the consolidation only (like many do) and then years later implement the planning cubes. Due to changes in the system over time, turnover in consultants and personnel between implementations, and evolving needs of a company it can sometimes be difficult to get the planning side to line up perfectly with the originally implemented consolidation cube which, although may not limit capabilities, can cause confusion when talking between different models.
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Rebecca T Barber, MBA, PHD profile photo
January 18, 2018

Fine if you are already in the SAP ecosystem, otherwise steer clear

Rebecca T Barber, MBA, PHD
Score 6 out of 10
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BPC is being used as the system in which we develop our yearly budgets, collect quarterly forecast, and do an analysis of the spending and revenues throughout the organization. The FP&A organization is the heaviest user, with extensive reporting and analysis being done on a daily basis. Over 300 users across campus access it during budget season in order to enter their budgets and half that many enter it quarterly to update forecasts.
  • Dimensional model allows for slicing and dicing of the data in a variety of ways
  • This is a custom tool - it provides an environment but you define what the structures look like, which offers flexibility
  • Updates are not backward compatible - on the server side they require complete reinstalls.
  • While they suggest the tool is unlimited, in practice, there are substantial performance limitations on the Microsoft Platform if you let the cube get too large
  • The Microsoft platform is legacy from the original tool (Outlooksoft) that SAP purchased. The result is that it gets the least effort in development
  • If you aren't using SAP Business Warehouse, the load process is considerably more complex than it otherwise might be.
I would recommend this tool to an SAP shop running SAPs other applications, including Business Warehouse, and only on Netweaver and/or HANA - I would advise AGAINST this product for new customers planning to run on the Microsoft platform. I expect that the Microsoft platform will be discontinued in the future.
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William O'Brien profile photo
April 10, 2018

SAP BPC Review

William O'Brien
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
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Our entire organization uses it for budgeting. Departments and offices enter annual expenses. Practice groups use it to track employees with annual billable hours and billable rates. Th finance and accounting department uses it for reporting as well as analyzing variances during the fiscal year. The system also is used for creating and updating revenue and expense forecasts during the year.
  • Allows for tracking of actual vs budgeted expenses. Can have multiple budgets or forecasts for comparison.
  • Can create reports that can be modified to show either department or office views of the data.
  • Allows for budgeting of production hours, billed hours and collections by individual timekeeper.
  • Data is not easily moved between modules. Several steps necessary to accomplish this.
  • Users often overwrite data entered by others. Need better controls for this.
  • Better reporting of changes between versions of a budget. In particular, the user who made the changes and what those changes were.
SAP BPC is helpful when an office, department or combination has multiple measurements to be reported on. The same layout can be leveraged to report on several different statistics. SAP BPC works well on ad-hoc reporting as the data is already summarized and totaled in the model and can be retrieved quickly as the summations are already complete. Reports that require multiple sections with different layouts are difficult to accomplish.
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Atul Rao, PMP profile photo
March 14, 2018

BPC Story - Baby Steps to Success

Atul Rao, PMP
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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At the World Bank Group (WBG), SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) is used as a corporate performance management system to enable financial planning and management and to support the budget processes across IBRD, IFC, and MIGA.

  • BPC acts as the single source for all budget, revenues, expenses, forecast plans and eliminates the need for budget monitoring staff to maintain their own spreadsheets and legacy systems.
  • Results in substantial time and cost savings due to the reduction of manual errors and data redundancy, enhanced data quality, and data governance, and an expedited planning and monitoring cycle for unit level and corporate planners.
  • EPM Menu can be simplified.
  • Compatibility issues with MS Office 365 need to be resolved.
  • Single sign on needs to be implemented.

At The World Bank Group, the implementation of BPC has enabled resource managers, budget planners, HR business partners, and activity planners across the institution to plan for budgets and expenses related to staffing/fixed costs, revenues and expenses across all sources of funds, work program allocations, capital investments, and project-based activity costing, etc.

The BPC system allows senior management to communicate budget ceilings and thresholds for top-down planning while automating real-time aggregation and consolidation of bottom-up plans for consumption by corporate budget units to perform variance analysis.

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Alyse Morley profile photo
March 09, 2018

Dynamic Tool - BPC

Alyse Morley
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use BPC for consolidations and eliminations for SEC filings as well for projections and forecasting. It allows for one source of the truth for month end reporting. Only accounting and finance employees have a BPC license. Financial statements and other reporting is pushed to our field users (GMs, VPs, etc).
  • Accounting and finance users love this tool because reports are built using native Excel. If commands such as EPMCopyRange are utilized it can further the use of native Excel.
  • Compared to BPC 7.5 our elimination and consolidation logic runs in a fraction of the time. Processes that would take multiple days can be accomplished within hours.
  • Powerful and dynamic reports can be built to help business leaders make decisions and see trends.
  • There is missing functionality on the ability to use the dynamic filter on apply a property when using the excluded members tab of the report editor. We are currently running SP30 BPC 10.1 and the ability existed in previous service packs. We now have to manually exclude some dimensions. We use member exclusions on our income statement tabs to help clean up the multiple total lines that appear when having two dimensions in the row running on member and descendants.
  • In SP 30 and some of the later BPC 10.1 service packs, when a user searches for a dimension member, it displays the dimension member the number of times it shows up in another hierarchy. In previous service packs, when searching for a dimension, it would display the dimension member within the first hierarchy it appears in and then if the user clicked next, it would jump down to show the dimension member within the next hierarchy it is a part of.
  • BPC is not able to handle to calculated member formulas in a report. For example, if a calculated profit center and a calculated datasource are used in a column of the report, BPC is not able to correctly compile and display the correct value for both calculated members.
BPC is well suited for reviewing forecast, projection and actual data within one report, for reviewing trends in the data and it helps us quickly pull together reports/data needed for our SEC filings. We have built in the ability to drill into a BEX report from a BPC report for the month to help review the line items that are making a balance.
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Santosh Kambli profile photo
March 05, 2018

SK SAP BPC Review

Santosh Kambli
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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BPC was used mainly for planning purposes for my previous client. Consolidation implementation started 6 months back where they planned to create a consolidated statement for 20 plus co codes with regions spread across Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia etc. They plan to achieve auto removal of intercompany transactions through this.
  • Detailed planning
  • Intercompany transaction identification
  • Reporting
  • None
Most scenarios are suited
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Praveen Kumar profile photo
March 05, 2018

BPC

Praveen Kumar
Score 10 out of 10
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We use BPC for our planning and consolidated financial reports and [we are also] using it for reporting purpose. The biggest challenge is the data integration between the SAP system ECC, BW, and BPC. It's not real-time processing due to the data flow.

If it were a real-time data flow then it would be very useful for all kinds of reporting needs.

  • Real time flow integration between the ECC, BW and BPC systems.
  • Real time integration
  • Always - it's very useful at a reporting level.
  • Integrated planning is required and consolidation is required from ECC to BPC.
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Travis Lehn profile photo
October 24, 2017

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation is worth every cent!

Travis Lehn
Score 9 out of 10
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SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) is being used as both a planning and reporting system at our organization. It allows us to have control over the financials and allows for systematic driven results. Users like the flexibility of the tool and that it's built right into Microsoft Excel. It lowers the risk of reporting errors and increases the quality of our financials. We can work through many scenarios of [our] annual plan and/or monthly forecast to make sure we achieve the results we want in the business.
  • Automation of financial processes using a systematic solution.
  • User-friendly Excel Interface to allow for various reporting requirements.
  • Data Integration with your current SAP ERP solution.
  • The new 10.1 web interface is a little slow when trying to manage a lot of dimensions compared to previous 10.0 web interface.
  • Training tutorials or application demos for various levels of user engagement.
  • Business process flows are really nice to have to organize the flow of a process, but they are more of a maintenance than a help.
If you have a large complex number of businesses that you have to consolidate to total corporate then BPC makes that very easy. You wouldn't want to do this just in Excel with linking all the data together. You need a systematic solution to consolidate with low risk of errors and a very fast turn-around for the users. BPC allows the users to submit each of their respective data and the system will automatically roll-up to the total business level. The ease of use through BPC templates and logic can make this process very easy for the users.
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Mike Harding profile photo
October 21, 2017

BPC worthy of consideration

Mike Harding
Score 8 out of 10
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Verified User
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We use BPC primarily for Planing and Consolidations/financial reporting. In support of Planning, we also have depreciation, resource assignment for projects and Head Count/Cost Center planning models. BPC enables us to group most planing activities within a logical progression. BPC enables us to have the planning detail and financial summary level in one place.
  • Pushes data from one model to another. This is helpful to have detail in one model, and summary level in another model.
  • Reporting flexibility using formatting, filtering and attributes is good. This offers flexible reporting and input templates by selectively choosing which data sets are relevant to the user.
  • Scripting language isn't very robust...it is a proprietary language that isn't as capable as VBA or other languages. Sometime ABAP code is needed to supplement the business requirement.
  • Web Templates don't have the same features as the Excel Ad-in. The use of filters and dimension over-rides don't exist.
Well suited for reporting and moving data from various models. Not well suited for complex logic.
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Sharon Chadwick profile photo
October 20, 2017

Kinross Advanced Reporting System (KARS) aka SAP-BPC

Sharon Chadwick
Score 10 out of 10
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Used across the whole organization by approximately 150 users at corporate headquarters, mine sites and regional offices.
Used to consolidate actuals and budget for +/- 250 legal entities for quarterly external reporting and monthly internal management reporting.
  • Timeliness of close process i.e. ledgers are closed on work day 5 and consolidated financial statements are issued on work day 10 (non-quarter end months) and work day 15 (quarter end months).
  • Consolidation completes in 12 minutes across 5 entity hierarchies.
  • The Excel front-end report writer is very user friendly so users are able to create adhoc analysis reports quickly.
  • From an administration point of view populating the 'Ownership' model is laborious across 5 Entity hierarchies and setting up data access profiles in Security is also tedious i.e. Security interface needs improvement.
Well suited to most organizations looking for an extremely easy to maintain consolidation & reporting system. Kinross consolidates both financial and operational data, uses the inter-company elimination functionality, and has script logic for the following:
  • Investment elimination
  • Fully automated cash flow
  • Gold equivalent ratio by month, quarter & YTD
  • Conversion of Imperial measurements to metric
Note: The following functionality is not utilized at Kinross:
  • Fx translation
  • Budgeting & forecasting
  • Proportionate sub-consolidations
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Monalisa Chati profile photo
November 01, 2017

SAP BPC on HANA

Monalisa Chati
Score 8 out of 10
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Verified User
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SAP BPC on HANA is used by the whole finance team for all activities including consolidations, financial planning/forecasting to reporting.
  • Custom BADIs help with complex forecasting calculations
  • EPM Excel add-in enables the use of complex Excel functions with EPM features
  • Non BPC users have problem accessing BPC spreadsheets, offline feature does not work well.
Not as user friendly as other cloud solutions.
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March 13, 2018

BPC Planning & Consolidation based on MS Review

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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BPC is being used for consolidation purposes. It is being used by Finance Controllers. First all P&L trial balances from all sites are uploaded with a flat file coming from SAP at month-end. Then with input schedules the flows for B/S are being updated. The BPC team analyses if there are no significant variances or changes in mappings and then runs the consolidation process within BPC. A major issue with BPC is that there are still a lot of manual steps done by users and very little script logic is used in BPC to automate month-end process.
  • The Excel EPM functions are really good
  • BPF functionality with a step by step guidance is a plus
  • Intercompany Eliminations within BPC engine is very straightforward and easy to setup
  • When a change is needed in the EPM reports it is not very flexible and needs IT intervention
  • Performance sometimes is an issue when consolidating more then 20 entities specially at quarter end
  • Script logic complex to handle and always needs BPC consultant when changes are requiered even if minimal - has very high costs
SAP BPC is a very good tool for final business users as they can use Excel EPM and predefined templates for reporting and detailed analysis. It is user friendly and everyone is familiar with Excel. It could be better for planning: all the planning is done in BPC but needs to travel back to SAP ECC to compare actuals vs. plan. There is no easy process to export BPC planning figures to ECC. It would be nice to have better integration with SAP Controlling module.
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March 27, 2018

BPC MS general reveiw

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
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We use BPC in our planning and forecasting for FP&A and consolidation for corporate reporting; as far as I know, we also use it for our international distribution.
  • Running ad-hoc reports
  • Researching on variance explanations
  • Creating standardized reports across the team
  • It'll be helpful to make the ID/description selection change a stand-alone button in the ribbon
  • Add back the option to select and copy ID's from the dimension dropdown
We are heavy BPC users and use it in almost every aspect of our daily job.
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March 21, 2018

SAP BPC, it’s OK

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
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We primarily use BPC as the consolidation and external reporting software. We have a basic planning implementation to support reporting. Data entry is primarily integrated from ECC with some topside entries made by corporate at the business level. Plans are entered at a business level directly into BPC via forms or pulled in from ECC.
  • Use of data sources allows easy identification of data origin. Ex: ECC, manual entry, management adjustment entry, ICC elimination, etc...
  • Reporting is generally fast if best practices are used to avoid performance hits.
  • There are a lot of BPC experts available to implement and provide training.
  • BPC out of the box is a blank slate and requires system development to be implemented. Generally will need to hire consultants to build and train your organization.
  • Many people are not familiar with multidimensional databases like BPC so there is a learning curve.
Well suited for organizational use as a planning tool that is integrated to the consolidated results. Can be implemented in such a way as to leverage driver-based planning methods and predictive analytics. Not well suited to organizations that are not willing to change their planning processes.
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March 06, 2018

SAP BPC answers the mail

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
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SAP BPC is used by the finance function across the enterprise. It provides a planning solution for finance users for their revenue forecasts for the current year, next year, and five-year planning. BPC allows us to plan, consolidate and report our forecasts internally and externally.
  • SAP BPC leverages Microsoft Excel well and provides an user interface that is easy to use for finance.
  • SAP BPC integrates with our SAP R/3 to provide a holistic look at our project level data.
  • SAP BPC provides flexibility that is needed in the A&D industry. We are able to customize functionalities for our business needs.
  • I'd like to see BPC better handle large volumes of data. Our company plans at the contract level and often find ourselves struggling with data volume in terms of system performance.
  • I'd like to see BPC have real-time data from our SAP R/3 system to facilitate a faster closing at month-end.

SAP BPC is well suited for companies with a large user base. Since BPC has a relatively familiar and easy user interface, it can be implemented across a large user group fairly quickly. The user interface is intuitive which facilitates an easier planning cycle.

Aerospace/Defense companies may need to customize SAP BPC to meet their business and customer needs. It would be ideal if SAP released a version of BPC specifically tailored towards the A&D industry.

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March 05, 2018

Why BPC?

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
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BPC Planning is used as a global financial planning and consolidation tool across all business units. It reduces the cycle time of rolling forecasts and brings accuracy and reliability to the forecast data. It eliminates manual work and the need to deal planning data in Excel. The workflow approval helps to improve the decision-making process.
  • Real time consolidation
  • One Source of truth for Plan and Actual
  • Powerful Predictive Analytics capabilities
  • Multiple Architecture Solutions available for BPC could end up with wrong selection of the tool that may not be appropriate for the organization
  • Need to procure additional software to compliment BPC (SAP Analytics for Cloud), the cost associated with additional license requirements
  • Maturity and stability of the latest version

More appropriate when you have multiple ERP Systems

Also, for large companies who are acquiring new companies, easy way to get consolidated results of newly acquired companies in BPC

Less appropriate:
Organizations using single ERP and do not have complex product line verticals and large geographical presence

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October 20, 2017

BPC for Financial Forecasting and Consolidations

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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We use BPC for Consolidations and for the monthly financial forecast process. We also use BPC for the annual budgeting process. We plan at a resource and cost object level for expenses. For revenue and COGS, we multiply volumes by average prices or unit costs to calculate Gross Margin.
  • BPC has an Excel front end, which makes it especially friendly for Finance teams who like to work primarily in spreadsheets.
  • BPC reporting in Excel is easy to learn and it is fast to execute ad hoc reports that pull updated values directly from the database. With minimal training, users can learn how to create and maintain their own reports which can quickly match up and compare forecast and actual values.
  • BPC allows you to use the same system for both actual consolidations and the financial forecast process. This enables users to quickly combine forecast and actual values timely. It is not necessary to wait for transfers of data to/from other systems to combine forecast and actual values in the same report.
  • BPC should come standard with web functionality that enables the same functionality as the EPM formulas.
  • BPC script logic should run faster for logic which has to reference member properties. When script logic has such programming, it often runs slow as it goes through the dimension information.
Well Suited -- Consolidated and Financial forecasting

Less Appropriate -- Resource Planning that meets the needs of both Finance for the financial forecast but also meets the needs of project planners which are trying to plan resources over the life of a project. It is difficult to meet the needs of both groups with BPC in a way that allows for resource actuals and the outlook to be combined.

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October 20, 2017

Working with Business Planning and Consolidation

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Business Planning and Consolidation is used as a primary tool for business Planning and Consolidation. It is used across the whole organization. Users are from all corners of the world. Specially Managers and Business Analysts.

Business Planning and Consolidation helps to plan / outlook across the organization and thus helps the corporate finance team to quickly get the planning number for analysis and any potential corrective action.
  • Easy to use for business users.
  • Less need for involvement of IT
  • Quickly setup master data and transaction data to simulate any ad-hoc scenario
  • Single version of the truth enable fast, accurate management and statutory reporting.
  • Web interface (reports and input forms) have limited functionality
  • Difficult to maintain large dimensions
  • For database reads or complex logic, script logic may not be best and need to do ABAP coding
BPC is appropriate for a large organization with need for consolidated planning and external reporting.
BPC for NetWeaver is more appropriate for ECC as a source system, so that master and transaction data loads can be automated.

BPC for NetWeaver may not be appropriate for non-SAP source. As automation of master data and transaction data may not be possible.
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SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (205)
7.9
Likelihood to Renew (1)
7.0
Usability (1)
7.0
Availability (1)
9.0
Performance (1)
7.0
Support (1)
7.0
In-Person Training (1)
9.0
Online Training (1)
9.0
Implementation (1)
8.0
Product Scalability (1)
9.0

Feature Scorecard Summary

Long-term financial planning (24)
8.6
Financial budgeting (24)
8.6
Forecasting (26)
8.7
Scenario modeling (24)
8.2
Management reporting (27)
8.4
Financial data consolidation (24)
8.8
Journal entries and reports (22)
8.6
Multi-currency management (21)
8.5
Intercompany Eliminations (21)
8.6
Minority Ownership (16)
8.2
Local and consolidated reporting (22)
8.7
Detailed Audit Trails (20)
8.5
Financial Statement Reporting (22)
9.0
Management Reporting (25)
8.8
Excel-based Reporting (25)
9.3
Automated board and financial reporting (21)
8.7
Personalized dashboards (17)
7.3
Color-coded scorecards (15)
7.6
KPIs (21)
7.8
Cost and profitability analysis (21)
7.5
Key Performance Indicator setting (16)
7.7
Benchmarking with external data (13)
7.4
Flat file integration (24)
8.8
Excel data integration (26)
8.7
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources (16)
8.3

About SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

The 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 financial reporting standards.

According to the vendor, with SAP BPC users can:
•Make better decisions based on what-if analyses and scenario planning
•Use collaboration tools to improve accountability and planning accuracy
•Shrink cycle times, close the books faster, and align their plans with strategic goals •Get real-time access to data in SAP S/4HANA Finance
•Run on their platform of choice – SAP BW/4HANA, SAP NetWeaver or on Microsoft •Engage in further visualization and predictive analysis leveraging SAP Analytics Cloud in a seamless manner
Categories:  Corporate Performance Management (CPM)

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features
Has featureLong-term financial planning
Has featureFinancial budgeting
Has featureForecasting
Has featureScenario modeling
Has featureManagement reporting
Consolidation and Close Features
Has featureFinancial data consolidation
Has featureJournal entries and reports
Has featureMulti-currency management
Has featureIntercompany Eliminations
Has featureMinority Ownership
Has featureLocal and consolidated reporting
Has featureDetailed Audit Trails
FInancial Reporting and Compliance Features
Has featureFinancial Statement Reporting
Has featureManagement Reporting
Has featureExcel-based Reporting
Has featureAutomated board and financial reporting
Does not have featureXBRL support for regulatory filing
Analytics Features
Has featurePersonalized dashboards
Has featureColor-coded scorecards
Has featureKPIs
Has featureCost and profitability analysis
Has featureKey Performance Indicator setting
Has featureBenchmarking with external data
Integration Features
Has featureFlat file integration
Has featureExcel data integration
Has featureDirect links to 3rd-party data sources
BI Standard Reporting Features
Does not have featurePixel Perfect reports
Does not have featureCustomizable dashboards
Does not have featureReport Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
Does not have featureDrill-down analysis
Does not have featureFormatting capabilities
Does not have featurePredictive modeling
Does not have featureIntegration with R or other statistical packages
Does not have featureReport sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
Does not have featurePublish to Web
Does not have featurePublish to PDF
Does not have featureReport Versioning
Does not have featureReport Delivery Scheduling
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
Does not have featurePre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Does not have featureLocation Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Does not have featurePredictive Analytics
Does not have featureSupport for Machine Learning models
Does not have featurePattern Recognition and Data Mining
Does not have featureIntegration with R or other statistical packages
Access Control and Security Features
Does not have featureMulti-User Support (named login)
Does not have featureRole-Based Security Model
Does not have featureMultiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Does not have featureReport-Level Access Control
Does not have featureTable-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
Does not have featureField-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
Does not have featureSingle Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities Features
Does not have featureResponsive Design for Web Access
Does not have featureDedicated iOS Application
Does not have featureDedicated Android Application
Does not have featureDashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Screenshots

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Integrations

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Competitors

Pricing

Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
Has featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?Yes
Entry-level set up fee?No

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Support Options

 Free VersionPaid Version
Email
Forum/Community
FAQ/Knowledgebase
Social Media
Video Tutorials / Webinar
Phone
Live Chat

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Technical Details

Deployment Types:On-premise
Operating Systems: Windows, Mac
Mobile Application:No