BPC for Financial Forecasting and Consolidations
October 20, 2017

BPC for Financial Forecasting and Consolidations

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

SAP NetWeaver Edition

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

My company has many integrations with BPC that work well. They must be set up by technical teams, but once set up can be easily managed by the functional BPC administrator.
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.
  • BPC can enable a company to reduce the number of financial analysts.
My company chose BPC because we were transitioning to SAP.
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.

SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) Feature Ratings

Long-term financial planning
6
Financial budgeting
10
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
2
Management reporting
10
Financial data consolidation
10
Journal entries and reports
9
Multi-currency management
10
Intercompany Eliminations
10
Minority Ownership
7
Local and consolidated reporting
7
Detailed Audit Trails
10
Financial Statement Reporting
10
Management Reporting
10
Excel-based Reporting
10
Automated board and financial reporting
6
Personalized dashboards
8
Color-coded scorecards
8
KPIs
8
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
8
Flat file integration
10
Excel data integration
10