SAP BusinessObjects Operational Performance Management Elite Enablement - Spend 3.0, Supply Chain 2.0, Data Enrichment 1.0 - Sep 26-30, 2011, Palo Alto

BE THE FIRST TO HAVE LIVE SPEND 3.0, SCPM 2.0 and DEC 1.0 EXPERIENCE at the SAP BusinessObjects Operational Performance Management Elite Enablement.

After successful Elite enablement sessions for BPC in US, Shanghai and (soon to come) in EMEA and a great PCM 10.0 Elite enablement session in Palo Alto, we felt that is was time to extend the offering to the Operational Performance Management (OPM) suite that is part of EPM 10.0:

• SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management / Spend Analytics 3.0 (SPM)
• SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification 1.0 OnDemand (DEC)
• SAP BusinessObjects Supply Chain Performance Management 2.0 (SCPM)

This action-packed week conducted by OPM product and solution management and Customer Solution Adoption (CSA – former RIG), will provide customers and partners invaluable "hands-on" exercises and information to ensure you hit the ground running with the latest OPM suite. In addition to mingling with the solution experts you will also have the opportunity to meet our OPM executive leadership team.

This Elite enablement workshop will cover a large variety of topics including:

• Day 1 – Hands-on walk thru of new features in SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management 3.0 (SPM), SAP BusinessObjects Supply Chain Performance Management 2.0 (SCPM) & SAP BusinessObjects Data Enrichment and Classification OnDemand (DEC) including What-If-Analysis, Advanced Analytics and Risk Management Integration
• Day 2 – Product deep dives covering User Interface configuration, data sourcing and integration from SAP ERP, integrating Spend and Data Enrichment & Classification
• Day 3 – Product deep dives (continued): Extensibility of SPM data model, integration of External Factors, Risk management integration and related applications configuration, Integration of SPM & BPC
• Day 4 – performance tuning SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, SCPM, SPM, DEC, Backend Modification to extend out-of-the-box functionalities (JAVA and ABAP Extensions), standard transports, install, security
• Day 5 – SAP In-Memory (HANA), best practices project setup, documentation, issue handling, project scoping

Also hear from the experts on the roadmap and future of OPM and OPM with HANA – SAP's in-memory technology.

We will distribute iPads to the participants to support the exercises.

Space is limited so register today! We will be limiting space per company in order to ensure we can meet the demand from all partner companies, so we encourage you to respond quickly to ensure your registration.

What other Elite enablement is coming up?

A BPC 10.0 MEGA Elite training completely on BPC 10.0 NW is planned for Nov 14-18, 2011 in Philadelphia. For the first time this will be open for over 100 customers and partners to go hands-on and dive deep into BPC 10.0 NW. Register here. Contact liz.fitzgibbons@sap.com for details and follow us on Twitter at #BPCElite or directly @SAPEPMRIG and @jenskoerner

Also SAPinsider is hosting a 3 day BPC bootcamp seminar in Chicago, Orlando, Amsterdam, Las Vegas and Philadelphia for customers and partners. For details check out www.bpcbootcamp.com and http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/24378

Debugging BPC 10 for NetWeaver

Debugging in BPC 10

In my opinion the ability to debug is one of the biggest advantages in the BPC for NetWeaver platform.  It has proven to be a huge asset when writing custom logic (BAdi’s and custom integration scenarios) in addition to general troubleshooting tasks.

The good news is that the latest release of BPC for NetWeaver (BPC 10) also allows you to debug the BW tier but there have been a couple of changes that you need to be aware of:

1. The .NET tier has been removed from the 10.0 release of BPC for NetWeaver.  This means you don’t have to map accounts on the .NET tier to enable debugging anymore.
2. The entry point for debugging has changed

After reading this (short) blog you will be prepared to debug BPC 10 for NetWeaver to your heart’s content.

Let’s get started…

Setting up your debug user

The only thing you need to start debugging BPC 10 is a valid BW user account with the same access as the BPC BW System Account.  You can find the required roles in section 4.1 of the Installation guide.

Once that is complete, grant the user the appropriate rights to the environment / model (application set / application) and set your breakpoints.

Where do I set my breakpoints?

There has been a pretty good amount of rework in the UJ package for BPC 10 and this has also impacted where you need to set your breakpoints.  I’ll cover two different scenarios below, debugging EPM Add-In and Administration functions and debugging data manager packages.

Debugging EPM Add-In and Administration functions

1. Log into the BPC client you want to debug (EPM Add-In or Web Administration console) with your BW debug user account.
2. Go to the portion of the use case you want to debug, but don’t execute the action yet.
3. Log into SAPGUI with your BW debug user.
4. Go to transaction SE80
5. Navigate to the class CL_BPC_REST_RES (under package UJX, embedded package UJX0).
6. Go to line 56 of the HANDLE_REQUEST method and set an external breakpoint.
   • Note – If you know the specific location you want to debug you can set the external breakpoint there and skip the breakpoint mentioned above.
7. Switch to the BPC client and execute the action you want to debug.
8. This will launch a SAPGUI debugging session
9. The case statement on line 60 will get you to the code you need to evaluate.

Debugging Data Manager Packages

1. Log into SAPGUI with your BW debug user.
2. Go to transaction SE80
3. Navigate to the class CL_UJXD_PACKAGES_RES (under package UJX, embedded package UJXD).
4. Go to line 179 of the DO_POST method and set an external breakpoint.
5. Switch to the BPC client and execute the data manager package you want to debug.
6. This will launch a SAPGUI debugger
7. Double click on the ‘ls_package_run-if_debug’ exporting parameter and set its value to true (represented by the character X).
8. You can then continue to any downstream external breakpoints you already set (for instance, in your BAdi) or can step through the code line by line.

How to manage scope changes with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS? Part 2

his series of seven blogs is dedicated to handling scope changes using “SAP® BusinessObjects^TM Planning and Consolidation 10.0, Version for SAP Netweaver Starter Kit for IFRS". The objective is to illustrate in the BPC Starter kit for IFRS some of the most frequent scope changes.

Blog #1: Acquisition of a subsidiary (full goodwill method)

Blog #2: Loss of control without any retained interest - this blog

Blog #3: Acquisition of further equity interests from Non Controlling Interests

Blog #4: Partial disposal of an investment in a subsidiary while control is retained

Blog #5: Step acquisition

Blog #6: Loss of control while retaining an interest

Blog #7: Internal merger between two subsidiaries

Each blog introduces a practical guide that deals with the following questions:

-          What are the regulation requirements that applies to the business case

-          How to handle the business case in the starter kit for IFRS

-          What are the impacts on the financial statements

The business cases presented in these blogs are included in the set of data provided with BPC NW 10.0 Starter kit for IFRS. You can consult them in the database. Please, refer to the operating guide delivered along with the starter kit for further detail on the consolidation process.

These blogs have been written by members of the SAP EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) Starter Kits & Innovations team that develops starter kits on top of SAP financial consolidation products, Financial Consolidation (FC) and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). The starter kits are preconfigured contents created to deliver business logic, to speed-up the application deployment and to provide guidance to help maximize advantages of the product. The contents provided in the starter kits consist of reports, controls and rules for performing, validating and publishing a legal consolidation in accordance with IFRS. SAP starter kits for IFRS are provided to BPC/FC customers at no additional charge; they can be downloaded from SAP service market place at http://help.sap.com/.

Now to the second blog!

Presentation of the business case

Year 2013

The 1^st of January, parent company P2 (USD) acquires 100% interest of subsidiary PS2 (EUR) for USD 95 000 in cash. PS2 net value of the identifiable assets and liabilities is EUR 87 500

Goodwill calculation = EUR 7 500 (x rate: 1 USD = 1 EUR)

PS2 profit for the year = EUR 10 000 (average rate for 2013: 1 USD =0,80 EUR)

On December 31^st, the exchange rate is 1 USD =0,85 EUR

Year 2014

PS2 goodwill impairment = EUR 4 000

PS2 profit for the year = EUR 15 000

The 1^st of December P2 sells its 100% controlling interests in PS2 for

USD 100 000. The average rate from January 1^st to December 1^st is

1 USD = 0,75 EUR. The spot rate on December 1st is 1 USD = 0,80 EUR

Note: For a matter of simplification, the case study is displayed on two years even if it is not fully relevant from an IFRS perspective (e.g. IFRS5)

PS2 net assets at the disposal date is EUR 112 500 (87 500 + 10 000 + 15 000).

PS2 individual accounts converted in USD and including goodwill are as follows:

Calculation of net gain/loss on the disposal

Practical guide

Please click here to access the practical guide

The Next Blog

In the next blog of this series, we will look at the Acquisition of further equity interests from Non Controlling Interests (Equity transaction)

Acknowledgements to Laetitia Lamoureux, Caroline Verrier and Jean-François Bouillon from the EPM SK&I team for their high contribution to the "Consolidation Practical guide".

Your comments about the contents are very welcome. Let us know what you wish to write about.
http://forums.sdn.sap.com/forum.jspa?forumID=400

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sapifrs

Twitter http://twitter.com/SAP_IFRS_XBRL

Comparision list of BPC Script Logic command between NW version and MS version

I guess many consultants already know the difference between BPC NW version and MS version.

Even though you know the difference, I think this chart will help us as a reference.

If you find anything wrong in the list, please leave a comment so that I can update it continuously.

Thank you.

*Index of Color

     YELLOW : Supported by both version.

     GREEN : Supported by NW version only

     WHITE : Supported by MS version only

     ORANGE : It was supported by MS version before 7.0 but not suppported any more.

Here is a link of Google docs. If you want to add more, please use it and edit, I will convert it as image and will publish it later

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlNX_-VUdSnudFhZSlpibzJ1NmpTX0N1Ty1WcUZUbFE&hl=en_US&authkey=CM3FoJkB

A Taste of What’s Coming in BPC 10.0

Today, the 2011 ASUG Annual Conference (and SapphireNOW) began with a series of pre-conference education sessions.  I was fortunate enough to attend the Enterprise Performance Management Version 10.0 Roadmap session led by a number of product experts within SAP’s EPM leadership team.  The goal of the session was to provide an overview of the changes that were coming in the to-be-launched-this-week EPM 10.0 as well as the vision for the suite of products beyond this pending release.

I was most interested in the SAP BusinessObjects Business Planning and Consolidation (“BPC”) portions of the session, since that’s the tool that I work with the most within the EPM product category.  In today’s session, I learned that SAP will be delivering a number of enhancements in the 10.0 release and I’ll do my best to try to outline the bigger changes below and my thoughts on those changes.

BPC Netweaver

New look and feel – One of the themes that SAP has been touting in the EPM 10.0 release is ‘Unified’, and this refers to making each of the EPM products have a similar user-friendly interface so that the user doesn’t know whether they’re in a BPC report or a Strategy Management scorecard (for example).  This new user interface seems very visually appealing based on the screenshots and demos provided.

Integrated security with Netweaver back-end – One of the complaints about BPC security in previous 7.x releases was that the security was not integrated with the underlying BW system.  SAP appears to have addressed this issue and provides a new administration area that will give system administrators a user friendly tool that acts as a front-end to PFCG or SU01 transaction code.

Enhanced hierarchy maintenance – While maintaining hierarchies were do-able by maintaining the ParentHx property in the dimension sheet, new functionality was developed that will allow for drag and drop hierarchy builds within BPC.

Enhanced script logic editor – Let’s face it, writing script logic can be less than straight-forward (and that’s putting it nicely), but with the new functionality planned for this enhancement, it will become a little easier.  With keywords and MDX statements now at a script-writer’s finger tips, searching online for the exact nomenclature will hopefully be less frequent.

No more .Net tier – As a business guy, I’m not sure that I understand exactly what this involves, but a more simplified and streamlined backend likely makes things easier.

Enhanced core consolidation functionality – New features such as Consolidation Central will give administrators a single place for configuration.  Better data validations (with thresholds that will allow consolidation process to continue or if breached, to stop) and a Consolidation Monitor (ala SEM-BCS) are added features in the upcoming release.

Ownership Manager – the Dynamic Hierarchy Editor is now called the Ownership Manager.  This web-based tool allows for auto calculation of ownership percentages based upon a user input of the Parent/Child relationships.  Based on the description, this reminds me a little of the SEM-BCS Group Shares report.

Web-based Journals – Journals will now be entered via a new web-based front-end, with what seemed to be a user-defined layout.  Enhanced journal reporting using a query manager will also allow users to better investigate the entries that are being posted in the system.

Future HANA Enablement – Beginning later in 2011, BPC will be enabled to run on HANA, first with replication of data using the Sybase Replication Server.  Then, in mid-2012, look for BPC to run fully on the HANA technology.

BPC Microsoft

Further demonstrating what SAP has said it would do, some of the Netweaver enhancements mentioned above will be available in the Microsoft platform, but not all.  Specific notable enhancements called out for the Microsoft platform were performance enhancements brought on by fully leveraging the 64-bit architecture and a new Advanced Variance Analysis tool that will help drive variance reporting.  The AVA will only be available in the Microsoft version of BPC, at least for the initial roll-out of 10.0

Conclusion

It was a really good Roadmap session with a lot of excellent and knowledgeable speakers.  I hate to short-change the speakers for the non-BPC EPM tools, but that’s what my personal focus is on these days.

I look forward to an exciting week at ASUG Annual Conference and SapphireNOW as there will be plenty of EPM sessions (more than any one person can actually attend by him/herself).

Don’t miss the official launch of EPM 10.0 on Tuesday, May 17 at 11:00am ET.

I’m quite certain that I missed out on some other enhancements that are coming in 10.0, especially on the Microsoft side, so please don’t think that’s all that’s coming.

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What makes a successful Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Solution?

Have you heard the IT consultant-seagull joke?  It runs something like this:

Q:  Why are IT consultants like seagulls?

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A:  Because they have big bills and hover around squawking at you, before crapping on you and flying off, leaving you with a mess.

There is a serious point here, that IT solutions, implemented by IT ‘experts' so often leave behind a system that, whilst being functionally acceptable, is rigid and a pain to maintain for the business.  This is particularly true of financial planning solutions, where a key success factor is the agility of the solution and its ability to accommodate changes in the planning model brought about by the inevitable business changes resulting from fluid market conditions.  Solutions that are delivered in times of financial retrenchment where the focus is on cost-reduction and profitability maintenance are often unable to support the sort of planning required in times of growth where the focus shifts to testing out new markets and/ or products.

Actualisation is the process of replacing forecasted figures for a recently closed fiscal period with actual financial results into the latest forecast.  The current range of planning solutions, most of which are based on multidimensional database platforms with sophisticated ETL components, mean that this process should be fully automated.  It never ceases to amaze me when I find planning solutions that require users to spend significant time each period keying in actuals figures to update their forecasts.  The potential to reduce this significant manual effort (often 2 or 3 mandays per period per planning entity) is often a key benefit in the business case for introducing a more up-to-date system.

Any financial budgting/ forecasting process will inevitably require some administrative overhead.  The key is to ensure that this is streamlined so that it does not become a barrier to an efficient month-end close process.  Most planning applications contain a workflow component which can be used to manage the forecast process centrally.  Visibility is given on the progress of the various planning entities required to submit budgets and forecasts and communication between the central administration and the planners is supported by the tool, providing a full audit of correspondence in convenient format.

Best-in-class planning applications, such as Business Object Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), are marketed as being owned by the Finance department, rather than IT.  This is an important distinction as, in order for finance departments to keep pace with the changing business environment in which their organisation operates, the tools with which they predict future performance and health of the organisation must be flexible enough to accommodate those changes, and those changes must be able to be made by the FP&A analysts using the tool.  Any system requiring intervention from IT in order to make small inevitable changes to a planning model, or to output reports, will cause frustration with the tool and a reversion to offline spreadsheet models.  This importance must be borne in mind beyond the choice of planning tool, and through the implementation of the tool.  Change management and training are key, with involvement of the business as members of the development team being essential if the tool is to be properly supported by Finance once the consultants have left.

Despite the importance of business involvement throughout the planning application implementation, consultants have an important role here - to impose the rigours of best practice software development and project management, and to bring to bear the benefit of their experience in implementing successful systems.  Some areas will remain technical, most notably integration of actuals and master data into the planning application, and a limited amount of bespoke development may be introduced into the system to achieve further efficiencies, but care must be taken to ensure that these developments are future-proof and will not become a barrier to the business maintaining the solution on an ongoing basis.

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