Comparison of Consolidation Tools from SAP – Part I

SAP Customers always inquire about which SAP Consolidation Tool perfectly fits their Organizational needs. In my last 15+ years with various SAP Tools and in particular consolidation tools and projects I have come across following:

The most initial tool for Consolidation from SAP is SAP ECCS – can say it was quite robust and well-built and stable tool. The Customers who were using it quite have been quite happy with it. It has got all the nice features like Consolidation Monitor, easy to configure, all standard consolidation options for Inter-company & Equity Consolidations. In addition, it has got really sturdy Management Consolidation options. Going by its good design, no wonder SAP kept most of the features in Group Reporting tool. Group Reporting is ECCS on nitro with smart UI in fiori and Reporting (using ABAP Core Data Services) works like charm. So, if you are an existing ECCS customer – Group Reporting is a great fit for you.

SAP BCS uses similar concepts to ECCS, but more BW driven. It has similar features to ECCS. With Hana there is no real need now to have BCS on standalone. There has been news about will bring back strong version of BCS again, those who have been SAP BCS fan you can be happy with that news 🙂.

SAP BPC standard / classic came from outlooksoft so it was not fully integrated to SAP BW initially. It got more integrated into SAP landscape from SAP BPC 10.1 NW version. Though some customers also implemented SAP BPC MS version and were quite happy with that. BPC Consolidation is quite an open tool, easy to configure interface to design your elimination rules, very easy reporting UI, Business Process Flows, flexible Ownership manager, Journals and intuitive consolidation monitor.

In SAP BPC Embedded, the process is more BW driven, making it more IT driven. In BPC classic/standard, you create models/dimensions from the front end, and objects are automatically created in the BW background. Whereas in case of BPC Embedded you first setup your architecture in BW backend and then define the Environment & Models in BPC Web front end.

Comparison– The main benefit of embedded is that it has fewer data load interfaces compared to BPC Classic, although most functionalities are similar between them except for their architecture. The main benefit of classic is its speed in building, testing, and usage, making it manageable even by business users rather than IT.

SAP BPC Optimized – not really much different with embedded, just that this BPC version sits inside SAP S/4 Hana in embedded BW. The only version available right now is BPC 10.1 NW optimized as BW/4 HANA is not supported inside S/4 hana and neither is there a future roadmap it seems.

The major difference with BPC with BO FC is that BO FC is only for Consolidation but not relevant for Planning purposes while BPC extensively supports planning.

BO FC also provides strong stability and is a business-driven tool, much like BPC classic, with robust support for equity consolidation. If you are a BO FC customer no need to change anything just continue 🙂.

SAP Disclosure Management is complementary tool to SAP BPC to help you with Notes to Account. Though not widely used, it is quite a useful tool if you are looking for a solution to capture your Notes to Accounts, though data will ultimately come from BPC in most cases. Alternative solution to Disclosure Management is you can explore SAP BPC classic Word Add-in, or just use EPM Reporting for Classic or SAP Excel Add-in Analysis for capturing Notes to Accounts.

SAP RTC closely resembles BPC Embedded or Classic in terms of functionality, encompassing around 95% of BPC Embedded features. The key difference lies in its real-time data sourcing via Hana Views on top of ACDOCA and the new ACDOCC table for Consolidation Tool entries.

Configuring it within S/4 Hana in embedded BW eliminates the need for an additional server and reduces maintenance costs. Though I would recommend using BPC Embedded as it doesn’t work too differently than BPC Embedded. BPC Embedded is more stable now in the latest release of BPC 11.0/11.1 NW. Another option could be to use Group Reporting.

This is latest flavour in the consolidation area from SAP and had some challenges till S/4 Hana 1709, but quite stable in S/4 Hana 1809. There is a version also available for cloud customers which is also quite stable. As mentioned earlier, it uses the real time feature of reading data from universal journal ACDOCA for actuals and post the consolidation entries in ACDOCU table. Reporting uses the Hana optimized ABAP Core Data Services. The solution is using most of the good features of ECCS so existing ECCS customers will definitely like this tool.

Wish this makes your life easy in tool selection. Reach out to us for any kind of tools selection, tool audit and sap guidance. : admin@trijotech.com

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