SAP Customers are always curious about which SAP Consolidation Tool is the perfect fit for their Organizational needs. In my last 15+ years with various SAP Tools and in particular consolidation tools and projects I have come across following :
- SAP ECCS
- SAP BCS
- SAP BPC Standard / Classic
- SAP BPC Embedded
- SAP BPC Optimized (In S/4 Hana)
- SAP BO FC
- SAP Disclosure Management
- RTC - Real Time Consolidation (in S/4 Hana)
- Group Reporting (in S/4 Hana)
SAP ECCS vs Group Reporting
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 a 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 existing ECCS customer - Group Reporting is a great fit for you.
SAP BCS
SAP BCS using similar concepts from ECCS but more BW driven . It is having similar feature as 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 happy with that news :)
SAP BPC
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 open tool, easy configure interface to design your elimination rules, very easy reporting UI, Business Process Flows, flexible Ownership manager, Journals and intuitive consolidation monitor.
SAP BPC Embedded is different than standard as it is more BW driven > which means it is more IT driven. In BPC classic / standard you create models / dimension from front end and objects are created in BW background automatically. 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 - Most of the functionalities are similar between BPC Classic & Embedded except for their architecture. Main benefit of embedded is that there are less no. of data load interfaces. Main benefit of classic is that it is very fast to build, test & use and it can be even managed 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. Only version available right now is BPC 10.1 NW optimized as BW/4 Hana is not supported inside S/4 hana and neither there is future roadmap it seems.
SAP BO FC
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 is also quite stable and business driven tool like BPC classic and equity consolidation is supported quite well in this tool. If you are a BO FC customer no need to change anything just continue :)
SAP Disclosure Management
SAP Disclosure Management is complentary 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 of the 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 - Real Time Consolidation
SAP RTC is more of BPC Embedded or Classic sort of Tool, functionalities are 95% of BPC Embedded, only difference is more real time as data is sourced using Hana Views on top of ACDOCA and new Consolidation Tool table ACDOCC where LC, Translation & Elimination entries are written to. It is setup inside S/4 Hana in embedded BW so no additional server required which cuts your maintenance cost. Though I would recommend to use BPC Embedded as it doesn't work too differently than BPC Embedded. BPC Embedded is more stable now in latest release of BPC 11.0/11.1 NW. Another option could be to use Group Reporting.
SAP S/4 Hana Group Reporting
This is most 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 (new consolidation table for group reporting). The Hana optimized ABAP Core Data Services are used for Reporting . 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
Disclaimer : All the opinions are solely for information purposes and the author doesn't recommend or reject any tools . It should be done after your own due diligence.
..To-be continued in part II
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