SAP Planning Solutions: How to Pick the Right Tool
SAP Planning Solutions: How to Pick the Right Tool
Recent innovations such as in-memory technology, mobile self-service analytics, and the cloud transform the traditional financial planning and forecasting process and provide an array of new planning and analysis options. But with so many different SAP Planning Solutions, how can companies move forward with the selection process?
This post is meant to provide a brief recap of the financial planning and analysis tools from SAP, including SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and the criteria you’ll want to use when deciding which path to take. Here’s a quick breakdown of SAP’s Planning tools:
- SAP BPC for NetWeaver (Standard or Embedded and with HANA versus without HANA)
- SAP BPC for Microsoft
- SAP BPC optimized for SAP S/4HANA
**The next generation of BPC planning merged into SAP ERP and enabled in real time via BPC Embedded virtualization functionality) - SAP BusinessObjects Cloud
**The next-generation planning solution from SAP that breaks ground by being designed to overcome the limitations of Excel and other products) - Renovated Planning
- FI/CO Planning
The conventional approach for selecting a tool is to evaluate technical architecture differences and product direction. With SAP’s current roadmap you’ll find that SAP BusinessObjects Cloud, SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation Embedded, and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation optimized for SAP S/4HANA are currently seeing the greatest rate of change. The below diagram illustrates how to pick the right tool based taking into account the technology perspective.
A more strategic approach is to also balance the evaluation with the user experience. A key consideration on which planning solution to use was based on the need for Financial Consolidation. However, now consolidation functionality is now available in both SAP BPC Embedded as well as SAP BPC optimized for S/4HANA.
In conclusion, it’s important that customers recognize that making the decision on which product to use depends on both functional and technical factors.
If your organization is navigating SAP’s planning options, we are happy to help! For more information contact us today at info@truqua.com or visit us online at www.truqua.com. We will also be presenting a session at the upcoming SAPinsider Financials conference in Vienna this June. For more information on the session, visit: http://bit.ly/1U7LbqO.