SAP Analytics
Thought Leadership

5 EPM System prep steps to take before budget season

Posted by David Den Boer on Fri, Jul 27, 2018 @ 13:07 PM

Summer brings days at the beach and the inevitable sunburn, while winter delivers snow and shoveling. Budget season? Well, that can mean a scramble to make sure your EPM software is 100% ready when entering a planning cycle. If your organization is like most, updating your EPM system is a priority during the off-season—especially if major improvements are on the punch list. The following five steps can ensure the smoothest possible experience—and keep the drama to a minimum:  

Topics: Roadmap, BPC v10 upgrade, BPC, Product Focused, reporting, sap bpc, SO - BPC v7.x, SO - BPC v10.x, SO - BPC v11.x, SAP Analytics Cloud, User Experience, tuneup, analytics tune up

If you're like a lot of people out there, you probably had to read the title of this blog twice. Over the last several years there has been a plethora of speculation, confusion, frustration and exasperation about the future of BPC for the Microsoft Platform.  From the very first announcement that SAP would port BPC to the NetWeaver platform, people have forecasted the end of the Microsoft version. The lack of roadmap beyond extensions of platform support for the latest versions and some new content (i.e. IFRS Starter Kit) does make one wonder about the future of BPC for the Microsoft Platform.  Here's the good news: SAP recently released the latest roadmap for the EPM portfolio and there are several meaningful planned enhancements to BPC for the Microsoft Platform; from here on out referred to as BPCMS.

Topics: Center of Excellence, Roadmap, Microsoft, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Topics: HANA, Thought Leadership, OutlookSoft, NetWeaver, Roadmap, Microsoft, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

I was on a sales call recently with a current BPC customer who is about to embark on an upgrade to BPC 10.0 for the NetWeaver platform. The customer had recently implemented BPC v7.5 and was expressing their frustration with having to move to v10.0 and learn the new way to write reports after just spending a lot of time and money on implementing v7.5. Had they known that v10.0 was coming so soon they might have done things differently. This got me thinking about how many times I’ve encountered customers in similar situations. The situation being that you don’t know what you don’t know. Whether it is not knowing about the BPC roadmap or the vast community of BPC users exchanging ideas and supporting each other on the SAP forums, there is ton of information and resources available to a BPC customer.  A great starting point is Column5’s own website (I have to plug my own company) where you can find info on BPC via our blogs, demos, webcasts, case studies and more at www.Column5.com. In addition to Column5’s website, BPC information is available from SAP. The challenge is finding it as it as the information is spread across several different sites and portals. A friend and former colleague of mine at SAP, Jens Koerner, wrote a very useful blog that outlines all of the information available from SAP with links directly to the content so rather than recreate what he’s already done I will simply share a link to his original blog here. 

Topics: Center of Excellence, Best Practices, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Roadmap, Implementation

I was reading the newspaper recently and came across a story about a Spanish submarine that was constructed 70 tons too heavy. Officials didn't discover the problem until the submarine was nearly complete. Now they fear if they launch the sub it would be too heavy to resurface! How did this happen? The problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place. Ouch! Something as simple as a keying error resulted in a $2.7 billion dollar paper weight. Fortunately, engineers think they can enhance the sub to make it seaworthy but this story illustrates how costly user errors can be. Segue to the world of finance where roughly 70% of companies rely solely on Excel for planning, budgeting and forecasting and the stories of user error and resulting time loss may not be as astounding as an overweight submarine but are just as prevalent.

Topics: Best Practices, Process Improvement, Roadmap

Are You Mature Enough for EPM - Part II

Posted by Peter Bull on Wed, Oct 16, 2013 @ 08:10 AM

In the last article we looked at a pragmatic approach to assessing EPM Maturity using a Maturity Matrix. In this article we’ll expand on the matrix and also develop the ideas of what this can be used for in developing an EPM approach in an organization.

Topics: EPM Maturity, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Performance, Roadmap, Implementation, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

Spilled Beer and the Key to EPM Value

Posted by David Den Boer on Wed, May 22, 2013 @ 12:05 PM

"They spill more beer than we make in a year!" That line was from a great beer commercial for a small brewery that claimed small, handmade batches (or microbrews) were superior to the huge commercial operations of the beer manufacturing kings. Consequently, sales of "microbrews" took off, with consumers deciding that selecting a personal favorite from a market rich with a variety of choices was superior to buying beer from the monolith that had "regular" and "light" to choose from.

Topics: Thought Leadership, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Roadmap, Value, Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

HANA: Improving SAP One Customer At A Time

Posted by Martin Lloyd on Mon, May 13, 2013 @ 12:05 PM

If you’ve read anything which has come from SAP in the last few months you will have heard of HANA. I understood that SAP thought it was very important but didn’t really understand what it was and how it was going to affect me. After some reading, attending a couple of courses and being involved in some discussions with SAP I know a little more and would like to share it with you.

Topics: HANA, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Consolidation, Cloud, Roadmap, Value, Data, BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)

SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions span across various technology stacks.  Some are on NetWeaver, some are on Microsoft, some are leveraged utilizing the Business Intelligence platform, and some are standalone.

Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Information Management, Roadmap, Data

In part one of this two part blog I reviewed the upcoming enhancements and new features coming to the Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) product. In this blog I will cover the remaining products in SAP’s EPM portfolio.

Topics: EPM Maturity, Roadmap