SAP CPM-BW Solution Overview

SAP CPM 2.0 (Naresh Raghavan and Ken Melching)

Quick Intro to SAP CPM 2.0

SAP CPM is like an enhanced Microsoft Project embedded within SAP. The greatest advantage being that all the costs and resourcing data is already in SAP. And since actual values like sales orders, PO’s and other details also reside in SAP it is easy to compare Plan to Actuals in real time! Plus with its easy interface to Analysis for Office using Excel Planning can be performed via the BPC/Integrated Planning Interface out of the box.

The starting point is user friendly NetWeaver Business Client screens on Internet Explorer and gives an overview of all the projects that you have added to your favorites list:

The overview screen gives you a quick glance at your projects and highlights the ones that have exceeded the planned values (in Orange) for your review and action.


By clicking open a particular project you get further details in a ‘Project Workspace’ screen:

You can see WIP reporting, project Cost Status and so on.

Here is an Example of the ‘Project Cost Status’ node (it’s driven by a BW Bex Query):

The above reports can each be customized by adding or removing columns using a ‘personalize’ button.


Report can also be displayed graphically:


The Actual costs can be displayed right on this workspace screen by choosing the ‘Project Cost & Revenue Analysis’

Furthermore, by choosing different nodes on the Master project structure on the left hand side the report values change accordingly:


You can explore other details from this Project Workspace screen such as Financial Plan, Issues and Change Management, Risk Management, Commercial view (Sales), Procurement View (MM)

For example clicking on the ‘Commercial view’ icon will show all Sales Orders related to this project:

You can even click on the Sales Order hyperlink and jump to the Sales order in VA03, right on a browser session!


You can also view the Sales Order doc flow right on the Project Workspace screen:


Detailed view:

Similarly clicking on the procurement view icon will show all PO data related to this project:

As can be seen above- the Project workspace lets you connect to various components of a project in real time all at one place. You no longer need to have different sessions of SAP and search for Sales orders or PO’s to get the full picture. Plus you can see Actual costs from PS tables also in the Reporting section as was shown earlier.

Now let’s get into the Actual Planning module.


Planning in CPM:

Access via the Financial Planning icon on your project workspace:

You can maintain various version of each project:

Choose the one you wish to plan for.


It comes up with a pop up for defining your periods

And once you choose the workbook and period you wish to plan for- it takes you to the Analysis for Excel (all with SSO). No separate logging in:


Here you can use the full functionality of SAP BPC/Integrated Planning. You can insert/edit records.

You get drop down menus for picking correct values. Below is an example of planning for a Resource –Advisory Engineer.

You can distribute your plan values across the periods chosen or you can also expand and manually enter values for each period.


In the below example we distributed 2 hrs per month evenly across 12 months

Full suite of BPC functions:


Several Planning functions and Planning Sequences come by default

After completing your planning you can Save the data and it writes to the BW Planning Cube (now called ‘Real-time cube’):


Option to toggle between regular Infocube or Real-time Infocube:

It also comes with a whole lot of Virtual Providers for providing the reporting data on the NetWeaver Workspace screen we saw earlier.

The important thing to bear in mind is that in this solution the CPM NetWeaver screens, the Analysis for Excel and the BW Cube/workbench are all driven the same SAP ECC system! What this means for BW consultants are that you will be working on the BW Admin workbench (RSA1) on the ECC system. BW is not a separate system.

CPM was designed this way so that all ECC data can be presented for analysis by using Virtual providers without needing to replicate vast amounts of PS, SD, MM and FI data.

Just type in RSA1 on the ECC system and you will access the BW workbench shown above:


As can be see, the various SAP components in play for CPM 2.0 are

1. SAP ECC (strong knowledge of PS needed) 2. Netweaver client with Internet Explorer front end 3. BOBJ- Analysis for Excel Workbooks 4. SAP BW Objects 5. SAP BPC/Integrated Planning objects and functions

In conclusion, the CPM 2.0 implementation needs dual skills of an ECC CPM consultant who has a strong background in PS and a BPC/IP/BW Consultant with a background in ECC, BW, BPC/IP and Analysis for Office in Excel.

Note: All functionality shown above are standard stuff. Enhancements can include adding additional characteristics/dimensions to the Planning Cube which will require a fair amount of customization on both sides- ECC as well as BW/IP.s

This document was a collaborative effort of

Ken Melching ([email protected]) CPM/ECC consultant

Naresh Raghavan ([email protected]) BW/IP Consultant

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

SAP CPM-BW Solution Overview

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