SAP BI BusinessObjects

SAP Business Objects Information Portal

SAP Business Objects Enterprise Planning and Consolidation (BPC)

SAP Business Objects provides applications for planning, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation.

Planning, budgeting, forecasting and consolidation challenges

Common challenges organizations face when realizing the planning process:
  • Unpredictable business environment - organizations nowadays need to be ready to expect the unexpected and keep in mind that today extraordinary is ordinary. Unpredictable and fast changing market conditions make it impossible to manage the business only on the basis of a traditional annual plan and budget
  • Inconsistent, incorrect, obsolete or missing data and there is typically no single source of data or data has quality issues
  • Inefficient business processes (manual) and workflow (manual, excel-based, email-based).

    In most organizations there are many types of plans used by the business which are typically created in spreadsheets by different people, not linked to each other at different times and with different assumptions.
  • Not sufficient effort in enforcing controls, policies and regulatory compliance

    SAP Business Objects Planning and Consolidation

    With SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation users can use tools like Excel as a frontend to centralized data with the aid of a context sensitive action panes which intelligently guide users through the planning process.
    The application provides scheduling, workflow and notification functionality and users can use the pre-configured processes or create new customized processes specific to the organization. The analytics module helps forecast future conditions and model scenarios help address problems or identify opportunities.

    SAP BusinessObjects Planning fully implements the "setup by IT own and manage by business users" concept.

      The IT setup of BPC typically includes:
    • Hardware
    • Security and Authentication - users, roles and privileges
    • Data and application infrastructure
    • Configure database and application server (only two versions are available - for Netweaver and Microsoft Platforms)
    • Model OLAP Structure
      Business Users are responsible for:
    • Application Security - Users, roles and privileges
    • Hierarchies and Roll-ups
    • Business Process Flows - creation and modification
    • Manage Report Templates and MS Office Templates (Excel, Word, PowerPoint). SAP BO Planning provides out-of-the box templates for sales and revenue planning, CAPEx planning, workforce planning, budgeted financial statement reports and forecasting.
    • Create and modify Metrics and Measures
    SAP BPC provides tools for preparing the following plans:
  • Business planning - Budgeting, Sales/revenue planning, Capital expenditure planning, Headcount/staffing, Expense planning, Cash flow planning
  • Consolidation - Intercompany matching/reconciliation, intercompany eliminations, management roll-ups, legal consolidation
  • Forecasting and consensus building - Rolling forecasts, Continuous planning, Collaboration
  • Financial reporting and analysis - ad-hoc reporting, automated variance analysis, driver analysis (industry, growth, capacity, etc.)

    Main outcome after implementing an advanced planning application like SAP BO Planning and Consolidation:
  • Improvements in the planning and consolidation processes, automation
  • Increased visibility and insight
  • Increased alignment and collaboration via bottom-up and top-down budgeting processes
  • Increased accountability and control
  • Lower total cost of ownership
  • Reduces maintenance, improves data integrity and simplifies deployment
  • Integration with SAP ERP (automated flow of general ledger data from SAP NetWeaver BI into BusinessObjects Planning) and SAP BO Strategy Management applications which makes it possible to share actuals information developed in BPC to update scorecards.