SAP BusinessObject Planning & Consolidation (BPC)

Highlights

• Automatic integration of data from different ERP systems in group companies
• Speed up multi-company Consolidation process
• Reduce pain of budgeting process
• Make budgets useful by providing speedy variance analysis and business insights

What is BPC?

An integrated platform linked to underlying ERP systems (not restricted to SAP); that allows users in different business units and locations to collaborate efficiently for the following tasks:

• Annual/Quarterly Budgeting
• Monthly performance review
  • actual against budgeted/prior period financial data and other KPIs
  • YTD comparisons
• Monthly Multi-company Consolidations (with different underlying ERPs)
  • Managerial Consolidation
  • Legal Consolidation

What problems do BPC resolve?

• Budgeting process in large organisations is inherently difficult and painful, as it involves
  • a large number of participants, often in different locations and time zones;
  • large quantity of data of different layers which are spread across different accounting systems;
  • ad hoc what-if analysis that are needed to meet Top Down and Bottom Up requirements;
  • managing different versions of budget.
• Often budgets that are painstakingly created are not fully used during the year, because
  • of the lack of automated mechanism to compare actual against budgeted;
  • actual data arrives too late for meaningful actions;
  • data are too high level. No simple way to "drill down" to investigate variances.
• Consolidation is taking too long, because
  • delays in obtaining month end data from different accounting systems in different location, mainly due to time taken for manual conversion into Excel files.
  • of the lack of an efficient mechanism for different business units to collaborate consolidation reconciliations.

BPC can resolve all of the above problems by

• providing users with a unified online work environment;
• automating data extraction from different accounting systems;
• embedding flexible tools for what-if analysis.

BPC implementation will also provide a chance to improve current process, and build a standard process into BPC. A unified Business Process will also reduce training for new team members.

How BPC works?

• Web 2.0 user interface. Every user starts on the same page.
• A central database that extract data from different ERP systems of different business units.
• Tight integration with Microsoft Office applications (Excel, Word, Powerpoint). Live reports can be easily produce and distributed.
• Reports distributed via Web Browser.
• Central depository of supporting documents.
• Security and access control.
• End user in control. Requires minimal IT support once installed.