Chapter 1 - Introduction to BPC Embedded 11

This is the first chaper of my book. The full lecture can be accessed above from youtube. Please subscribe and support me on Become a Patron!. You can also buy the book by clicking on it on the right.

Objective of this book

This book aims to provide a practical guide to teach you the fundamentals of implementing SAP BPC Embedded. The book is designed so that you can master all the techniques gradually, starting from basic and relatively simple techniques before moving on to the more demanding techniques that Business Intelligence Professionals use to create planning applications for their customers.

The book will take you step by step through the process of creating a revenue planning application. From this course you will learn:

• Fundamentals of BI-IP,
• The structures involved, such as InfoProviders, Aggregation Levels, Filters, Sequences and more,
•  Create all the required objects in BI-IP, tips and tricks and more advanced design considerations;
•  Query design for planning applications;
• Basic FOX to enhance our application with calculations and;
• Tying the whole planning application together into a BoA workbook;

Before we jump into the creation of the application, let’s discuss some of the history and position of BPC Embedded

Early history of SAP Planning

BPC Embedded as we know it today has a very interesting and sometimes confusing history. Up to 1998, SAP had no dedicated planning toolset available. SAP ERP customers were limited to planning in the functional module, for example, CO-CCA (Cost Center Accounting). The user experience and functionality of these transactions were poor, forcing customers to plan in Excel and then to load the planning data into SAP with LSMW or other ABAP tools.

SAP launched the first dedicated planning tool in 1998 with the introduction of SEM-BPS which represent a giant leap forward in functionality and user experience. It allowed users to use SAP standard content InfoCubes and InfoObjects, which assisted in increasing the integrity of planning data. A major advantage of BPS was the use of Excel as an integrated front-end.

The next iteration in planning was the release of BI-IP in 2006. While at first glance, BI-IP and BPS appeared to differ significantly, the overall approach to planning remained the same. The terminology of the various configuration steps differed, for example, a planning area in BPS was termed Aggregation level in BI-IP. BI-IP required the SAP portal to configure, which in my opinion was an unnecessary complication. The web front-end was ‘clunky’ at best and came with all the drawbacks of doing actual work in a web client - Accidently press refresh or back and your work was gone! It did , however, offer an additional in choice planning front-ends, in that planning reports and input sheets could be presented to users in web templates, but user acceptance of the web client was mixed.

SAP buys Outlooksoft

Just as BI-IP gained traction, SAP announced its acquisition of Outlooksoft in 2007. Outlooksoft promised to bring a more user-friendly and finance centric planning tool into the SAP product suite. BI-IP and BPS has a major criticism of being too IT centric and too complex to implement. However, the lack of integration, data redundancy and functional limitations, especially the loss of dimensions due to performance restrictions, meant that Outlooksoft is and remained a finance planning tool and not really suited to detailed and complex operation planning models.

Unification and separation

After the acquisition of Outlooksoft (OS), SAP set out to integrate the new tool with Netweaver. The first release of OS for NW, version 7.0, ran on SAP BW, but was separate from the standard content in that it ran in its own namespace. Integration to the rest of BW was limited and required consultant involvement, especially in the area of data integration, negating some of the value proposition of implementing OS over BI-IP, for example. In the meantime, SAP also moved BI-IP back into the SAP GUI (transaction RSPLAN).  The ‘metro map’ below gives a graphical view of the evolution on BPC.

Enter HANA

With the introduction of SAP HANA, there was a further divergence of product choices. Both BPC Classic and BI-IP moved to HANA. SAP basically rebranded BI-IP to BPC Embedded and made a half-hearted attempt to create the EPM-Addin for BPC Embedded. This was eventually (and inevitably) abandoned in favour of BoA (Business Objects Analysis for MS Office). Other features such as data-audit, BPFs and Work Status are fairly strong, but not up to the level offered by the NW Standard or MS versions.

BI-IP Embedded’s major advantage over the classic version running on HANA, is its very strong integration with HANA. FOX script ( Chapter 9 ) runs native in HANA, while not all of Classic’s Script Logic has been optimised for HANA. As far as the future is concerned, BPC Embedded will also form the foundation of planning in S4. From a main front-end point of view, Business Objects Analysis for Office (BoA) is the main interface with the user.

Where to next?

The roadmap for SAP BPC Embedded shows much tighter integration into SAP HANA and especially S4. Features such as real-time integration of actuals and built-in predictive capabilities were features that customers have been asking for since the release of BPS. The embedded version will also get enhancements to features that are not on par with the classic version, such as Business process Flows and Work Status. Real-time integration between planning applications will also remove ‘silo’ planning. It will be interesting to see how much additional consulting work will be required and how much will be ‘out-of-the-box’. Knowing SAP, consultants have a long and productive future in BPC.

For the MS version, an interesting line in the roadmap is the bi-directional integration with SAP Business objects cloud for planning.

Positioning BPC Embedded

The strengths of BPC embedded can be summarised as follows:

Integration

Embedded can incorporate SAP Standard InfoObjects, which means that the same master data used in SAP ERP or S4 is available for planning. This is not just limited to master data, but planning models can incorporate actual data through Composite Providers (Chapter 3).  In SP04, the ability to plan master data attributes has also been added (Chapter 16).

Real-time capabilities

SDA is a SAP HANA virtualisation feature. It allows virtual data access from remote sources e.g. Teradata, SQL Server etc.). By using SDA, we can add real-time capabilities to planning applications (Chapter 18).

HANA Database

Planning logic can be pushed down to the HANA database through amdp (ABAP Managed Database Procedures) covered in Chapter 14. This allows us to use the processing power of HANA in our planning applications.

These strengths and capabilities positions BPC embedded well for detailed and complex operational planning models where large sets of data must be processed and where the use of SAP master data is key. For example, it is possible to perform detailed product cost planning, logistic cost planning and labour planning models using SAP material, customer and employee master data and also structures such as Bills of Material and routings.

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