SAP BPC Planning & Consolidation System
Jessica Blake
⚡ Smart Summary
SAP BPC unifies Business Planning and Consolidation on a single platform, supporting budgeting, forecasting, legal consolidation, and reporting. This page explains architecture, NetWeaver and Microsoft platforms, administration, dimensions, security, and where SAP BPC fits inside modern finance landscapes.
What is SAP BPC?
SAP BPC is a SAP module that provides planning, budget, forecast, and financial consolidation capabilities. SAP BPC stands for Business Planning and Consolidation. It delivers a single view of financial and operational data and a unified solution that supports Performance Management processes such as adjusting plans and forecasts or speeding up budget and closing cycles.
It delivers built-in functionality for:
- Strategic Planning
- Budgeting
- Reporting
- Forecasting
There are two platforms in SAP BPC finance. About 80% of the functionality is the same; the back-end differs. Each platform has two versions.
- SAP BPC MS (Microsoft Platform) – SAP BPC 7.5 MS and SAP EPM 10
- SAP BPC NW (NetWeaver Platform) – SAP BPC 7.5 NW, SAP BPC 10 NW, and SAP BPC 11.x on SAP BW/4HANA
Like any other module, SAP BPC holds master and transaction data. BPC is divided into two components: “Administration” and “Reporting“.
SAP BPC Overview
For any organization to run a business successfully, financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting are critical attributes. SAP BPC software bundles these capabilities in one package.
- Unified – Planning and Consolidation in one product. A single application reduces maintenance, improves data integrity, and simplifies deployment. It also enables flexible planning and consolidation functions.
- Owned and Managed by Business Users – Business users manage processes, models, and reports with little IT dependence.
- Open, Adaptable Application – Extends the value of your investment across both SAP and non-SAP environments.
- Familiar and Easy to Use – Supports native Microsoft Office tools (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and web browsers accessing a central database.
- Aligns Financial and Operational Plans – Connects financial goals and operational plans with strategic objectives.
- Reduces Budget Cycle Time – Streamlines collaborative planning so cycles close faster.
Let us look at each attribute of SAP BPC in detail.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning helps the management team formulate its vision, mission, core values, and objectives. The team builds strategic plans to uphold competitive advantage in the marketplace. It helps answer the following questions:
- What does the corporation want to be?
- What to do?
- How to do it?
- How to measure what we do?
- What do operating units need to do to achieve corporate objectives?
Budgeting
Budgeting is not just a prediction of future results. It is also a plan of actions and expected operations of the organization over the next year. Budgeting is done for proactive management and measurement of corporate performance.
- How to execute corporate strategy at operating unit level?
- How to measure what operating units do?
- What is the quantitative execution plan for operating units?
Reporting
Reporting ensures performance progress is monitored, problems are anticipated, and continuous improvement efforts are promoted.
- How do we measure that we perform towards achieving our targets and objectives?
- What information would help management decision making?
- How do we control performance of the corporation?
Forecasting
Forecasting is the act of predicting outcomes. It is done throughout the year to reflect changes in the internal and external environment. It determines how those environments impact the original plans and budgets. The main objective is to provide more accurate information for less risky management planning and decision making.
With these four pillars defined, the next question is how SAP BPC fits in the broader Enterprise Performance Management category.
What is EPM in SAP?
The EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) solution is widely adopted across financial divisions. It is similar in scope to CPM (Corporate Performance Management), BPM (Business Performance Management), and FPM (Finance Performance Management). EPM acts as a single repository to manage relevant information.
| Business needs | Benefits & features |
|---|---|
| Process controls | Business Process Flow (BPF) technology for context-driven workflow and process enablement |
| Centralized data and application management | |
| Status monitoring and workflow management | |
| Role-based security and user authentication | |
| Dimensional audit trail for budgeting, forecasting, and actuals | |
| Versioning control supporting any number of versions | |
| Data lockdown by dimension or specified period | |
| Compliance and Auditability | Audit trail history across planning, reporting, and forecasting |
| “A single version of the truth” on reported numbers | |
| Transparency based on data and data-change visibility | |
| Ensures accountability so confidence in the numbers drives ownership | |
| Audit report information stored, recalled, and reported on as needed | |
| Consolidation | Legal and Management Consolidation |
| Currency conversion | |
| Inter-company eliminations | |
| Journal entries | |
| Reports including P&L, Cash Flow, Balance Sheet, and Fixed Assets | |
| Budgeting & Forecasting | Single application tightly linking budgeting with data and processes for forecasting, reporting, and scorecard |
| Ensuring integrity and accuracy of results | |
| Rolling forecasts based on any time period | |
| Unlimited versioning | |
| Centralized, collaborative templates that simplify the enterprise-wide forecasting process | |
| Factors for trends and seasonality that can impact plans and budgets | |
| Incorporates real-time actuals with historical data for the most effective forecast seeding | |
| Comprehensive process management including versioning, workflow, and status control | |
| Automatic forecasting and budgeting process | |
| Collaborative top-down and bottom-up process that ensures organizational alignment | |
| “What-if?” analysis and scenario planning including realistic, optimistic, and pessimistic projections |
To deliver these capabilities, SAP BPC relies on a layered architecture that we examine next.
SAP BPC Architecture
SAP BPC architecture uses various business rules and script logic (such as MDX-style logic and Script Logic LGF files) to perform planning calculations. The key components in BPC architecture are shown in the image below.
The architecture exposes two interfaces for end users: the EPM Add-in for Microsoft Office and the BPC Web Client. Underneath, the NetWeaver edition stores data in SAP BW InfoCubes (or, on BPC 11.x, in advanced DataStore Objects on SAP HANA), while the Microsoft edition stores it in SQL Server with Analysis Services cubes.
BPC Administration
BPC Administration allows administrators to perform maintenance and setup tasks for BPC client applications.
How to start BPC administration
BPC financial administration has two interfaces: a client application and a web interface. The administration action pane lists the available tasks for both interfaces.
To start BPC administration
- Any of the following will work:
- Open a browser and type http://<server name>/osoft, where <server name> is the name of your BPC server.
- From the Windows Start menu, select SAP > BPC.
- From your Windows Desktop, click the BPC icon.
- From the Launch page, select BPC Administration.
- From the Administration action pane, select the desired task.
The console client is a Microsoft Explorer-like window where we manage items such as application sets, applications, business rules, dimensions, and business process flows. The browser client controls application-set and application properties and lets you maintain BPC web parameters.
Creating a new dimension
Dimensions represent the entities of a business (for example, accounts, company codes, and categories). They hold the master, text, and hierarchy data for each business entity.
It is possible to create new dimensions in a BPC application set. There is no restriction on the number of dimensions in SAP BPC. These dimensions then become shared dimensions that are available for use in any application within the appset.
Some dimensions are required dimensions and must exist in all applications within an application set. The dimension type determines the default properties to be included. It is possible to add additional properties as needed.
Dimension types
Required in each application:
- A = Account type dimension
- C = Category type dimension
- E = Entity type dimension
- T = Time type dimension
Required in each application set:
- R = Currency type dimension
The currency dimension validates currencies that are input in Entity type dimensions. It may not be part of any application within the application set.
Required for Intercompany Eliminations
- I = Intercompany
It is also possible to create additional dimensions as a requirement:
Un = User defined dimension type. For each user-defined dimension, the number ‘n’ is incremented (for example, U1, U2, U3, and so on).
Creating Dimensions
Select Dimension Library on the left side. The action pane displays the related dimension tasks.
To create a new dimension, click “Add a new dimension”.
Similarly, it is possible to copy, modify, process, and delete dimensions. While adding dimensions, you need to enter the reference type.
Next, we will look at how BPC handles reporting once data is in place.
BPC Reporting
BPC for Office combines the power of BPC with the rich functionality of Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. With BPC for Office, you keep the Microsoft functionality you already use. On top of that, documents, worksheets, and slideshows can link directly to the BPC database that holds the company’s reporting data.
BPC for Office allows you to collect data, build reports, perform real-time analysis, and publish reports in a variety of formats. You can save reports for use disconnected from the database, take them completely offline, and distribute them based on user access rights.
A sample layout looks as follows:
Reporting access is governed by the security framework, which is described in the next section.
BPC Security
BPC security is managed in the Administration Console. There are four key components in BPC security:
- Users – Add users to the environment and manage their access rights.
- Teams – Define a group of users with the same access rights.
- Data Access Profiles – Set up profiles that govern access to data in models.
- Task Profiles – Set up profiles that enable access to specific tasks.
BPC NetWeaver vs Microsoft Platform
The two BPC platforms share around 80% of features but differ in their back-end stacks. The short comparison below highlights the most important distinctions.
| Aspect | BPC NetWeaver | BPC Microsoft |
|---|---|---|
| Back-end stack | SAP BW / BW/4HANA on SAP HANA | SQL Server + Analysis Services |
| Latest version | BPC 11.x on BW/4HANA | BPC 10 MS (EPM 10) |
| Scripting | Script Logic (LGF), ABAP BAdIs, FOX | SQL stored procedures, MDX, Script Logic |
| Best fit | SAP-centric finance landscapes | Microsoft-centric, non-SAP source systems |
