Hi EPM community,

Here is the first edition of our product support newsletter for EPM that will cover the following topics:

- BPC-NW

- BPC-MS

- EPM-XLS

- BPC related content.

In this newsletter you can find the notes released in February and hot news of product support and development team. You will also have the oportunity of meet a member of our team and the featured content.

Please, feel free to share your ideas and suggestions to improve this new channel and provide relevant information.

Best regards,

Francielle Chaves

SAP Active Global Support

This is just a small piece of information which discusses about how to solve "PushActions By Value Error when opening a link from BPF Using Firefox"

Many of us would be using IE browser for opening BPF link.

If any one of you using Fire fox and encountering errors “PushActions By Value” when opening BPF link.

Please find the steps in the attached document to install NP.EPM.Plugin.xpi in the Fire fox Add ons to resolve the issue.

Also please refer to the Latest OSS note released for this:

2133861 - "Error launching office client: a.PushActionsByValue is not a function" happens when launching EPM Add-in from a BPF instance

It worked for me and I would like to share this to all of you.  Kindly ignore if it’s already working for you.

Open fire fox and click addons

In the below screen screen, click “Install add-on from file

Please browse and select the file NP.EPM.Plugin.xpi from the below path:  change the user name as per your system or search the file name NP.EPM.Plugin.xpi in My Computer, locate the file and open it.

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Programs\SAP BusinessObjects\EPM Add-In

C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Programs\SAP BusinessObjects\EPM Add-In

Once you click open, select the file and click Install Now.

1. NP.EPM.Plugin will be installed after you restart your fire fox.

Restart your firefox and open the BPF LINK from the web Admin, there will not be any “Push back errors “and the package link will open in the way it opens from Internet Explorer.

Hi Everyone,

SAP Early Knowledge Transfer for  SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.1 SP05, Version for SAP NetWeaver is now available inSAP Learning Hub.

After you have the access to SAP Learning Hub with Customer Edition Subscription, you will be able to see SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.1, Version for SAP NetWeaver: Learning Map for Consultant and you will learn about the new BPC 10.1 NW Support Pack 5 features which include:

• Hierarchy Maintenance
• Hierarchy Maintenance for BPC 10.1 NW Embedded
• Business Process Flow (BPF) Work Status Integration
• Enhancements for Control in SP05
• BPC 10.1 Embedded EPM Add-in

We also have the Live Expert Session Recording: “Functional Enhancements for SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.1 NW SP04 and SP05”.

This recording contains the new SAP Planning and Consolidation 10.1, version for SAP NetWeaver SP4 and SP05 functional enhancements and their benefits.

Presenter: William Yu

Topics including:

• Master Data Maintenance
• Local Master data
• BPF Comments
• Control Enhancements
  
  

See also:
SAP Learning Hub - Registration Guide
SAP Learning Hub - General User Guide

If you have any SAP Learning Hub access or registration questions, please go to SAP Learning Hub, choose your region and find the local education contact in the bottom of the page.

SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Webinar Series Kicks off in May 2015!

Whether you are a long time EPM Community member or are just interested in knowing more about SAP's ongoing innovations in the EPM space, this series is what you don’t want to miss. Next week, May 19th 7:00 AM PT, we will be kicking off the first webinar in this new expert series called EPM Expert Webinars. We plan to cover Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) for Netweaver/Microsoft as well as our new Cloud for Planning solutions  primarily through these webinars.

This series are an extension of our Knowledge Enablement Series, which you may be familiar with.  This series is designed with our customers, partners and prospects in mind. Hence they are open to anyone and everyone interested in the innovations happening in the SAP EPM space. Attendees of the sessions will uncover new ways to streamline and enhance current business planning and financial processes through product demos, tutorials and client/partner stories. All the sessions will be recorded and links posted for offline viewing. So if you miss a webinar, no sweat and make sure you plan to attend others that interest you!

Our first Live Webinar details are below:

Title:Introduction and Overview to SAP EPM Solutions

Speaker:Pravin Datar, Senior Director - Product Management

Date-Time:  Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at 7:00AM PT

For more information or to register for the webinar, please visit: https://enablement.sapevents.com/

For others in future, please visit theEvents Calendar

If you have feedback and/suggestions please leave them as a comment below or send an email to ruchi.sethi@sap.com. See you there!

Dear Customer,

SAP EPM Product Management, Development, and Go-to-Market teams cordially invite you to participate in a Design Council workshop focused on SAP Cloud for Planning.  We will share features, capture feedback, and co-innovate with customers for continuous improvement. Click here, SAP Cloud for Planning, for information and high level features.

During the session, please be prepared to discuss business planning related use cases within for your organization.

The workshop will be limited in attendance to ensure a high quality discussion. Please RSVP to take advantage of this influence opportunity.

Best regards,

SAP EPM Product Management (Americas)

SAP EPM Development

SAP EPM Go-to-Market

Hi Everyone,

SAP Early Knowledge Transfer for SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 is now available inSAP Learning Hub.

After you have the access to SAP Learning Hub with Enterprise, Customer or Partner Edition Subscription, you will be able to see SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1
by searching the title or the search term: EKT_FINCON101CONS.

Learning Map for Consultant and you will learn about SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1's new features which include:
In "What's new in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1":

• The Rejuvenated HTML5 web user interface
• The new web printing client in addition to ActivePDF
• The 64-bit support for the web
• The refined SAP HANA reporting

Following Demos are included:

• New HTML5 Web User Interface
• SAP HANA Real Time Reporting Overview
• SAP HANA Using Lumira and Excel

If you don't have the subscription yet, please go to SAP Learning Hub, choose your region and find the Local Education Contact in the bottom of the page.

See also:  Discover SAP Learning Hub

In order to avoid issues related to post installations steps that were not properly followed, we created a tool to perform a check of these steps in a fast and simple way. This tool was named "Installation Checker" and it is aimed at NetWeaver version of BPC.

In this first version, the Installation Checker verify the following items:

1. Check the RFC for BW

- Verifies if the RFC for BW was created and if so, brings the name of this RFC. If the name is not displayed, then the RFC for BW was not created

- Presents the BW user* related to this RFC, extracted from RSAADMINA table

- Presents the BW user* related to this RFC, extracted from RFCDES table (RFCDES stores the configurations of all RFC connections)

- Presents the BW destination client

*Important: both tables, RSAADMINA and RFCDES, should show the same user.

2. Check the RFC for BPC

- Verifies if the RFC for BPC was created and if so, brings the name of this RFC. If the name is not displayed, then the RFC for BPC was not created. This information is extracted from UJ0_PARAM table*

- Does the same verification described above, but in this case the information is extracted from RFCDES table*

- Presents the BPC user related to this RFC, extracted from RFCDES table

*Important: both tables, UJ0_PARAM and RFCDES, should show the same RFC name.

3. Check the RFC for MDX PARSER

- Verifies if the RFC for MDX PARSER exists in the system

- Verifies if the RFC is created at the right place, under TCP/IP connections

4. Execute UJA_DATA_CHECKER

- Executes the UJA_DATA_CHECKER program for Environment Shell and returns the result of the execution (if the file service structure is correct or not)

5. Authorization test for BW RFC

- Executes the authorization test for BW RFC and returns the result (if it passed or if there is any error, it will presents the error)

6. Authorization test for BPC RFC

- Executes the authorization test for BPC RFC and returns the result (if it passed or if there is any error, it will presents the error)

* Important remark:

- The green light is only displayed if all the sub checks under the main check are correct. (It should be changed in a next version, where each line will contain your own light indicator)

- Inside parentheses it is possible to see the table from where the information is extracted

This is the first version and the code can be found in the KBA 2171559. In the near future, more releases will be created, which will include any fixes needed and additional checks.

If you have any suggestion, please feel free to share it with us through the comments. This way you can help us to improve the tool.

Follow this blog post to be notified of updates.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

What trends have developed over the past century for enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) methods and business analytics?

One way to find an answer is if we performed research using a Google database that was unveiled in 2011. It includes 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008. With this database, one can input search words and phrases and discover how frequently those different terms were used during different past time periods.

With this Google database, researchers have been learning about interesting and possibly relevant shifts in social values or cultures. For example, one study revealed that between 1960 and 2008 self-centered phrases about an individual increased while group-related communal phrases declined. That is, phrases like “I come first” increased as “community” and “common good” decreased.

What Might Words Tell Us?

Imagine that we had access to this massive database of books to investigate shifts over time in what organizations, especially for commercial businesses, emphasize and pay attention to.

Here are my best guesses:

• “Big data” up and “IT department” down. This shift is a no-brainer. References to big data are recent and growing. The simple explanation of big data is with the five Vs – volume, variety, velocity, value, and veracity. Regarding an “IT department,” users of technology are increasingly self-sufficient. The IT department of the past is today viewed by analysts more as a back office service. What analyst users want is easy and flexible access to data and the ability to manipulate it.

• “ROI on customer” up and “sales reporting” down. Companies are realizing that it is no longer their objective to just increase their market share and grow sales but rather to grow profitable sales and maximize the return on investment from their marketing efforts. There is a trend for customers to increasingly view suppliers’ products and standard service-lines as commodities, resulting in customers who seek special services and differentiated treatments. Consequently, many suppliers have actively shifted their sales and marketing functions from being product-centric to customer-centric. This shift is accomplished through analytics – specifically through the use of data mining, business intelligence and analytics tools to understand their customers’ behavior. These include their preferences, purchasing habits and customer affinity groups. “Sales reporting” does not reflect the trend of viewing customers as investments like in a portfolio. Maximizing the ROI on customers leads to maximizing a company’s shareholder wealth creation.

• “Balanced scorecard” up and “management by objectives” down. I was fortunate in my career to have been trained by (and to have become friends with) two luminaries in the management sciences, Harvard Business School Professor Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David Norton. They are the co-creators of the balanced scorecard[1]. They will likely agree that their strategy map diagraming method of linked and causally related strategic objectives is relatively much more critical than the balanced scorecard instrument. The balanced scorecard display merely serves as a feedback mechanism. The more important navigation resides in the strategy map. The balanced scorecard’s KPIs monitor the progress toward accomplishing the strategic map’s typical 10 to 25 strategic objectives defined by the executive team. On the other hand, the “management by objectives” phrase has declined because in its heyday there was no conscious integration of each manager’s or employee’s MBOs. Each manager’s objective was like a random piece of a jigsaw puzzle thrown on to a table. The strategy map and its companion balanced scorecard bring order, structure and, most importantly, alignment of the KPI measures for the primary purpose of strategy execution. An executive’s biggest frustration is strategy execution. Executives are well-skilled with strategy formulation but have substantially lower control with its execution. The achievable targets of KPI measures align employees’ priorities and work activities to achieve the executive team’s strategy.

• “Driver-based rolling forecasts” up and “annual budgets” down. This shift may not be that apparent. Does it surprise you that organizations are increasingly frustrated with the annual budgeting process? Many are backing off from the cumbersome task (which is arguably of decreasing value) of producing the annual budget due to a number of reasons. One is that the budget is often obsolete a few months after it is completed and approved by the senior management team. Also, the budget is often a fiscal exercise performed by the accountants, but is not connected to the strategy-related required projects and initiatives. The budget method often simply increments each department’s expenses up or down a few percentage points with little or no consideration for valid estimated demand volume changes in future periods. In contrast, driver-based financial projections start with forecasts of the demand volume and mix of products and services placed on an organization’s processes and workload. The forecast is the primary independent variable to project the required capacity, workforce headcount and spending – which are dependent variables. When analysts have constructed reliable models with reasonably accurate unit level consumption rates based on recent performance and outcomes, then the accountants can calculate and project the estimated required capacity, workforce headcount and spending levels with suppliers.

• “Risk management” up and “contingency planning” down. Stock market equity share prices of publicly owned companies have become more volatile and sensitive to every new bit of information that might even modestly affect a company’s future cash flow. With financial scandals like Enron, WorldCom and the JP Morgan substantial write-offs from bad financial derivative investment bets, systematic enterprise risk management (ERM) is now becoming institutionalized in organizations. ERM attempts to identify every possible type of risk event, its probability of occurrence, and its impact if it were to occur. Deep analytics are now pervasive in assessing various types of risks, such as bank loan credit scoring of individuals and companies. In contrast, “contingency planning” had temporary popularity in the past, typically based on a brief exercise to describe the reactions to a few unplanned but potentially possible adverse events, such as a fire at a primary production facility.

Words and Phrases as Indicators of Interests

These are my best guesses of how shifts in the references to words and phrases in books might indicate changes in what organizations pay greater or less attention to manage. Use of analytics is central to each word or phrase shift that I mentioned.

Are my guesses correct? You may have some thoughts on this yourself, and if so I’d be delighted to hear them. Perhaps a researcher might analyze the Google book database and surface the truth. That is what analysts are known for; Facts, not guesses.

[1] Kaplan, Robert S; Norton, D. P. (1992). “The Balanced Scorecard – Measures That Drive Performance”. Harvard Business Review (January–February): 71–79.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

One of the frustrations I experience is when managers or analysts share with me that their organizations tried to implement progressive management methods, and they either failed or abandoned them. A prominent example is an unsuccessful attempt to implement activity-based costing to measure and manage costs and profit levels of products, services, channels and customers. Other examples include risk management, customer analytics, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and the balanced scorecard.

What causes these failures or the quick loss of an organization’s interest in them?

Experiencing failure is a foundation for success

What we are discussing here is a topic few wish to discuss – failure. I advocate having a positive view of failure and leveraging disappointing or botched implementations of an advanced managerial method or system as a learning experience. Failure can be a great teacher. Perseverance and determination is important for success. Don’t believe that one needs to avoid failure. You have to accept risk when taking on improvement projects.

There are some inspirational lessons about early career failures by individuals who ultimately succeeded. Consider these:

• Winston Churchill failed sixth grade, and he was subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he became prime minister at the age of 62.
• Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, had every cartoon he submitted rejected by his high school yearbook staff.
• Twenty-seven publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first book, To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
• After film star Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”
• Henry Ford went broke five times before he succeeded.
• Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything,” and he was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.”
• Albert Einstein’s PhD thesis was rejected as being “irrelevant and fanciful.”
• In 1981 the USA’s NBA basketball star Michael Jordan was cut from his high school team.
• In 2000 Barack Obama ran for the US Congress and failed.
• Is this not enough evidence that failure is just another name for experience?

Failures with improving measurement and monitoring systems

In my introduction I mentioned the example of activity-based costing (ABC) as an example of a “tried-and-died” managerial method. I have a substantial amount of experience with implementing ABC. I was a pioneer implementing ABC systems in the 1980s during ABC’s takeoff when I was a consultant with Deloitte and KPMG and subsequently I wrote books about it. Since ABC is a proven and reliable method with value for most organizations, yet some fail implementing it. Let’s use it as an example from which to generalize.

A common problem with implementing ABC is excessively over-sizing and over-engineering the size of the ABC model. This is due to the accountants’ misplaced quest for precision, detail and accuracy. The result is their model is too complex to be understandable and becomes unmanageable to maintain. Yes, if accountants report wrong information for external regulatory reporting with financial accounting, they risk going to jail. But ABC is primarily intended as managerial accounting for internal decision making. So if the ABC information is approximately correct rather than precisely inaccurate, they don’t risk going to jail! Financial accounting is for valuation, like for inventories, whereas in contrast managerial accounting is for creating value – for both customers and shareholders.

But there are other obstacles. If the sponsors for ABC do not secure in advance organizational buy-in from managers and the planned purposes for using the information, there is a likelihood there will be less interest. Lack of proper training is another obstacle. I recall a user looking at the ABC information and saying, “I feel like I am a dog watching television. I do not know what I am looking at!” Finally, after the sponsors for ABC have achieved buy-in to pursue the implementation, they need to remain involved. In particular, they need to motivate their colleagues to use the ABC information to generate previously unasked questions and stimulate conversations as to what changes to make.

There are also misperceptions about the level of involvement by employees to provide input data. They fear they must complete daily time sheets and record counts on anything that moves. Although it is counterintuitive, the accuracy of the output costs, such as for products or customers, is much more determined by the design of ABC’s cost assignment network. With a good cost model design, the costs are good enough for gaining insights and making better decisions.

There is also the “one and done” syndrome. This occurs when there is a problem, like understanding which customers are more or less profitable; and an ABC model is constructed as a one-time study rather than as a repeatable and reliable production system. If the information is needed once, there should be interest in regularly refreshing the model to monitor progress with improvement initiatives.

Lessons learned: Valid methods don’t die but go dormant

To generalize from this single example, there are dozens of books available about project management that can provide useful information. However, when I step back and look at the big picture, the ultimate lesson is that implementers should not underestimate the importance of behavioral change management and overcoming people’s natural resistance to change. This includes employees who are afraid of others knowing the truth or they do not want to be held accountable or measured.

My advice is to consider how much emphasis to place on three factors that, when combined, overcome resistance to change: discomfort with the current situation; a vision of what a better state looks like; and first practical steps (e.g., a pilot project or a rapid prototyping exercise). Many project champions dwell on the second one, a vision, by explaining the benefits of their proposed project. The key is to focus on the first factor by creating discomfort in managers and co-workers. Constantly ask, “How long do we want to continue to make decisions with flawed, misleading or incomplete information?” That creates the interest in the vision – a solution with a software system that will provide it.

After a “tried-and-died” project fails, the need that triggered interest typically does not go away. Like a hibernating bear, the project simply goes dormant. Inevitably managers will repeat the same questions, like “Where do we make or lose money?” There will always be a second chance to successfully implement the project or system. The need for better information remains high.

As an example, I recall an ABC implementation at a bakery goods producer. The product manager for the Danish pastries killed the project. Why? Before ABC his products were the most profitable. With ABC all the sugar and jellies for his products caused extra work for cleaning pans and ovens. He realized that other product managers would now be the more profitable ones. He said to the leadership, “We should be doing six sigma quality management. This ABC is a waste of time.” The project was then terminated. Until a few months later when the management still did not have visibility to where they were making or losing money – and why. The Danish pastries product manager cared more about himself than his organization and its shareholders.

Learn from your failures. Do not underestimate the value of experience. Never lose hope.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

There is much confusion and little consensus as to what enterprise performance management (EPM) is. Different information technology research firms define it differently. Different consulting firms describe it to fit their unique competencies rather than what their clients may require. Since my impression is that most of these organizations view EPM far too narrowly – such as only a CFO initiative with better budgeting and control – my feeling is that it is better to discuss what EPM does rather than have arcane debates about defining what it is.

I argue that organizations have been performing the various methods that comprise EPM for decades – well before it received its recent popular references in the media. Organizations have been pursuing basic types of performance management methods arguably even before there were computers! So why is EPM receiving popularity as a buzz phrase now?

The Debut of EPM at the Enterprise Level

If you had done a Google search a few years ago on the term “performance management”, the results would have predominantly referred to the human resources and personnel departments’ attention to monitoring and improving individual employees including employee appraisals. But if you do that Google “search” today the shift is toward the performance of the organization or enterprise in its entirety – not for individual employees. Today the term “enterprise” typically precedes “performance management.”

Some would argue that this shift to where EPM regularly appears in the media and information technology (IT) community has been due to the IT research firms observing that business intelligence software vendors – the type with functionality more towards data-mining and analyzing data rather than producing the raw transactional data – are now integrating analytical information across multiple departments. For example, a computer manufacturer’s purchasing system detects a temporary vendor part shortage that, in turn, is directly signaled to its customer order entry agents to influence their customers to select alternative product variations, perhaps with a discount or deal as inducement, until the part shortage is resolved. The risk of a missed sales opportunity is eliminated. This “demand shaping” is more powerful than “demand management.” This type of communication from the purchasing function deep in the bowels of the production function to a call center agent deep in the sales function would have rarely existed a few years ago.

Others might argue that the increasing appearance of EPM at the organizational level arose from the same IT research firms observing that ERP software vendors like SAP now provide strong combination suites of at-a-glance visual dashboards and scoreboards. Further, these reporting tools are now linked to strategic planning and execution; managerial accounting; and forecasting tools – and they are extremely scalable to handle millions of records for products, distribution channels, and customers.

These are certainly factors, but I believe the emergence and interest with EPM in the media and marketplace has deeper root causes.

The forces causing interest in EPM today

I believe that a better way to understand what EPM is about is to understand what problems the various EPM methods solve – the immense forces on management – such as these:

• A failure and frustration by executives to execute their usually well-formulated strategy. The terminations of CEOs by boards of directors have been recently occurring at record high levels due to this frustration
• A lack of trust among managers to achieve results is an increasing concern. Consequently, there is an escalation in accountability of managers and employee teams for results with consequences
• Change is the new constant. Increasingly rapid decisions by employees (without time for higher management input) needs to leverage trade-off and predictive analytics. This means a need for employees to understand their executive team’s strategy
• Mistrust by managers of their managerial accounting information and its flawed and/or incomplete product, channel, and customer profitability reporting
• Poor customer value management. There is a shift from being product-centric to customer-centric with customers now viewed as the primary source of shareholder wealth creation. Surveys report customer retention and growth as the CEO’s number one concern
• Dysfunctional supply chain management with a lack of trust among the traditional adversarial relationships between buyers and sellers along the supply chain. Trading partners should ideally be collaborating and identifying mutually beneficial projects and actions
• Balancing risk appetite with risk exposure to optimize financial results with anticipatory risk mitigation actions
• Today effective EPM software goes well beyond query and reporting data mining – it addresses and resolves all of these issues. The result is rather than just monitoring the dials of its key performance indicator (KPIs) dashboards, organizations must move those dials. The purpose of EPM is not just managing but improving organizational performance.

Join me in part 2 of this blog later in the week where I shall discuss the deep root cause forces spurring interest in EPM today.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

In part 1 of this blog I questioned why EPM was receiving such popularity at the executive level, and posited some theories. Here in part 2 I give my view of some deep root cause effects.

Deeper root cause forces spurring interest in EPM today

There is a more deep-seated root cause than the forces described in part 1 of this blog. It involves a growing gulf related to (1) the ability of an organization’s managers to have consensus and agree with each other, and (2) the uncertainty of future external influences impacting their organization.

The figure below is a modified and simplified framework developed by Ralph D. Stacey, Ph.D., a scholar in organizational management.[1] The framework proposes that different managerial approaches are required based on where a problem resides in the two dimensional matrix with the axis “level of managers’ agreement” and “degree of uncertainty.”

The lower left and upper right zones of the matrix are easiest to understand:

• Bottom-left zone with high agreement and certainty. University MBA programs typically focus here. Past data is gathered and used to predict the future. Managers easily and rationally reach consensus and the expected outcomes are confidently predictable. Projects, initiatives, and actions are selected and monitored with variance analysis from plans used for mid-course control and adjustments.
• Upper-right zone with lack of agreement and high uncertainty. In this zone there is often avoidance of decisions and it borders on chaos. Breakdowns occur here because traditional methods of planning, debating, negotiating and committing don’t work. Organizations get balkanized and either make strategic mistakes breaking from the past or take no action due to lack of confidence. Innovation and creativity should prevail in this zone, but they often come up short.

The widening of the zones “in between”

As we move from the lower left to the upper right zone then politics and coalition building occurs. This is because there are broad differences about “how to get there” rather than the expected outcomes. Cause-and-effect relationships are rarely known or understood, so this is where a shared vision of the future state is more important than project planning. What is needed in this area of the matrix are the executive team’s ability to lead and inspire their employees and to continuously sense-and-respond to unexpected factors.

My belief as to why there is an accelerating interest in EPM is due to expanding gulf in this “in between” zone. This “in between” section of the matrix involves increasing complexity, uncertainty and change. In this section there is a gathering storm threatening all organizations. This is where agenda building overrides fact-based decision-making. This is where blind muddling by managers unfortunately overrides something more desirable – vision, inspiration, and good enterprise risk management (ERM) practices from the executives. As markets become more intensely competitive, managers are faced with more high-stakes decisions. As a result success in this “in between” area of the matrix requires both making the right decision in the first place and then executing on that chosen path direction.

The collective suite of integrated methodologies that comprise EPM (e.g., strategy mapping, scorecards, customer profitability management, rolling driver-based financial forecasts, enterprise risk management, etc.) provide the solutions for this “in between” section. EPM shifts problems and decision making from this “in between” section toward the lower left zone – making them simpler problems. Here is how and why technologies become essential enablers:

• A shift in emphasis toward applying analytics of all flavors, including predictive analytics with what-if and economic trade-off scenarios, bolsters proactive rather than reactive decision making.
• Gathering all information into an enterprise-wide and common information platform with scalable real-time information replaces disparate and disconnected data sources. These are increasingly cloud-based and accessible with mobile devices.
• Cross-functional communication and collaboration amongst employees and automated rule-based decisions replace self-serving silo and bunker mentality.
• The work processes, priorities, initiatives and target-setting of managers and employee teams are aligned with the strategic intent of the executive team. These replace pet projects, minimal (or non-existent) accountability, and internally competing silo department performance metrics that are suboptimal and degrade maximizing stakeholder needs – such as for shareholders or customers.
• Economic measures of customer profitability and potential customer value are made visible to support differentiated service levels, offers or deals to achieve maximum profit yield from the sales and marketing budget.
• Exception reporting, alert messaging, and at-a-glance visual reporting improves traction and accelerates speed in the strategic direction set (and continuously re-set) by the executive team.

Organizations need top-down guidance from its executives with bottom-up execution. Effective EPM, not simply the narrow CFO financial view of better budgeting and control, shifts decisions that are currently waffling in the “in between” section of the matrix – and away from the dreaded upper right zone of high uncertainty and lack of managers’ agreement. Complexity is expanding due to the forces described earlier, and EPM software brings rational thinking to convert once perceived complicated problems from the upper right into simpler and solvable problems in the lower left.

Understanding what EPM does is more important than trying to define what it is.

[1] Stacey, Ralph D.; Complexity and Creativity in Organizations; Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.; 1996.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

I was educated as an industrial engineer. Engineers are not perceived as very worldly or sophisticated. They are often pictured with a shirt-pocket protector stuffed with pens. But some engineers, like me, do have appreciation for the performing arts. For example, I appreciate classical music. In particular, I admire and am in awe of the great classical music composers. How did Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn transcribe such beautiful music as notes from their brain to a page of musical score for so many instruments? (Hint: I don’t think they had a smartphone or email to distract them.)

I believe that in the next few years the adoption rate for enterprise performance management (EPM) methods embedded with business analytics will accelerate. Core EPM methods include strategy management (strategy maps, balanced scorecard, dashboards); profitability analysis (by products, channels, and customers); driver-based budgets and rolling financial forecasts), enterprise risk management (ERM); and continuous improvement (lean and six sigma quality management). They should ideally be seamlessly integrated.

This acceleration will have an effect similar to the one Ludwig van Beethoven’s masterpiece – his third symphony, Eroica – had on the future of classical music. Beethoven followed Eroica with his universally memorable fourth to ninth symphonies, and other great composers emulated him. What connection am I making between classical music and EPM?

Breaking free from tradition

Ever hear much about Beethoven’s first or second symphony? Few people have. That is because it was with Eroica, his third symphony, where Beethoven himself is quoted as saying, “I will now take a new path.” It was a radical change in music composition.

Eroica, inspired by Beethoven’s admiration for Napoleon as a world leader, had true melody. Prior to Eroica, Beethoven’s compositions followed a tradition where melody was rare. He complied with the conventional rules of what tasteful music for the elite should sound like. His prior music was influenced by masters who dared not change from tradition, such as Bach and Haydn. But Beethoven had a strong urge to break free from tradition. With Eroica, classical music was changed forever.

The evidence of the “Eroica effect” is this: How many billions of people, including you and me, will die with little trace of remembrance generations from now but a tombstone? But the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, Sibelius, Grieg and others in their league will be listened to for a long time to come – possibly for centuries.

Are we now at a point where the implementation of EPM’s suite of integrated methodologies, like Eroica, will also “take a new path?” Yes – because tradition increasingly gives way to change, and organizations are slowly and gradually learning to not just manage change but to drive change.

Will EPM soar in the Cloud?

The acceleration of EPM will not be restricted to only implementing or improving its core methods. With the advent of modern, sometimes futuristic mobile solutions and Cloud technology platforms, the potential is not only for improving EPM, but for radically changing the way it is implemented, deployed and maintained. The potential also impacts the way that information produced by EPM solutions will be consumed by enterprise users. Mobility solutions, which have been around for a short time now, provide a basis on which to extend the use of EPM information and to gather EPM data inputs to global enterprise users. It’s not just a back-room, batch function any more – it’s information for enterprise users, anytime, anywhere! And of course mobile EPM solutions will evolve to support the demands of those enterprise users, who are now more than familiar with mobile devices in their personal lives and which will begin to blend with their working lives too.

Of course the big change, possibly echoing tones of the Eroica effect, is likely to be Cloud. The technology for Cloud EPM has arrived, and is being supported by software vendors eager to gain a lead in this new EPM market area. But, if you take a breath and think about this, Cloud could be something magical for EPM, as well as other areas of Finance. It’s not just about a new way to deploy an old technology, or revamp some old and well known processes, or the ability for EPM users to access, maintain and extend software systems more easily. It’s all of those things and more. It’s an opportunity for software vendors and EPM users to reimagine the way that they implement, deploy, maintain and use EPM solutions – taking the best of what they have done so far, and creating new innovative solutions, led by best practice but built for the rigors of industrial use. Software vendors will craft new EPM solutions built for purpose on a history of experience in the area, and in doing so have an opportunity to propel EPM usage and the benefits derived from EPM solutions to new levels in the Cloud. Such solutions, underpinned by robust Cloud platforms will access the latest collaborative technologies to enable cross-functional EPM approaches in the areas of planning, marketing, sales, distribution, operations, and finance. And the seamless integration of EPM’s core methods, which the software technology enables, will put EPM on steroids.

The future of enterprise performance management

People are what it’s all about, so I honor and respect the importance of applying the principles of behavioral change management. However, my love for quantitative analysis influences me to conclude with a short narration by the great Princeton University mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash. Nash introduced a theory describing how rational human beings should behave if there is a conflict of interest. In the Academy Award-winning movie about Nash’s life, A Beautiful Mind, he said:

“I like numbers because with numbers truth and beauty are the same thing. You know you are getting somewhere when the equations start looking beautiful. And you know that the numbers are taking you closer to the secret of how things are.”

The executive management teams with the courage, will, caring attitude and leadership traits to take calculated risks and be decisive will likely be the initial adopters of a fully integrated EPM system embedded with business analytics. They will achieve the full vision of EPM. Other executive management teams will follow them.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

In my prior blog I described the acceleration in the adoption rate for integrated enterprise performance management (EPM) methods, and new deployment options like mobile and Cloud, will have an effect similar to the one Ludwig van Beethoven’s masterpiece – his third symphony, Eroica – had on the future of classical music. We will get to Beethoven in a minute.

First, however, some background. My interests in integrated EPM waver back and forth from explaining the mechanics and outcomes from its various components to wagging my finger at those who have been naughty for not yet implementing its components. Should I be a teacher or a police officer?

First, what do I mean by the integrated components of EPM? In my prior blog I wrote “the core EPM methods include strategy management (strategy maps, balanced scorecard, dashboards); profitability analysis (by products, channels, and customers); driver-based budgets and rolling financial forecasts), enterprise risk management (ERM); and continuous improvement (lean and six sigma quality management).” There are several more minor EPM methods that I could name, but the key phrase is “integrated” methods.

Most of the EPM methods like these have been around for decades, and arguably even before there were computers. So EPM’s components are not new methods that managers have to learn. But like a table top jigsaw puzzle, the challenge is integrating them without seeing the puzzle box cover. The additional challenge is to imbed in each method business analytics of all flavors, such as segmentation analysis, but especially predictive analytics as managerial styles shift emphasis from being reactive to proactive.

Beethoven and Heroics

Now let’s return to Beethoven. I was educated as an industrial engineer, and I do not view myself as a scholar of the performing arts, literature, or classical music. However I have always been a careful observer and listener of what I see and hear. As I continuously witness the success and failure of attempts to fully implement various EPM methods, I compare them with Beethoven. Why?

During Beethoven’s “middle period” of music composition he was attracted to heroes and heroic efforts. This was the time period around 1810 that he composed some of his most popularly recognized pieces such as Eroica (his Third Symphony that I wrote about in my prior blog), Egmont(from Goethe, and his Op. 84), and Emperor (piano concerto no. 5 in E-flat, Op. 73). What is common about Beethoven’s interest in heroics and champion-like project managers who take on the challenge to implement and integrate EPM’s methods? It is these three heroic phases: crisis, struggle, and triumph.

Crisis

The initiation of an EPM project, such as developing a balanced scorecard or an activity-based cost management system, may not result from a crisis. But you could liken typically quickly emerging organizational interest and eventual need in such a method to being a crisis situation. The spark typically occurs when an executive (or a champion or coalition of concerned managers) realizes disturbing deficiencies.

Examples of these sparks are employees that have little or no clue as to what the executive team’s strategy is. Performance measures are too summarized, too late, and have little explanatory value to what caused their result. There is little trust in the managerial accounting system to accurately calculate the costs and profit margins of products or standard service-lines (or outputs government organizations). And further, there is no inclusion of the increasingly more important non-product costs-to-serve (e.g., distribution, selling, marketing, customer service) to measure the channel and customer profitability levels. There are other similar types of deficiencies I could describe, but the point here is the crisis moment emerges when some motivated managers start asking, “How long do we want to perpetuate operating this way and making decisions with no data or with flawed and misleading data, measures, and financial reporting?”

This is when, in my opinion, Beethoven is at his best. It begins with the first of his four orchestral movements. The music starts with a single note or a few brief chords or with a melodramatic song giving the feel of a thunderstorm or being lost in a blinding snow storm. You know how Beethoven’s 5th symphony begins. The famous four notes – “da da da duh.”

Struggle

The next stage of heroics in Beethoven’s works is the struggle. How do we get started? What is the road map? How do we get buy-in, both from executives at the top and co-workers and employees at the bottom? How do we get funding? How do we select the correct key performance indicators (KPIs)? How do we construct an activity-based cost assignment model? How many activities should we divide our processes into? At what size is our model too complex to understand or unmanageable to maintain? Where do we get all the input data to feed our systems? Do we even have the data? If we have the data, are there quality and integrity problems with it? Is the data scattered about in disconnected and disparate data sources?

Life and work can be a struggle.

How did Beethoven compose his music to deal with this phase in his second and third movements? Sometimes moody. Sometimes sad.

Triumph

Not everyone wins. It is so tragic to me when during my international business travels that I visit an organization that initiated and even completed an EPM component method, like activity-based costing; and then they abandoned it (see my earlier blog on this topic). An executive pulled the plug on it. The reason may be that it already provided the answer they wanted (so it was more like a one-time project rather than a permanent, repeatable production system). Alternatively they may have concluded it is not worth the administrative effort to collect, calculate, and report the information (meaning someone excessively over-engineered the system and made it unnecessarily complex). Alternatively the method may be something a new executive does not understand (like in Kipling’s poem, the blind men and the elephant … touching the tail, it must be a rope).

But you can triumph and win.

Beethoven provides you the thrill of triumph in his fourth and last movement. The decibels grow louder. The chords are crisper. At this point you want to march with your feet to his music.

What does it take to triumph in successfully implementing an integrated EPM framework of methods? A few tips. Do not over-plan and under-execute. Analysis paralysis. Just get going. Make mistakes early and often, to learn from, and not later when it is costly to make changes. Even more critical, do not under-estimate the magnitude of peoples’ resistance to change and the need for behavioral change management.

So, how successful would Beethoven have been implementing EPM? Read my prior blog, “Beethoven’s ‘Eroica Effect’…is this the Cloud for Enterprise Performance Management?”.

I already provide you the answer there.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

If you have not heard about or read articles or blogs about integrated business planning (IBP) until you are now reading this article then welcome to learning about a topic that will be critical to you and your organization. For those of you who have heard of the term, this blog is intended to remove any confusion you may have about what IBP is.

This blog is the first of a series on IBP. The blogs in the series will involve the increasing role of the CFO and finance function with other line management functions that often operate in silos. In this blog I will discuss issues related to IBP. My next blogs in this series will address the various integrated components of IBP.

To begin with the issues, for many of us there may likely be a nagging question: “Is IBP such a big deal that if our organization is late to the party of deploying IBP, then will we never catch up to our competitors that have deployed it?”

Which type of capability is more critical?

I have personally gone back and forth on wondering if applying IBP is now an urgent imperative for an organization to survive or if it is simply a “nice to have” relative to other more potentially critical “must have” capabilities that an organization should ideally possess or need to improve them.

In my opinion critical capabilities involve forecasting, modeling methods, business analytics, and multi-platform reporting. Their purpose is to increase profitability, strategy execution and decisions. However, a case may be made that there is a sufficient competitive edge from simply using traditional commonly accepted managerial improvement methods without these four mentioned methods. Organizations can have risks by relying on only standard methods like lean and six sigma quality management methods or traditional standard costing. But can those methods provide a sustaining competitive edge?

P-Automation-gears

Some managers view their organization as a big machine, and they believe they simply need to fine-tune its pulleys, levers, gears, and dials to maximize performance and results. The reality of this situation if often much more complex. Fine-tuning will not be sufficient. What is needed are new sets of levers, pulleys, and gears as well as better ways to manage them and display what they are doing.

Up until now many organizations believe they are not ready to apply IBP. They believe their problems have not been complex enough, their need for a large level jump in improvement is not essential, and the computing power has not been sufficiently powerful. As a result, their skepticism of the urgency for IBP is based on doubt since they observe that most companies have gradually improved without needing an IBP capability.

How much things have changed

I suggest that skeptics become advocates regarding the urgent need for IBP capabilities.

IBP is becoming an imperative for successful organizational performance. Many professionals today grew up with computers and digital devices. They understand this imperative. They embrace the need for better planning and decision making. They possess passionate brainpower combined with the now proven and accepted tools needed for forecasting, higher data quality, and timely reporting. The imperative also involves the current challenge all organizations have on how to cope with the five “Vs” of Big Data: volume, variety, velocity, viability, and value.

Regrettably many professionals prefer to rely on gut feel, intuition, and experience for making decisions. They are weighted with transactional processing that denies needed time for analysis. Fortunately today there are increasingly fewer professionals since most rising managers are tech-savvy and prefer fact-based decision making by leveraging quantitative information.

So, just what is Integrated Business Planning?

IBP seamlessly integrates user interfaces and workflows. It links strategic, operational, and financial objectives and plans to improve employee alignment with the strategy and financial performance.

Data replications drawing from disparate data sources are no longer an obstacle. IBP removes the walls between the silos in organizations regardless if they are multiple line management functions (e.g., marketing, sales, and operations) or technology platforms.

IBP integrates forecasting, resource capacity planning, what-if scenario planning, analysis, and more. With today’s previously unimaginable in-memory chip database power, calculations can be dynamically made in real time on massive amounts of data. The calculated results can be displayed on a laptop computer or any mobile device. The calculations can be performed with on-premises hardware or in the cloud.

IBP saves time and errors with a single integrated solution. It simplifies what in the past has been complex and cumbersome tasks. Bothersome reconciliations are eliminated. Tasks involving time and effort, like period-end financial closing the books and cash management, are reduced.

Note to reader – Get on the bus or be under the bus

If a task is complex with lots of data and a goal or objective to maximize, minimize, or optimize, then the capability day for IBP has arrived. IBP is essential to effectively framing problems, devising their solutions, making decisions, and taking actions.

The type of managers, hopefully only a few, who do not embrace having a strong quantitative capability will risk the consequences of being classified as Medieval. The world is no longer flat.

In my next blogs I will delve into the components that comprise IBP, starting off with a look at the link between planning and strategy execution.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

By Gary Cokins, Founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC

In my initial blog in this series related to integrated business planning (IBP) I described IBP as seamlessly integrating user interfaces and workflows. IBP links strategic, operational, and financial objectives and plans to improve employee alignment with the executive team’s strategy and financial performance.

I further referenced how the CFO’s financial function is increasingly contributing its skills and capabilities beyond financial reporting to performing as a strategic advisor and facilitator. In this blog I will discuss issues, needs and solutions related to strategy execution and how IBP is part of the solution.

Measurements are key to aligning employees with the strategy

My career spans 40 years, and I began it as a headquarters strategic planner in the early 1970s for a large US conglomerate with over 50 divisions. In those days we created forms at headquarters and annually mandated the divisions to complete them as a first draft. They were ten year strategic plans, and after they were completed we would skeptically interrogate the divisions’ staffs about their plans as if we were law enforcement officers.

That was then and today is now. That method for strategic planning is archaic and no longer applicable. Why? With today’s increasing volatility, uncertainty, Internet-led communications, and globalization removing trade barriers each new day requires frequent strategic adjustments to anticipate continually changing customer needs, disruptive new technologies, and counter-tactics by competitors.

To complicate matters the frustration that executives have is comparatively less with their strategy formulation, which many executives are reasonably good at, and more with strategy execution. Organizations struggle with aligning the behavior and priorities of their managers and employee teams with the leadership’s usually well-formulated strategy. Organizations strain to determine what correct performance measures, popularly referred to as key performance indicators (KPIs), to select and assign to managers to hold them responsible and accountable including setting target levels for the KPIs. They strain to determine if they can even afford the executive team’s strategy!

To further complicate matters, measurements are not about just monitoring the dials of a strategic balanced scorecard and its cascaded performance measures displayed in operational dashboards. The challenge is with moving the dials. This involves selecting the projects and initiatives as well as the core processes to improve with actions to achieve the organization’s strategic objectives.

IBP provides the capabilities to integrate strategic, operational, and financial objectives and plans. It resolves issues arising when non-integrated plans are produced in silos (e.g. operations, sales, and marketing). When plans are not integrated it is likely the financial projections will be imperfect. Quite simply, they are not in sync.

One aspect of IBP is it links the strategy to the budget, which is rarely the case given the way organizations typically create budgets with rolled-up consolidations of cost center spreadsheets. IBP provides modeling tools to test and validate reality with illusion.

Key concepts with targets, forecasts and plans

Before describing how IBP supports strategy execution, some key concepts are needed.

Targets are what we would like to happen; these are initially created by producing a forecast. A forecast is what we believe will happen. And Plans are then what we intend to do to with actions and changes to strive to achieve our targets.

Affordable strategy execution begins with the executives defining a set of causally linked strategic objectives. A one page strategy map diagram is today commonly accepted as the means to do this. Today’s software technology replaces PowerPoint strategy diagrams for this, and much more (a topic with which I will conclude this blog). Forecasts of demand (e.g., sales volume and mix) that IBP forces to be consistent as a single source are combined with identified projects, initiatives, core process improvement actions to achieve the linked strategic objectives.

Several critical steps next take place. KPIs are selected to monitor the progress towards accomplishing each strategic objective, and aspired targets are set for each KPI. At this point, however, the formulated strategy is still just a hypothesis. The CFO’s finance function should next ideally validate if the combinations of spending (i.e., for demand-driven production and the strategy, risk-mitigation, and capital projects) will meet the expected enterprise profits desired by the executives. IBP enables the integration to perform this financial validation test.

IBP reconciles aspirations with reality

When the financial validation step just mentioned is taken, typically the desired profit level will not be attained, and wishful thinking will not solve this. Now the fun part begins. With next generation budgeting, forecasting and planning tools revised plans and changes in assumptions can be made. Analysts can determine where productivity improvements are needed and where customer product mix and volume needs to be changed. And those are only two revisions of many options.

This type of analysis cannot be done with spreadsheets or operational transaction-based software. It cannot be done if silo systems operate in isolation of each other including disparate data sources. IBP enables timely modeling, what-if scenario analysis, and sensitivity analysis to link the resulting revised strategy to the budget. And, of course, budgets become obsolete soon after they are created, so driver-based rolling financial forecasts with updates to all the variables, especially the forecasts, has become the new norm for the CFO’s financial function.

What lies ahead?

Have I yet mentioned business analytics and Big Data? No, but I will now. Earlier I wrote that strategy diagrams and KPIs should be enabled with software, not in PowerPoints and cumbersome table reports. With IBP, for example, correlation analysis can be applied to prior period KPIs and measure the explanatory value that KPIs have on other KPIs they contribute to and influence. This validates the quality of the KPIs selected. If the correlation is low then select better KPIs that as their target levels are achieved, via aligned employee behavior, the result will then be the strategy execution better matching the formulated strategy the executive team is seeking. Strategy execution then becomes a scientific laboratory as well as it should.

And with in-memory chip computer power vast amounts of Big Data can be modeled at substantial levels of detail.

As I wrote in my initial blog for this IBP blog series, IBP is no longer a “nice to have” but rather a critical “must have.” I’ll be continuing this discussion in my next blog on this topic, in which I shall look at on product, channel and customer profitability analysis.

About the Author: Gary Cokins, CPIM

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

gcokins@garycokins.com; phone +919 720 2718

http://www.garycokins.com

Linkedin.com contact: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gary-cokins/0/15a/949.

Earlier this year SAP released its game changing purely SAAS based planning solution SAP Cloud for Planning. Built on rock solid Hana Cloud Platform, this subscription only planning solution is radically simplifying the ways companies used to do planning, budgeting and forecasting. In this blog series we will look at some of the salient features that make this product outstanding and revolutionary.

Creating planning models easily and quickly is of prime importance when it comes to responding to changing demands with alacrity. If a planning solution is able to create the planning model automatically or if a user is able to configure all essential planning model attributes in a single screen or if there is a functionality to automatically convert a strawman model in an Excel sheet into a fully working planning model then it may crush all complexity out of planning model creation. SAP Cloud for Planning is able to all of this and more and that too with an appealing visual user interface. Here is a quick demonstration of how simple and yet powerful it is to create a planning model with SAP Cloud for Planning.

Creating planning model made simple with SAP Cloud for Planning

The simplicity is evident in all aspects of planning in SAP Cloud for Planning. If creating models was simple then creating a report is even simpler. First of all, it is a single cohesive solution that allows you to create model, build report, connect to other systems, collaborate in context and manage the process. There are no separate products to deal with, let alone do their installations, manage interfaces etc. A default report is automatically created every time a planning model is created. The users can create their own report template or choose from the available ones. Intuitive drag and drop features make creating a report a fun than an arduous task. SAP Cloud for Planning incorporates analytics and reporting in the same UI seamlessly. SAP Cloud for Planning has the buit-in intelligence to recommend the best suited charts based on the data selection. For example, if a user selects Plan and Actual data, it automatically recommends charts showing variance and the user can select to go with it or select any other chart among a variety of choices offered. All these features are changing the rules of the game. Here is a quick demonstration of how SAP Cloud for Planning is revolutionizing the way of building reports.

Building reports revolutionized by SAP Cloud for Planning

The discussion about simplicity in SAP Cloud for Planning will be incomplete without mentioning simplicity of reviewing and monitoring planning process. In connected economy, synchronizing activities of all stakeholders in the planning process is a single factor that makes execution of the plan successful. SAP Cloud for Planning not only enables intuitively create input tasks, review planning process, assign target completion dates etc. but also provides integrated calendar functionality with workflow integration and ability to synchronize with other applications. All this you can do from the same easy and simple user interface within the context. Here is a demonstration of how simple it is to create an input task in SAP Cloud for Planning.

Creating input task made simple with SAP Cloud for Planning

As SAP Cloud for Planning continues to evolve,  we can expect many more such game changing features that take complexity out of the planning process altogether and make financial planning a simple, easy to use and beautiful experience. After all simplicity is the essence of beauty!

The SAP Financial Consolidation software helps you meet management and global regulatory requirements and streamline compliance. Today we are pleased to announce the general availability of SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 support package 01 (SP01). This release delivers new features and a rejuvenated user experience (UX), all designed to maximize ease of use and customer return on investment.

Rejuvenated web user experience

Highlights

Using modern design principles based on SAP Fiori, the UX is simplified across tasks to reflect the way end-users actually work throughout their day. The new HTML5 web user interface (UI) supports multiple browsers and the UI has been fully reimagined through an intense collaboration between business end-users and the SAP R&D team. Available today with release 10.1, the rejuvenated web UX for the data collection process is our first delivery. Other web features such as reports, manual journal entries or consolidation processing will be made available through support packages. As we deliver innovation without disruption both the legacy and the new HTML5 web UI will co-exist.

Simplified homepage

Supports multiple browsers

Enables working on multiple packages at the same time

New widget facilitates data control

Key other 10.1 features

New SAP web printing solution

"Propose an alternative solution to ActivePDF for printing" is ranked #1 most voted idea by SAP Financial Consolidation customers in SAP Idea Place (see the idea). In release 10.1 you can now use a new web printing solution developed by SAP, embedded in the software and including an automated installation via product setup. The solution is built upon open source and works as follows from a technical standpoint: Microsoft XPS Document printer input is transformed to HTML, and then HTML is transformed to PDF.

64-bit web server layer

A tried and tested 64-bit web server layer is now available with almost no memory constraints, delivering better stability and performance. All components have been updated in 64-bit: Web Service, Web Administration, Legacy website and new HTML5 website (see architecture graph below).

Refined SAP HANA real-time reporting

The SAP HANA value proposition – simplified IT layers, real-time updates, instant reporting, big data ready (see real-time reporting on consolidated data video) – is being refined through a new, direct and native link between SAP Financial Consolidation and SAP HANA tables using SAP HANA SPS09 improvements on calculation views.

More information

• SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP01 download from our SAP Software Download Center
• SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP01 release note 2186808 - FC 10.1 SP01 Release Notes
• Detailed information on the rejuvenated web UX on the SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 web HTML5 user guide
• Installation guide and product documentation are available on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 – SAP Help Portal Page
• Would you need additional information feel free to contact our product owners Florence Jungnickel and Christine Protin

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© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. Please see http://global12.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. National product specifications may vary. These materials are provided by SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP SE or its affiliated companies shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP SE or SAP affiliate company products and  services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. In particular, SAP SE or its affiliated companies have no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop  or release any functionality mentioned therein. This document, or any related presentation, and SAP SE’s or its affiliated companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP SE or its affiliated companies at any time  for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

Document revision: October 2015

We periodically release updates for SAP Financial Consolidation to include new features, the latest security protection, and the best integration with both ERP, enterprise performance management (EPM) and business intelligence (BI) software. Below are the major updates available in SAP Financial Consolidation release 10.1. For more information you can also download the "What's new in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1" document on What's new in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1. This interactive document provides a summary the major product updates from version 7.5 to version 10.1.

Rejuvenated web user experience (release 10.1)

Using modern design principles based on SAP Fiori, the UX is simplified across tasks to reflect the way end-users actually work throughout their day. The new HTML5 web user interface (UI)supports multiple browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari. It has been fully reimagined the web UI through a co-innovation process with our business end-users. Available today, the rejuvenated data collection process is our first delivery. Other web features such as reports, manual journal entries or consolidation processing will be made available through support packages. More information is available on our SAP Help Portal on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 – SAP Help Portal Page.

New SAP Web printing solution (release 10.1)

The new web printing solution has been developed by SAP. It is free of charge and alternative to ActivePDF (i.e. you can choose to use either the SAP printing or ActivePDF). The SAP web printing is embedded in the software and its installation is automated via setup. From a technical standpoint, the SAP web printing has been built upon open source. It first transforms Microsoft XPS Document printer input to HTML, then the HTML is transformed to PDF. More information is available on our SAP Help Portal on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 – SAP Help Portal Pageand on SAP Idea Place, our online collaboration platform with customers.

Real time reporting through SAP HANA (since release 10.0)

The support of SAP HANA as an underlying database, in addition to Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases, had been released withSupport Package 12 in Q4-2013. For more than a year our R&D team worked on a proof of concept with one of our most strategic customers to leverage the in-memory technology in SP15 from a reporting perspective. With SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15 released in October 2014, we bring SAP HANA integration to the next level and help you unleash the power of real-time analytics on consolidated data. More information on  Real-time reporting through SAP HANA with SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15

Reinforced user management and SOX compliance (since release 10.0)

User management is a more and more important topic for large enterprises to be compliant with internal controls and external regulations such as the Section IV of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Today corporate responsibility has been enhanced to combat corporate and accounting fraud and internal control effectiveness is being severely assessed. With SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15 we reinforce our specialty financial consolidation product with a set of new features which makes user management easier, more precise and significantly increases visibility of data access rights (who can do what for which data?).More information on Reinforced user management and SOX compliance with SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15.

Faster data extraction process to SAP Business Warehouse or any non-SAP target application(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Information Management offers SAP Financial Consolidation connectivity to both SAP and non-SAP applications, moving data from a source to a target system. Before SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15, extracting data from SAP Financial Consolidation and loading it to target systems such as SAP Business Warehouse was slow. To speed up the transfer process, both SAP Financial Information Management 10.0 SP11 and SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15 have been optimized. This improvement was notably requested by our customers using SAP Financial Consolidation in combination with SAP Business Warehouse but also applies for non-SAP target applications. More information on Faster data extraction process with SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15.

Customer-driven enhancements: 3 new features(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15 includes new functions proposed by our customers through SAP Idea Place, our online service to enable SAP teams to facilitate co-innovation with our business end-users. Three new customer-driven features are delivered in SP15:

• Manual journal entries can now be exported to Microsoft Excel which is massively used by finance teams
• Ergonomics and usability of the SAP Financial Consolidation end-user “desktop” have been improved through more precise entity selection and new filtering capabilities
• A new “save as” feature has been created for rate tables so consolidation end-users can fill in conversion or tax rates based on a previous period instead of creating a new table from scratch

You can find more information on http://Announcing the availability of SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 SP15.

New database support for SAP HANA in-memory computing(since release 10.0)
In addition to Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database Server, the SAP Financial Consolidation application now supports the SAP HANA database. SAP Financial Consolidation data can be stored in column mode, according to the SAP HANA database standards, enabling a dramatic simplification of the IT architecture and a full leverage of our in-memory capabilities for a real-time reporting. The database server contains all the data in SAP Financial Consolidation application and supports the standard database engines. The application server connects to the database server using OLE DB and the RDBMS client. More information on SAP HANA is available on Welcome | SAP HANA.

Microsoft Office client(since release 10.0)

Finance teams can now analyze and report SAP Financial Consolidation data in Microsoft Excel through SAP enterprise performance management (EPM) add-in. The EPM add-in is an add-in to Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office PowerPoint designed to give access to SAP EPM product data, including SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0, and to perform reporting and analysis against this data through Microsoft Office. The add-in allows analysis of data coming from several EPM products at the same time. You can find more information on SAP EPM add-in on SAP EPM solutions, add-in for Microsoft Office 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Integration with SAP Disclosure Management(since release 10.0)

SAP Disclosure Management helps manage the production, filing, and publication of financial and regulatory statements. In order to streamline and accelerate the financial close to disclose process, a new SAP Financial Consolidation feature is available in release 10.0 to automate the synchronization with SAP Disclosure Management. End-users can now create a dedicated report bundle in SAP Financial Consolidation which is automatically pushed into the SAP Disclosure Management application. From a technical standpoint, SAP Financial Consolidation generates a sending report bundle task which automatically refreshes the report bundle, extracts CSV from the reports and sends data to SAP Disclosure Management through a Web Service. More information on SAP Disclosure Management can be found on Disclosure Management Software | EPM | Analytics | SAP.

Integration with SAP Financial Information Management(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Information Management is our ETL (extract transform and load) tool to move data from/to SAP Financial Consolidation. In release 10.0, SAP Financial Information Management can be launched directly from SAP Financial Consolidation to map and import data into packages and drill through to origin with a single sign-on (SSO) when launching or using drill through to origin functionality. Through SAP Financial Information Management data can also be exported from SAP Financial Consolidation SAP NetWeaver BW. The integration to source systems is now easier and data import from ERP even more secure. You can find more information on SAP Financial Information Management on SAP Financial Information Management 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Integration with SAP Intercompany(since release 10.0)

Our intercompany reconciliation software empowers individual business units – rather than your corporate finance division – to reconcile intercompany balances in real time via the Web. To streamline the reconciliation activities, a new view has been developed in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 for a direct access to the SAP Intercompany application. The link to access SAP Intercompany is keyed in the “general options” of SAP Financial Consolidation. The creation of related rights and functional profile security can be entered in SAP Financial Consolidation “security” view. You can find more information on SAP Intercompany on Intercompany Reconciliation Software | EPM | Analytics | SAP.

Web administration console(since release 10.0)

The administration console is dedicated to system administrators to help them manage the SAP Financial Consolidation platform. With release 10.0 the administration console can now be accessed through the Web. In addition, the console includes a series of improvements to better monitor activities on the database such as connections or tasks in progress. You can find more information on the Web administration console on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Preventing security breach during the reporting unit package process(since release 10.0)

To further increase security and integrity a new feature has been developed in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 to prevent security breach in the process of generating reporting unit “packages”. Bypassing or contravening enterprise security policy for locked reporting units is now impossible. When a package is protected or fully locked, regeneration of its opening package is not authorized. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Embedded Archiving tool to monitor, archive, backup and restore consolidations(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 embedded archiving tool is dedicated to the database administrator to monitor database size and also archive as well as restore past consolidations. The archiving tool provides transparent access to all archived historical data and helps reduce database size. The tool integrates a monitoring and simulation of the sizing of production databases. It can also support multiple archives and handle scheduling of the archiving / restoring process. You can find more information on the archiving tool on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Matrix consolidation(since release 10.0)

The matrix consolidation technique is used to present segment information in matrix-type reports. This feature has been requested by many of our customers to meet both statutory consolidation and management reporting requirements. SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 can manage matrix consolidation requirements by retrieving two different reporting unit rollups into one single consolidation. In order to enable matrix consolidations, two new system dimensions have been created in SAP Financial Consolidation: the management unit (MU) dimension and its counterpart called the partner management unit (PMU) dimension. SAP Financial Consolidation reports can now cross two hierarchies and retrieve properly positioned eliminations on both lines and columns. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Attaching comments to consolidations(since release 10.0)

With its new "attachment" feature SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 enables the creation and management of attachment files into consolidation definitions. Once the consolidation has run, attachments can be added to the consolidation definition. With this feature, greater information detail can be made available for the office of finance, internal governance or external audit teams.  You can find more information on the archiving tool on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Enhanced email alerts and notifications for package and manual journal entry process

Real-time monitoring of data collection and central manual journal entries is critical to properly manage the financial consolidation process. SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 integrates email alerts for data entry package and on manual journal entries. In order to streamline the data entry process, SAP Financial Consolidation package workflow monitoring has been enriched with the business end-user responsible for gathering packages being emailed real-time when data is ready to be processed or when a package is rejected. For central manual journal entries, the consolidation end-user can subscribe to a journal entry and automatically receive alerts and notifications on any creation, validation, posting, protection or deletion of manual journal entries. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

“Proportionate to full consolidation” new consolidation method(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Consolidation is designed to meet complex regulatory requirements. In release 10.0 a new “change in scope” status has been created in order to comply with the international financial reporting standards (IFRS) updates with regards to Business Combinations (specific goodwill calculation rule in this case). In the scope view of the product, the new “proportionate to full consolidation” / “full consolidation to proportionate” mode enables the selection of reporting units that are switching modes. Consolidation rules can then specifically trigger reporting units where consolidation method is changing from proportionate to full or vice-versa. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Ability to manage discontinued operations in the consolidation process(since release 10.0)

In order to deal with discontinued operations according to IFRS regulation, SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 is now able to identify in a consolidation scope the reporting units planned to be divested. The target to be able to specifically select the planned divested reporting units applicable for a given consolidation rule. A new reference table called “scope custom properties” is now available to trigger the planned divested reporting units in consolidation rules. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

IFRS starter kit automated installation(since release 10.0)

With version 10.0 the SAP Financial Consolidation installation set-up includes our starter kit for IFRS including one single step installation through the web administration console. The starter kit for IFRS version can be controlled directly from the product to ensure streamlined and continuous compliance with the latest IFRS evolutions. The installation includes all documents in the starter kit file including the Operating and Design guides. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Improved search capabilities(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Consolidation search capabilities have been improved in order to streamline the process of finding existing or past consolidations. Searching historical consolidations is significantly easier and past consolidations can now be found much faster than before. When using the desktop user interface, a more flexible context menu has been made available in the combo box, displaying each reporting ID, category and data entry period in two separate columns. When using the Web user interface, stronger search and filtering capabilities have also been developed. You can find more information on the new search consolidation feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Consolidation "snapshot" feature(since release 10.0)

In order to better deal with consolidation activities such as pro forma statements, changes in accounting standards and/or audit of consolidated data over time a new "consolidation snapshot” feature has been developed in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 to freeze filters of dimension members. When a filter has been frozen, SAP Financial Consolidation changes the dynamic selection of the filter (for example based on account characteristics) into a fixed list of elementary values. When freezing the filter, the end-user is able to create a copy of the dynamic filter at the same time as the freeze. You can find more information on the new "snapshot" consolidation feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Locking and unlocking multiple consolidations(since release 10.0)

Previously SAP Financial Consolidation was only able to lock or unlock consolidations on a one by one basis through a 1 by 1 selection mode. In order to simplify the business end-user job we were able to remove the need for repetitive tasks : in release 10.0 the product now also enables the consolidation locking and/or unlocking through multi-selection. This new SAP Financial Consolidation feature is intended to streamline the customer process of managing several statutory consolidations, management reporting consolidations as well as simulations. You can find more information on the new lock/unlock consolidation feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Improved Category Builder usability(since release 10.0)

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 "category builder" module has been redesigned to provide more clarity and streamline the category scenario definition usability. As customers need to update their customization to their evolving and changing business needs, this improvement enables easier, faster and safer maintenance and implementation of changes. It is now possible to define indicators through export and import of flow behaviors to/from Microsoft Excel. The category builder maintenance has also been improved through new capabilities such as copy/paste of category scenarios, new list functions to display items, multi-selections, export formulas and controls either for back-up purposes or for communication to auditors. You can find more information on this feature on SAP Analytics Knowledge Center - Financial Consolidation release 10.0.

Master data import and export to/from non-SAP sources(since release 10.0)

In order to improve SAP Financial Consolidation integration to non-SAP systems, the master data import and export web services are now officially published and supported with release 10.0, enabling integration with systems other than SAP. A comprehensive documentation is provided in the SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 Administration Guide including the principles of importing / exporting dimension members through web services, examples of export or import web services as well as import web service error processing. For more information please check SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page (go to System Administration and Maintenance Information and select the Administrator’s Guide – Financial Consolidation).

New hierarchy selection methods in the report designer(since release 10.0)

The software reporting capabilities have been enhanced through enriched selection possibilities based on hierarchy now available in SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0. In order to complement the selections based on hierarchies, two additional hierarchy link methods have been added to the hierarchy selection dialog box in the SAP Financial Consolidation report designer. The first is “children and grandchildren from starting point” and the second is “starting point and children and grandchildren". You can find more information on this feature on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page.

Cube Designer enlarged support including SAP NetWeaver and full SSO(since release 10.0)

Included in SAP Financial Consolidation, SAP Cube Designer is an application which enables authorized users to map two types of structured data: firstly data stored in a SAP Financial Consolidation database, and secondly data to be stored in OLAP cubes and/or star schemas. To improve reporting capabilities on top of SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0, Cube Designer now supports SAP NetWeaver BW 7.30 and includes a full single sign-on (SSO) mode. You can find more information on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.0 – SAP Help Portal Page (go to Application Help and select the “Financial Consolidation: Cube Designer User Guide”).

Accessibility for visually impaired users(since release 10.0)

Through a co-innovation performed with one of our key strategic customers, SAP Financial Consolidation has been improved so that visually impaired users can take full advantage of screen reader capabilities when using the product. This new capability is part of SAP overall accessibility commitment, which refers to the possibility for everyone, including and especially people with disabilities, to access and use technology and information products. SAP ensures the accessibility of the products via the “Product Standard Accessibility” using various process steps to plan, develop, test and report these quality features. More information on our commitments to accessibility can be found on SAP Design Guild -- Accessibility.

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© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. Please see http://global12.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices. Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. National product specifications may vary. These materials are provided by SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP SE or its affiliated companies shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP SE or SAP affiliate company products and  services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. In particular, SAP SE or its affiliated companies have no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop  or release any functionality mentioned therein. This document, or any related presentation, and SAP SE’s or its affiliated companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP SE or its affiliated companies at any time  for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

SAP Financial Consolidation Road Map Webinar - December 3, 2015

The Technology Product Road Map Series offers interactive webinar presentations for each of the SAP technology product road maps. The road maps describe the planned and future direction of SAP products. This series is driven by the Products and Innovation Product Management Customer Services Team and is delivered by the SAP product owners. These webinars are open to all customers.

SAP Financial Consolidation provides enterprise-class consolidation features for statutory and management reporting to meet complex consolidation requirements, close your books quickly and accelerate the financial close process. While release 10.1 is generally available since 2015Q3, the product will continue to deliver significant new capabilities to drive incremental business and IT value as we move forward. This webinar will give you visibility on the product road map for 2016/2017+. You will also be able to see a real-software demonstration of SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 Support Package SP02 planned to be released mid-December. This webinar will be presented by Christine Protin and Stéphane Neufcourt from SAP R&D.

Schedule

Start:December 3, 2015 4:00 pm (GMT), 10:00 am(CT)

End:   December 3, 2015 5:00 pm (GMT), 11:00 am(CT)

Registration

https://sap-signup.dispatcher.hana.ondemand.com/#/event=5370

Contact

Elaine Ho, SAP Product Management elaine.ho@sap.com

SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management (FIM) and SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (FC) are part of SAP Enterprise Performance Management platform, to provide financial  consolidation and management reporting solution. SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management(FIM) is a wrapper application based on SAP BusinessObjects Data Services(DS).  From now on, we use FIM to reference SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management application, FC to reference SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation application, DS to reference SAP BusinessObjects Data Services. This paper provides some technical guidelines on Web Service timeout configuration in the implementation of FIM/DS and FC solution.

FIM jobs are using FC web services calls to import package data or manual journal entry into FC. Web services are supposed to provide a simply and loose-coupling integration option between applications. In reality, it’s often the most complex component to implement in a FIM and FC integration environment. One of the most common issues is time out, especially when FIM server and FC server are installed in different servers, or different network subnets.

The paper is based on FIM V10.0 SP13, FC V10.0 SP16 and DS V4.2 SP4.

1. Native_Webservice_Call_Timeout_Miliseconds

Parameter Location:  <DS_COMMON_DIR>\DSConfig.txt, e.g. C:\ ProgramData\SAP BusinessObjects\Data Services\conf\DSConfig.txt

The parameter controls the timeout period for a client waiting for the return of a web service call in milliseconds. The default value is 30,000 milliseconds, or 30 seconds.

If the parameter value is too small, below error will be generated by DS job:

1. 14.2) 11-09-15 16:48:50 (E) (2152:4664) RUN-248005: |Data flow DF_LOAD_CMP10|Transform WScall-Function21

There is no response for the web service <ImportPackageData>. Ensure that the network, web server, and service are running properly. Also ensure that the service client call time out is set properly.eb server, and service are running properly. Also ensure that the service client call time out is set properly.

The default value, 30 seconds, only works for very small FC load. It’s a good idea to increase the value to a more reasonable value, e.g. 7200 seconds, in most cases.

In case you only want to adjust the timeout duration for an individual job, you can also use “socket timeout in milliseconds” parameter at the datastore level, which will be explained in the next section.

2. Socket timeout in milliseconds

Parameter location: Web service datastore property

It’s the equivalent of Native_Webservice_Call_Timeout_Miliseconds, controlling time out period of a web service call. But it’s at the web service datastore level. If it’s not set, Native_Webservice_Call_Timeout_Miliseconds value will be used. If it’s set, the set value will used, overriding the Native_Webservice_Call_Timeout_Miliseconds value.

3. monitorInterval and monitorRetries

Parameter location: C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat6\webapps\fim\WEB-INF\server.xml

When a FIM job is executed it will launch a monitoring thread to ping DS to get the status of the job. These two parameters, monitorInterval and monitorRetries, control the interval between pings and the number of times the thread will ping Data Services, e.g.

    <bean id="jobExecution" class="com.sap.fpm.fim.server.webservice.impl.JobExecutionImpl" init-method="init">

...

        <property name="monitorInterval" value="10"/>

        <property name="monitorRetries" value="1800"/>

…

    </bean>

By default, the values are set to 10 and 1800 respectively. Which means FIM will ping DS every 10 seconds up to 1800 times, a total of 5 hours. If a FIM job runs longer than 5 hours, before or during calling FC Web Services, you’ll obverse the following:

1. 1) FIM Job ends with status unknown;
2. 2) FC ctserver logs the below entries:

11-18-15 16:23:03 PID=5032 THD=1320 USR= MSG=0 WARN security.authentication - Failed to validate Business Objects Enterprise serialized session: Session ID is not valid. (FWB 00011)

11-18-15 16:23:03 PID=5032 THD=1320 USR= MSG=0 WARN security.authentication - Invalid security token.

11-18-15 16:23:03 PID=5032 THD=1320 USR= MSG=0 WARN business - Service request authentication failed.

1. 3) Data Services Job completes without any error.

Depend on the actual execution time of the FIM job, we can increase either monitorInterval or monitorRetries, so that total monitoring interval will be able to cover the whole execution duration.

4. receiveTimeout

Parameter location: C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Tomcat6\webapps\fim\WEB-INF\server.xml

While FIM is calling FC web services to load data into FC, FIM is also calling Data Services web service to start and monitor DS jobs. FIM can time-out when DS job server doesn’t response in time. receiveTimeout is designed to provide some tolerance for the communication delay between FIM and DS. Below is an excerpt from FIM 10 Administration Guide.

receiveTimeout: Timeout in milliseconds to receive result from Data Services execution Web Service. (Default 300 000 milliseconds)

The author noticed that receiveTimeout is set to 600 in FIM V10 SP13 installation. There is another parameter, connectionTimeout, mentioned in FIM 10 Administration Guide, but it doesn’t exist in default server.xml file. The default receiveTimeout value, 600 seconds, should be enough for any normal operating environment. If in some rare cases, DS execution Web Service took long time to response, FIM job would show failed status even the corresponding DS job completed successfully in the end.