The aim of this blog series is to explain the status of SAP Business Planning & Consolidation (SAP BPC) integration with SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and our strategic direction. Furthermore, we want to show you how SAP Analytics Cloud can extend and provide a positive ROI for your current planning, forecasting and analysis scenarios and help you run an Intelligent Enterprise. This is going to create new opportunities for planning, forecasting and analysis and thus it will help you steer your organisation even more effectively.
We also want to provide some guidance about the supported scenarios and high-level architectures and what can be done when it comes to modernising the existing planning & analysis solution of SAP BPC by adding SAC as:
- a unified user experience for:
- a planning (data entry) user interface,
- a data analysis interface,
- a planning extension,
- a pure SAC scenario (complete move from SAP BPC).
There will be several blog posts in the series that will cover relevant topics about integration and supported workflows, so please stay tuned for the updates of this blog post with all relevant links to additional blogs of the series:
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: Benefits & scenarios of moving SAP BPC planning scenarios to SAP Analytics Cloud
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: Use SAP Analytics Cloud as data entry UI for SAP BPC
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: Work with BPC planning sequences in SAP Analytics Cloud (THIS BLOG POST)
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: How to create a business workflow for BPC/BW live models with SAC Calendar
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: How to analyse data
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: MS Office/Excel add-in
- SAP BPC Move to SAC: Commenting
In SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) you can integrate your BPC embedded planning models via the BPC Live-connection. This enables Live planning with your BPC models, the data updates (writeback) are made in real-time into the BPC embedded data providers, so there is no staging or duplication of data in SAC. Essentially you are leveraging the BPC embedded planning objects (data providers, input queries and business calculation functions) and only using SAC as a frontend user interface for planning and analysis.
In the previous blog of the BPC MOVE blog series, I presented how you can use the BPC Live-connection and consume the BPC embedded planning queries for building a data entry user interface in SAC.
In this blog I want to illustrate how you can leverage the BPC embedded planning sequences for triggering remote BPC business logic and how to incorporate them into SAC stories and analytics applications for building an end-to-end BPC Live planning application in SAC.
End-to-end BPC Live planning application in SAC
How to
There is a simple BPC embedded planning example available in SAP BPC/BW systems, which follows a quantity-times-price approach for planning sales and contribution margin of vehicles across Europe, per Region and Product Category. This simple planning example contains the following BPC planning sequences:
- Selective deletion of plan data per region (SSP_PS_DEL_01)
- Prefill/Initialize plan version per region by making a projection based on actual data (SSP_PS_INT_01)
- Validate plan sales quantity input, negative values are not allowed (SSP_PS_VAL_01)
For incorporating a BPC planning sequence in SAC, the corresponding SAC model with live data access to BPC embedded model must be available. See more information at the previous blog.
Work with BPC planning sequences in SAC stories
From the Insert area choose the Planning Trigger option (1), select the BPC Planning Sequence Trigger (2), choose the SAC model and the Planning sequence e.g. SSP_PS_DEL_01 (3), enter Label and Description (4), if there are input variables, you have the option to select “open automatically the variable prompt by triggering” (5), finally position and format the created push button in your SAC story similarly as with Data Action buttons (6).
Incorporate BPC planning sequence in SAC story
You can execute the assigned deletion BPC planning sequence by selecting the region (1) & (2). After execution, the impacted data points will be highlighted in yellow and these changes will be stored in a temporary technical version (planning buffer). They then have to be published (3) for writing back the changes in realtime into the BPC data provider.
Trigger BPC planning sequence in SAC story
Remark: Context-sensitive execution for providing the ability to pass story filter or input control values into BPC planning sequence variables is not available in SAC stories yet.
Work with BPC planning sequences in Analytic Applications
For maximizing user experience and satisfying complex business requirements like validations and specific user guidance, you can boost the user interface using Analytic Applications. In Analytic Applications, the related BPC planning sequence APIs support, the BPC planning sequence trigger without manually setting any variable values, do various operations on the variable values at runtime, execute multiple steps e.g. validate and publish data .
In the below application after selecting the region (1), you can execute the assigned validation BPC planning sequence and publish data with one step (2).
Trigger BPC planning sequence in Analytic Applications
In the below example the “Validate & Publish” button triggers the BPC planning sequence (SSP_PS_VAL_01) for checking negative plan sales quantity data entries and if the check is successful, data changes are published and are written back in realtime into the BPC data provider.
Trigger BPC planning sequence in Analytic Applications: Prevent publish data
Trigger BPC planning sequence in Analytic Applications: Validate and publish data
The following blogs explain how to publish data and pass input control to Data Actions with buttons (similar approach by using the BPC planning sequence APIs) in Analytical Application.
With the new Optimized Story Experience the above Story and Analytic Application scenarios will be unified, see the link below:
Last but not least, you can execute BW/BPC calculation steps by triggering process chains in the BW backend system. Detailed information can be found in the blog link:
https://blogs.sap.com/2022/09/22/trigger-process-chain-from-sac-with-bpc-live-connection/
Summary
With the BPC Live-connection in SAC and with a few simple steps you can incorporate the BPC Embedded business logic into SAC stories and Analytic applications. Only minimun effort is required to modernize and unify your frontend user interface for planning and analytics. Any existing BPC planning application can be extended and combined with other use cases in the cloud in a unified way. It is worth mentioning that by leveraging the BPC Live-connection and the BPC Runtime license, we simplify the BPC customers transition journey to xP&A and to SAP Analytics Cloud by allowing them to move at their own pace, without disruption to their planning processes. This is something unique!
Check out the BPC MOVE blog series and this further information to learn more about the transition from SAP BPC to SAP Analytics Cloud:
- The SAP Note 2969947provides you the latest information of the supported and unsupported planning functionalities when using an SAC Model based on a BPC Live connection.
- Enabling BPC Runtime-license: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3150518
- Easily transition from BPC to SAC-P: https://www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/cloud-analytics/move-planning.html
- SAP Note 3308697 with SAP BPC Standard Migration guide
Ready to take the next step?
Start your cloud migration journey. Contact us at movebpc@sap.com to learn more about using SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning to migrate your SAP BPC investment to the Cloud and accelerate your business & financial transformation.
