Item: SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)
Rating: 10
Author: Jeffrey Suk

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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?

Return on Investment

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.

Ease of Integration

It's always possible, and with the right consultants you can achieve this integration. Every business is unique in its recording whether in SAP or non-SAP sources. If a company has a special way of recording certain accounts, consolidating entities, etc. then this may increase the difficulty of data integration into SAP BPC.

Alternatives Considered

N/A - did not consider other products.

Other Software Used

Box, Cisco Spark, TValue

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Benefits of BPC

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)