SAP BPC – Business Process Flow (BPF); an Overview!Business Process Flow, a component (Web based user interface) within SAP BPC. Why is it required? What it does and what it takes to get it ready to work. Let’s have a look.

Before we do that; let’s try to understand different Forecasting & Planning Cycles possibly an organization can have. Budget is generally done once a year. Forecasts can be done either monthly or quarterly depending on the need of the organization. Effort required to complete these budgeting & forecasting cycle vary depending on the nature of the business, size of the business, product-market matrix and so on, so forth. Employees, Managers, Budget Holders, Department heads, Division heads from different divisions located in different countries participate, contribute in order to achieve one single consolidated Budget or Forecast for the parent organization. This is quite a task, which requires a lot of coordination. Literally impossible to coordinate these activities in time, with accuracy and manually.

There comes the need of a tool like SAP BPC’s Business Process Flow (BPF), which is: A workflow driven component of BPC:

Which guides users, reminds the users to complete the task, review the inputs/tasks/data, reminds what to complete, the sequence of these tasks to execute.

Through email notification, monitoring ability & status tracking, it helps in coordination.

Real time simulation, helps in early detection of potential issues during a planning cycle

Integration with “Consolidation central” solves issues by working out; Opening Balance, Closing Balance, Reclassification figures, which were not possible from “Consolidation central” alone. So the entire set of tasks for a month-end process or year end process or Actual submission or Forecast submission or Budget Submission can be done from BPF window, seamlessly and efficiently.

The tool can be used for user assignment to specific tasks & assigning authorizations to these users, within the scope of a particular forecasting cycle.

The concept of Data Locking from previous SAP Planning tool (BPS or IP) has been provides in BPC, as part of BPF component.

Detailed report delivery & Work status integration are some of the essential features, which provided completeness.

SAP BPC Activity flow – An overview!By Corporate Performance Intelligence

Large part of professional life; I continued to wonder what is the difference between Planning and Forecasting? How are they different? Asked many and never found a suitable answer, until I studied chartered accounting. Answer is “not much”. Planning is a combined terminology used for the Monthly & Quarterly process of Forecasting and annual process of Budgeting. Just a term, that’s all.

There is a BIG difference between BPC and all other planning tools, SAP has ever produced, in terms of features, in terms of technical options, in terms of data granularity with which planning can be done, seamless integration between planning functions, integration of planning & consolidation, and most importantly empowerment of the business departments to manage the planning process, without being too dependent on the project/support teams. BPC V10 is just an incredible tool, in my opinion. Perfectly designed/fits to the need of large, complex, matrix and global organization. Having said that; it also accommodates the need of SMEs, also quite easily.

So first thing comes into mind; what exactly is done in BPC? Answer is “Financial Planning” of organizations. And in order to work out the financial planning; process has to touch upon other plannings such as Sales Planning, Inventory Planning, Manufacturing planning….name it…

If I have to quickly list, activities takes place in BPC at a high level…

Load data (actual from previous year, Forecast/Budget data from previous year) in BW from source systems or ERP systems or external systems

Transform the data / prepare the data in BW, in a format required by BPC

Import the data into BPC and prepare the same by adding versioning, allocation, top down, bottom up, type of data processing

Submit the final version of the data in various models or functions such as HR, Overheads, Project systems etc

Transform (Smoothing process to make the data accurate & reflect a true view of internal & external business situation/condition) the data using Script Logics or ABAP BADI using DATA PACKAGES.

Version /Label the dataset such as Initial version, working version, optimal version, pessimistic version, or other choose time based versions etc…before using them further.

Once the initial versions of dataset are prepared, there comes the need of script logic, which are required to help in the copy process, to apply various seasonality, to reflect external conditions in the plan data, to calculate various rebates, discounts & offers etc, Anything that your company participates in a normal business scenario can be integrated into the plan data, automatically using script logics. Script logics can also be used for on-the-fly-calculation (real-time) nature and also for obvious/automatic data transformations such as currency transformation, consolidation etc at a chosen/scheduled time.

TRANSFER / REFERENCE the data between various model to help with granular/aggregated planning and finally to the central model, where these data is applied to the financial statements such as P/L account.

Check the correctness of the data by doing few tests and running few calculations, accessing the projections WRT the previous financial years and current state of the Actual world with respect to the running Budget/Forecast. Make amendments if necessary (APPLY: trend analysis, apply a top-down number, incrementing numbers based on micro/micro economic conditions of the market etc etc).

Submit the final version of Budget/Forecast. Retract the data into BW or ECC if required for further processing and

reporting purpose. At this point in time, all types (Actual, Budget, Forecast) & up-to-date

data is available in BW centrally. And BW is a data warehousing system, which takes care of all complex enterprise reporting needs, very easily with its array of tool-sets; such as: Business Objects (WEBI, Crystal Reports, and Dashboard), BW-BEX, BW-WAD, Portal, and Enterprise Portal.

Manage the submitted Budget/Forecast regularly; by comparing it with various internal & external influencing factors.

Process for forecast is repeated once in every month or once in every quarter depending on the need of the organization.

Process of Budgeting is repeated once in every year, for the next year.

Some important SAP BPC Transaction codesBy Corporate Performance Intelligence

BPC TRANSACTIONS:

1. UJ00 ::BPC Configuration

2. UJFS :: File Service

3. UJBR :: P&C: Backup & Restore Tool

4. UJKT :: Script Logic Tester

5. UJLD :: Auto update msp file upload

6. UJQ0 :: Query Runtime Parameters

7. UJR0 :: Write back Runtime Parameters

8. UJBPCTR :: Transports – Create Request

9. UJETC :: UJE Transaction Data Check

10. UJSTAT :: Performance Statistics Report

11. UJUT_DATA :: Unit Test Data Maintain

12. UJ_VALIDATION :: Validation / CONTROLS in BPC 10

13. UJ0_IMG_01 :: BPC Parameters

14. UJ0_IMG_02 :: BPC AppSet Parameters

15. UJ0_IMG_03 :: Model Parameters

16. MDXTEST :: Measure Formula

17. UJA_MAINTAIN_MEASURE_FORMULA :: Measure Formula

BPC TABLES:1. Table TSTC - List of all transaction codes2. Table UJA_APPL - Query Technical Name3. Table TCURR - Foreign Currency Exchange Rates.4. Table UJR_PARAM - BPC System Parameters5. Table UJA_APPL - Stores the technical name of the InfoProviders

6. Table UJ0_ACTION - Lists the actions for which you can collect statistics.7. Table UJ0_EVENTS – Displays the list of events that is used in SAP BPC.8. Table UJ0_STAT_HDR & UJ0_STAT_DTL – After the web parameter for collecting statistics for a model is set to On for a model, statistics data is collected in Tables UJ0_STAT_HDR and UJ0_STAT_DTL.9. Table UJU_AUDACTHDR, UJU_AUDACDET, UJU_AUDDATAHDR, /1CPMB/KIABGAD, and Table /1CPMB/KIGTQAD – Activity audit data is stored in Table UJU_AUDACTHDR and Table UJU_AUDACDET. Data audit data is stored in Table UJU_AUDDATAHDR, Table /1CPMB/KIABGAD, and Table /1CPMB/KIGTQAD.

BW TRANSACTIONS:1. SE012. SE033. RSA14. SE385. SE376. SLG17. SE168. SE129. SE1110. RSRT11. RSPC12. RSPCM13. SM3614. SM3715. SPRO16. RSA1117. RSA1218. SE1919. SE2420. SE0921. SE1022. RRMX23. RSANWB24. RSD125. STMS26. SM2127. ST2228. SU0129. SU01D30. PFCG