SAP BPC – Competitors, Pros/Cons and Review for 2024

Introduction

Global organizations have relied on SAP BPC (SAP Business Planning and Consolidation) for their financial consolidation and planning needs. Unfortunately, the end-of-support for SAP BPC has been updated and set for 2030. Organizations are thus exploring modern SAP BPC competitors that offer the same capabilities. Yet those alternatives must also meet the challenges of complex global consolidation requirements, broader close capabilities (e.g., account reconciliations), and financial & operational planning scenarios, with the volumes of data needed to support those processes.

Organizations are looking to finally deliver on the promise of one source of truth. To unify the full consolidation and close lifecycle and financial & operational planning with built-in dashboarding, reporting and analysis, from the balance to the transaction level in one solution. Ultimately, the goal is a single solution that meets the requirements of modern organizations and grows with them to meet future requirements.

In this article, we’ll review SAP BPC competitors to examine the key features, capabilities and pros/cons. We aim to give you the information needed to make an informed decision about the right SAP BPC alternative for your organization.

What Is SAP BPC?

SAP BPC was developed to bring together consolidations and planning into one Excel-based interface to ensure familiarity among Finance professionals. With built-in financial intelligence, SAP BPC helped Finance streamline consolidations and produce consolidated Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements. Because of its Excel-based interface, ability to cover multiple planning scenarios and a common data model, organizations were able to run their planning and forecasting scenarios and reconcile plans to actuals for variance reporting and analysis.

With SAP BPC end-of-support set for 2030, many organizations have either already selected or are currently in various stages of selection processes to find SAP BPC alternatives.

To produce this article, we evaluated numerous reviews and analyst reports, which serve as the typical starting point for selecting the right CPM/EPM platform. We then evaluated alternatives based on five key criteria:

1. End-to-end management of enterprise-wide consolidation, close, and financial & operational planning and forecasting
2. Built-in data quality engine, in the hands of Finance, to provide a strong, flexible foundation in integration and data quality
3. Ultimate agility to adapt to varying levels of granularity in the business and across consolidation, planning and forecasting processes
4. Optimized end-user experience to drive efficiency and effectiveness, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual processes
5. Trusted insights from the balance to transaction level with transparency, auditability and actionable details behind every number

Now let’s dive into an overview of the key features, highlights and benefits of SAP BPC for consolidation and planning. To help you find the right solution for your organization, we’ll cover the pros/cons and alternatives. Looking for more information on other top CPM/BPM software? Check out our review: 5 Best SAP BPC Alternatives for 2024.

What Was SAP BPC Used For?

For decades, global organizations have relied on solutions such as SAP BPC for global consolidations and planning processes. SAP BPC had built-in financial intelligence to streamline consolidations so that Finance could produce consolidated Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow statements. In addition, SAP BPC had built-in planning capabilities (e.g., spreading) to streamline the planning user input during planning processes.

However, SAP BPC never delivered on the promise of one solution. Most customers needed to manage separate consolidation and planning applications. Then, these applications would need to be integrated. Additional applications were often needed to bring everything together for analysis and variance reporting.

SAP BPC Key Features

SAP BPC is known for several key capabilities:

• Financial Consolidation: Facilitates financial consolidation processes, helping companies streamline reporting, eliminate errors and stay compliant with regulatory requirements
• Financial Planning: Enables business planning to create detailed budgets and forecasts, incorporating various factors (e.g., historical data, market trends and business objectives)
• Workflow: Automates workflow processes related to planning, budgeting and consolidation, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency
• Reporting and Analysis: Delivers reporting and analysis capabilities, allowing users to generate customizable reports, perform ad-hoc analysis and gain insights into financial performance
• Data Integration: Integrates with various data sources – including ERP systems, databases and spreadsheets – bringing all financial data for consolidations, planning, reporting and analysis into one solution

SAP BPC Pros

• One application to manage financial consolidation and planning processes
• Built-in financial intelligence and workflows to streamline consolidation and planning processes
• Flexible deployment and integration options with SAP systems and tools

SAP BPC Cons

• SAP BPC is in end-of-support, set for 2030
• A lack of feature parity in future solutions to replace SAP BPC (Group Reporting for consolidations requiring S/4HANA to be implemented first, SAC for planning)

SAP BPC Alternatives

Enterprises today are looking to replace SAP BPC with more modern, cloud-based approaches to CPM/EPM. Many SAP BPC alternatives take the traditional multi-solution approach to CPM, which still results in complex management of multiple solutions, interfaces and integrations. However, solutions such as OneStream unify consolidation, close, and financial & operational planning, reporting, and analysis in one platform.

Enterprises therefore have options to achieve organizational CPM/EPM goals and, with the right choice, can get closer to that elusive one source of truth. The following solutions are the best alternatives for end-to-end management of enterprise-wide consolidation, close, and financial & operational planning and forecasting:

·         OneStream

·         SAP EPM

·         Oracle EPM

·         Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik

·         Workday Adaptive Planning

Conclusion

With the looming end-of-support for SAP BPC, organizations are actively looking for alternatives. OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform is the only CPM/EPM solution that delivers end-to-end management of enterprise-wide consolidation, close, and financial & operational planning and forecasting in a unified platform. This platform enables Finance and Operations teams to better collaborate and finally deliver on a single source of truth.

With over 1,400 customers globally, many successful migrations from SAP BPC to OneStream and a mission to ensure every customer is a reference, OneStream stands as the only truly unified platform for CPM/EPM.

Learn More

Want to know more? Check out OneStream’s video about what comes after SAP BPC/BFC/BCS here.