SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) is the SAP product that enables companies to manage their budgeting, forecasting and financial consolidation processes in a single application. Finance teams enter plan data through an Excel-based interface and the web, actuals are taken from SAP systems, and integrated planning, actuals and consolidation reports are produced as needed.
Enterprise Performance Management tools give you instant access to accurate, comparable information and let you make fast decisions. BPC is SAP's budgeting, reporting and consolidation solution. It makes it possible to plan budgets in versions through the derivation of plan data, file import and data entry screens.
Producing, gathering and reporting the financial values forecast for the future from multiple sources is a demanding process. BPC aims to manage your planning, consolidation and reporting processes reliably. By taking advantage of core Microsoft Office components (Excel) and web browsers, it is adopted quickly by users, keeping user training to a minimum.
Combining planning and consolidation in a single product reduces maintenance needs, guarantees data integrity and offers flexible planning functions. BPC is fully integrated with your SAP database and makes it possible to produce reports and comparisons of plan and actual values. You can access reports such as consolidated profitability and cash flow, and obtain your statutory and management reports in line with local and international accounting standards.
These three concepts are often mentioned together, but they ask different things of the finance team. When evaluating BPC, the first step is to clarify which of them is the priority.
Depending on the configuration, BPC supports these processes with integrated data models and reporting; consolidation can also be set up as a separate application model. This way, the variance between budget and actuals can be tracked in BPC reports rather than in separate Excel files.
Although the details vary from one implementation to another, in holding and group structures the process usually runs in four steps:
Of these steps, approval and locking, currency translation, elimination and cash flow reports depend on the process and model scope set up in BPC; they are not standard in every implementation. When the process is set up this way, its main contribution to management is a single, consistent number: instead of combining different files from the companies, the group CFO looks at approved, comparable data.
How BPC can be positioned on the treasury and cash flow side can be shown through a multi-company group structure. In this example architecture, treasury operations are centralised on SAP S/4HANA Treasury & Risk Management; SAP BPC is the layer in which cash flow data taken from the group companies' local systems is consolidated and modelled. Management reporting and analysis are provided through SAP Analytics Cloud.
With this structure, management can monitor the following on a consolidated basis:
In this architecture, what-if scenario models based on exchange rates, interest rates, financing terms and expected cash inflows and outflows are also built in BPC. This example shows only one of the ways BPC can be used; not every BPC implementation includes cash flow or treasury scope. For the details of a similar structure, see the group treasury and cash flow management case study, and for the related solution package, the Central Treasury Solution page.
SAP's planning and consolidation product family offers several options today. The main points a finance team evaluating BPC should know are:
The functions of these products may partly overlap with BPC, and they can take on different roles in the same project. In practice, the decision depends less on the question “BPC or another product?” than on the scenario: the existing SAP infrastructure, the consolidation need and who will run the planning process.
At Montag, SAP BPC is part of our financial close and consolidation, management accounting, profitability analysis, and IFRS compliance and financial reporting services. We also support existing BPC environments with reviews, enhancements, adding new companies and reports, and release upgrade assessments. For organisations that want to present the budget–actual and consolidated view to senior management on a single screen, our CFO Reporting Cockpit package can also use BPC as one of its data sources.
To prepare for a first meeting, the answers to the following questions are a good starting point:
To assess your current SAP infrastructure and needs in a short meeting, you can reach us through our contact page.
In the SAP context, BPC is short for Business Planning and Consolidation. It is the product SAP offers for budgeting, forecasting and financial consolidation. The abbreviation is also used with different meanings in other industries.
Depending on the model implemented, SAP BPC supports budgeting, forecasting, analysis of actuals and financial consolidation. It can collect budget and forecast data from group companies and store it in versions; which check and approval steps, plan–actual comparisons and consolidated reports are included depends on the scope of the implementation.
SAP Analytics Cloud is a cloud-based planning, analysis and reporting product; with SAC Planning, planning processes can also be run in the cloud. BPC, on the other hand, is a planning and consolidation application that mostly runs on on-premise SAP infrastructure. The two can also be used together. Which one to choose depends on the existing infrastructure and the requirement.
Yes. BPC can work integrated with S/4HANA data, and there are also planning scenarios based on the local BW through SAP BPC for SAP S/4HANA. These options are different: SAP BPC for SAP S/4HANA offers embedded planning on the local BW within S/4HANA, while BPC running on a separate SAP BW or BW/4HANA system receives S/4HANA data through data integration. On the cloud side, SAP Analytics Cloud Planning can also be considered as an alternative. The right option depends on the product release, licence and architecture.
The standard model runs on BPC's own application model and allows finance users to manage the model more independently. The embedded model runs directly on SAP BW or BW/4HANA planning objects and is more tightly integrated with the existing data warehouse. The choice depends on the data structure and on who will manage the model.