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SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

Overview

What is 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…

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Recent Reviews

SAP BPC

6 out of 10
March 10, 2022
Incentivized
The goal of utilizing SAP BPC (business planning and consolidation) is to be able to better plan and consolidate business.
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Easy Business Planner

9 out of 10
February 28, 2022
Incentivized
SAP BPC was used in a previous company I was employed in to aid in the organization of business expenses. Also, it was used in order to …
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SAP BPC Review

6 out of 10
December 28, 2019
Incentivized
BPC is used by our entire organization to do budgeting for the year. A BI team loads the data using custom SSIS components and a custom …
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SAP BPC

8 out of 10
September 26, 2018
Incentivized
SAP BPC is used as Reporting tool of consolidation. It is used for monthly reporting (short Financial Statements) and quarterly reporting, …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 25 features
  • Management Reporting (36)
    8.0
    80%
  • Forecasting (36)
    7.8
    78%
  • Excel-based Reporting (35)
    7.7
    77%
  • Management reporting (36)
    7.6
    76%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is 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,…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Budgyt?

Budgyt is a platform made to simplify business budgeting. With built-in functions designed for data integrity, team collaboration, and scenario planning & analysis, Budgyt is presented as an optimized budgeting experience that rids users of complex, error-prone spreadsheets and the time-consuming…

What is PlanGuru?

PlanGuru is budgeting, forecasting and financial analytics software for SMB's, Nonprofits and the Accountants/ Advisors that work with them.

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Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting

These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning

7.6
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.

7.8
Avg 8.0

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8
Avg 8.2

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

8.4
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

7
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is 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

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features

  • Supported: Long-term financial planning
  • Supported: Financial budgeting
  • Supported: Forecasting
  • Supported: Scenario modeling
  • Supported: Management reporting

Consolidation and Close Features

  • Supported: Financial data consolidation
  • Supported: Journal entries and reports
  • Supported: Multi-currency management
  • Supported: Intercompany Eliminations
  • Supported: Minority Ownership
  • Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
  • Supported: Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Reporting and Compliance Features

  • Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
  • Supported: Management Reporting
  • Supported: Excel-based Reporting
  • Supported: Automated board and financial reporting

Analytics and Reporting Features

  • Supported: Personalized dashboards
  • Supported: Color-coded scorecards
  • Supported: KPIs
  • Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
  • Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
  • Supported: Benchmarking with external data

Integration Features

  • Supported: Flat file integration
  • Supported: Excel data integration
  • Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

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

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Integrations

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Competitors

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Oracle Hyperion, Wolters Kluwer CCH® Tagetik, and Anaplan are common alternatives for SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation).

Reviewers rate Personalized dashboards and Color-coded scorecards highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(275)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-10 of 10)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BPC for budget planning for the entire organization. It is extensively used by the finance and accounts team to manage the budgets and create workflows that can help complete this exercise in a collaborative manner. All senior leaders are given access to the system and they have to enter their budgets which undergo an approval process and final consolidation at the organization level. The use case is - The central team which manages BPC makes the template for budgets - both capex and overheads at the beginning of every year. Then, they extend the template to all senior leadership and the leadership accesses it via Excel plugin called Analysis for Office. Then the senior leaders input their nos and then submit it. Once submitted, the finance team is able to get the consolidated view of the planned budgets and then they approve or reject it. This also has a workflow where after every step, an approval is needed from the immediate manager.
  • Budget Planning
  • Workflow for approvals
  • The tool can be used in a collaborative manner with different stakeholders
  • Excellent integration with MS Excel
  • The user interface is very bad
  • The software plugin on excel is very slow and it often hangs the entire system
It is well suited for doing a consolidated budget planning exercise across multiple functions and stakeholders. Our use case is - a template is created by finance team which is then extended to all stakeholders ( senior leadership that are responsible for budgeting). They then access it via plugin - Analysis for Office and then submit the budget nos. The software then consolidates it across functions and groups and then finance can review and approve it. The whole exercise is ale to get completed within a week due to the features of the software.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently we use both functionalities of SAP BPC: Planning and Consolidation.
  • Planning: With BPC we manage the financial budget across all the business units of the Company. We configured standard interfaces with the GL of our ERP (SAP R3) so we can easily measure the actuals vs. the annual plan. With the use of the EPM add-in for Excel, the financial users can create, consume and share reports.
  • Consolidation: With the interfaces from the General Ledger to BPC it is easy to acquire information (balances) for reporting purposes. Also, we have configured business rules such as inter-company eliminations, adjustments or journals, so by executing a package from the EPM add in for Excel the consolidation team has been empowered and there is no IT involvement in the process.
  • User friendly, with the use of the EPM add-in for Excel, business users can work in a familiar environment.
  • SAP Analytics Cloud easy and native integration for dashboarding purposes.
  • Can manage several business scenarios (versions): actuals, plan, forecast, etc.
  • For Consolidation, there is a required dimension for auditing purposes (audit trail) so it is useful for internal and external audits.
  • EPM add-in is only available for the Microsoft Windows Operating System.
  • In order to open or refresh an inform, it is required to have the EPM add-in for MS Office already installed.
  • Difficult to configure, ex. Script logic for ad-hoc adjustments.
In a traditional company that uses SAP ERP it is well suited. You can also acquire data from non-SAP data sources but it requires some technical skills to achieve this. It is great for reporting within Excel, can create local members (KPI) within reports, and has the advantage of all the functionalities that MS Office provides.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
September 26, 2018

SAP BPC

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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
April 10, 2018

SAP BPC Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
March 27, 2018

BPC MS general reveiw

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Atul Rao, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

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.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Rebecca T Barber, MBA, PHD | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Sharon Chadwick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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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