Who Uses SAP BPC

SAP BPC Used by

Business End Users:

Business end users are typically the users who will be in charge of the financials generated within BPC. They are aware of the different processes but may not understand the technical details or how each process is coded and programmed. Not all business end users may use the BPC system; they may only consume its financial information. Here are some typical business end-user groups one may find in a company.

FP& A Group: The FP& A (financial planning and analysis) group of each company may use SAP BPC to conduct various activities for their daily activities. These activities include but not limited to

• Planning and Forecasting – FP& A groups use the planning and forecasting capabilities of SAP BPC to plan for future financials as well as compare actual to planned and forecasted financials.
• Management Reporting – Reporting of financial results produced in BPC and formatted into analytical reports to be presented to the management team
• Information gathered in BPC can also be hooked up to other EPM tools such as Business Objects Dashboard, Crystal Reports, and other reporting to management

Controlling and Accounting Group: The controlling and accounting groups of each company may use SAP BPC to perform legal financial consolidations. The controlling and accounting group will produce consolidated financial statements from the information and processes established in SAP BPC

Tax Group: The tax group usually uses BPC to calculate tax and tax reserves based on standalone or consolidated financial results. The information used by the tax group can be a combination of information needed by the FP& A and Controlling groups of a company.

Support Teams:

Support teams are usually the system administrators and other IT related personnel who maintain the technical side of SAP BPC. They work with the business end users to ensure that the system is performing the way the business users need and reflects the information that the business users require.
♦ Master Data Maintenance (MDM): Master data maintenance team usually handles the changes and updates required for each dimension required for each SAP BPC environment. (i.e. adding a new entity, changing the description of a account, etc.)
♦ Security: Security team manages all of the people who need access to SAP BPC, type of access they need, and what restrictions are necessary. (i.e. John Smith need to be provisioned for a system ID and should have the entity preparer role with access to entity 1 and 2)
♦ General Support and Development: A support team should be in place to ensure that existing configuration is working as intended, fix bugs, or to develop a new process. (i.e. development of a new reclass process that requires coding of new LogicScript or custom program)
♦ BW or BI: Business Warehouse (BW) or BI (Business Intelligence) groups are needed because BPC is built on top of a BW component of SAP. The BW or BI teams are there to handle any issues arriving with processing of information kicked off in BPC but processed in the BW layer or to build any custom tables to be fed into the BPC system (i.e. YTD financial tables).
♦ BASIS: The BASIS team is the team that ensures the software and hardware components of BPC are installed correctly and connections to servers are stable. The BASIS support team is there to make upgrade any patches to the software or change the hardware resources.

Consultants:

Consultants are usually involved when a BPC project is being implemented in a company. Their job is to gather requirements, architect a solution, design, build, test, and deploy the solution in conjunction with business users. There are normally multiple consultants who are involved in an implementation; we can separate them into 2 types of consultants.

Functional: A functional consultant for SAP BPC normally has some kind of financial reporting , accounting, consolidation or relevant business area expertise. The job of a functional consultant is to

• Work with the business end users and gather all requirements, constraints, and other necessary information needed to be able to architect and design the system
• Translate all information gathered to the technical teams and work together with the technical teams to architect the structure of BPC and design specific processes to run in SAP BPC
• Work with the business users to develop testing scenarios, creation of test cases/ data, deployment and conversion of legacy data

Technical: A technical consultant normally works with the in-house technology team and functional consultants to ensure the following

• Establish the BPC environment, including setup of all users and all necessary security required
• Work with the functional consultants to architect and design the BPC environment
• Build all necessary components and processes required with the solution including but not limited to

1.Dimensions (Master Data)
2.Interfaces
3.Reports
4.Configuration
5.LogicScript
6.Custom Programs
7.Business Process Flow

• Handle deployment of transporting of code between different environments
• Help debug issues with configuration and other code for processes