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In a recent SAP value engineering study, it was revealed that the average number of days for the very best companies to close their financial books was 7 days. How did the worst performers fare? They took more than 3 times as long at 22 days! Now this wouldn’t be a big deal if finance cost weren’t a significant cost. But that same VE study revealed that finance cost, when measured as a percentage of revenue, also varied widely:
You ever wonder how the U.S. government actually gets financial statements from private companies? If you’re a CFO, you may already have heard of an application called SAP Disclosure Management, which, as a Financial Consolidation consultant, I believe is a giant leap forward for companies that currently struggle to comply with SEC reporting requirements.
One of the more interesting ‘assertions’ planted by a key SAP competitor which I faced was a statement that you can’t do planning and forecasting with SAP! As an Airline Industry Principle, it was an interesting pre-sales engagement to lead. Researching the issue, I was able to show that planning happens in many different parts of the SAP portfolio:
If you’re a Business Planning and Consolidation consultant or end user, you will frequently have need to use BPC functions. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them, and it sometimes is hard to remember them, so I’ve decided to provide an on-going series of articles on those functions, which you can either copy here, or download from our site when I assemble them into one large checklist.
Many enterprises have a difficult Business Planning process. Though they may have been in business for decades, in many cases, they are suffering from one, some or all of the following symptoms of a poorly performing Business Planning process-and many don't know they are making these mistakes.
SAP has many Business Planning solutions, including SAP BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation), SEM BPS (Strategic Enterprise Management, Business Planning & Simulation), Business Intelligence, Integrated Planning, and as well, Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP). Each SAP Business Planning product provides different planning capabilities and most companies do not use all of them. However, there are some common Business Planning Best Practices you should be aware of when selecting and implementing any of these solutions.
