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

We are pursuing our journey of delivering fast product innovation to modernize SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1web user experience (UX) and better reflect the way end-users actually work with the software. Today, we are happy to announce the release of SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 Support Package SP02 on December 30, 2015. With SP02, the overall HTML5 web UX value proposition is strengthened: all existing features have been enhanced and this version also delivers on new web capabilities.

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP00-SP02 Feature Recap

SP02 provides an enriched HTML5 web UX welcome page including a series of new features:

• You can personalize the welcome page with the background picture of your choice to better adhere your company brand
• A new Analysis tile leads you to the reports for data analysis, control and retrieval
• Would you use SAP Financial Information Management, a new tile has been developed to connect with our ETL software for data import
• Tiles you don't want to see in My Recent Work section can be removed
• Recent packages tiles display additional information such as the status or the last modification / publishing date

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP02 Welcome Page

From a functional standpoint SP02 delivers a new Analysis feature to analyse data and run consolidated financial reports:

• The Analysis HTML5 web page shows all folders, books and reports available
• You can filter the reports by category (e.g. Actual, Forecast, Plan) to focus on the reporting you are currently working on
• Favorite reports can be tagged to further personalize the list
• A new "Google-like" search capability helps you quickly find the report you want to run (this feature was previously unreleased in the product)
• The navigation between reports through linked schedules is simpler
• You can run reports up to the lowest level of data granularity (journal entry number)
• A new Information On Data widget has been developed with dimension identification related to the amount in a cell
• You can print reports and report settings with the new free-of-charge SAP Printing client

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP02 Analysis Reports

The "Excel-like" grid for data entry is strengthened in SP02 for better usability:

• The left pane (quick view of available package list) now easier to read
• A new Information on data widget has been developed
• New Drill-to-origin feature displaying the origin of data in the transactional system is now available when the software is used in combination with SAP Financial Information Management

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP02 "Excel-like" Grid

The Package List is also enhanced in SP02 to maximize its ease of use:

• To be more user-centric, it's now possible to filter the packages based on package dimensions, characteristics and “filters” in addition to the member picker
• When collapsed, the filter bar displays the selection summary
• 7 new criteria are available to sort the package list such as control status, control level to be reached, control level reached or publication date
• The package list easier to read through multiple paging display
• It is also smoother to use with the ability to reorder columns through drag and drop

SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP02 Package List

More information on SAP Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP02

• What's new in 10.1 SP02? (SAP Help Portal)
• Release Note 2246982 (SAP Service Market Place)
• Product enhancements Note 2246984 (SAP Service Market Place)
• Limitations and known issues Note 2188698 (SAP Service Market Place)
• Support package installation procedure Note 2186804 (SAP Service Market Place)
• Product information page (SAP Service Market Place)
• Product documentation (SAP Help Portal)

© 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.

In January 2016, the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) issued IFRS 16 Leases. IFRS 16 sets out the principles for recognition, measurement, presentation and disclosures of leases. It replaces the previous standard IAS 17 and will become mandatory from 2019. This is the conclusion of a major project started in 2005 jointly with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

A document is now available for SAP(R) Financial Consolidation starter kit for IFRS users to help them consider the transition to IFRS 16. This document firstly presents the main changes introduced by IFRS 16, including a comparison with the forthcoming US standard. It then proposes a first analysis of the expected impacts on both companies' financial statements and the SAP Financial Consolidation starter kit for IFRS.

The comprehensive document can be consulted here.
http://go.sap.com/docs/download/2016/03/ca1b8fdc-637c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.pdf

Common Types of Mappings required : Usually for source system to target planning or consolidation system following type of mappings are required by the business

The table below represents the recommended approach that can be followed in FIM mapping tables

Most used FIM mapping operators

Common Errors that needs to be highlighted to business users during FIM training

1. Do not write the source fields beginning or ending within single quotes.
2. Do not use comma as a delimiter, semicolon is default delimiter in FIM.
3. Target fields should begin and end with single quotes if they contain constant strings.
4. Not using correct source field names while referring it in the target. E.g. if source field name is "DP Year" then space should be maintained while referencing it. Still better is to avoid space in all source field names.
5. While referring to the source dimension in the target, write the source dimension names in same case as in Source
6. While concatenating not writing strings within single quotes. E.g. [YEAR]||'.'||[MONTH]  here the dot should be written in single quotes.
7. Using comma as delimiter instead of 2 dots in range definition E.g. [10000,20000] instead of [10000..20000]
8. Account, Cost Center fields not padded with Zeros. In case field length would vary in different source systems.
   

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.

SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation is part of SAP enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions. This product addresses financial consolidation requirements and can be integrated into both SAP and non-SAP software environments and can load data from any general ledger application.

SAP starter kit for IFRS is a complete configuration on top of SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation - from data collection to publishing of financial statements - designated to perform, validate and publish a statutory consolidation in accordance with IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). Using both product and functional best practices, the starter kit for IFRS ensures optimal performance, better usabitlity and facilitated customer enhancement.

This document describes how SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation starter kit for IFRS has been configured to meet IFRS requirements. This update is based on the applicable IFRS at 1 January 2016. For each standard, a reminder of the main requirements is presented and followed by the practical consequences in the starter kit.

This document is available on our SAP Help Portal

http://help.sap.com/boall_en (Select Financial Consolidation in the product list and version 10.0 or 10.1 in the release list).

With SAP S/4HANA Finance comes an option for planning functions called BPC Optimized.

A question that comes around regularly is how BPC Optimized does compare to SAP’s planning tool Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), and when to use which, or both.

In this short article, we will compare the features and use cases of both products.

First of all, let’s define more precisely what comprises each product:

BPC Classic:

BPC is a full feature planning and consolidation tool based on BW and supported on HANA. The philosophy of the tool is to be designed for flexibility and to be administered by the business users. As such, it requires its own BW namespace and its own cubes in its “classic” version.

BPC Embedded:

Version 10.1 of BPC on HANA introduced the BPC “Embedded” option, taking advantage of native BW cubes and allowing leveraging existing BW-IP logic. However, some business content features of BPC “classic”, such as the IFRS consolidation, are not yet supported on BPC Embedded (but announced on the roadmap for Q4 2016). BPC Embedded allows taking advantage of HANA optimization scenarios, such as Planning Optimization Kit (PAK), which executes in HANA the majority of ABAP Planning functions and the FOX scripting.

BPC Optimized:

BPC Optimized is in essence BPC Embedded v10.1 installed on the BW engine present in S/4HANA Finance. BPC Optimized is only available with S/4HANA. Its first purpose is to replace planning functions from FI/CO, which are not there anymore in S/4HANA Finance. Templates specific to BPC Optimized are delivered with it.

In a nutshell:

• BPC Optimized = BPC Embedded v10.1 on BW embedded in S/4 + Business content (templates)
• BPC Embedded v10.1 = PAK (BW-IP optimized for HANA) + new UI5 and Analysis for Office UIs
• BPC Optimized runs on the BW Embedded on the ERP, and is only available with S/4HANA Finance (the component SAP Accounting for HANA is mandatory).

Figure 1 below illustrates S/4HANA Finance architecture with BPC Optimized:

Fig. 1. Overall architecture of S/4HANA Finance with BPC Optimized

BPC is SAP’s planning and consolidation tool. Figure 2 below illustrates an architecture where both products are installed on the same HANA environment:

Fig. 2. Overall architecture of S/4HANA Finance plus a separate BPC installation on the same HANA appliance (necessitates HANA SP9+ for multi-tenant support).

Comparison of each product benefits:

Benefits of BPC Optimized:

• Front-end Excel add-in (Analysis for Office)
• No data replication with ERP (actuals in real-time)
• Masterdata shared with ERP

Benefits of BPC Classic:

• Excel EPM add-in common to all SAP EPM tools, with business functions
• Consolidation (Consolidation on BPC Optimized announced for Q4 2016 by the roadmap)
• Local models
• Administration designed for business users (cubes, security, rules, etc).

Typical use cases:

Depending on each customers’ situation, the table below gives an overview of which product to consider. Of course, each customer situation is specific, but we’re trying here to give a canvas on which to build the discussion:

As this table illustrates, the choice between BPC Optimized and BPC will be mainly guided on the business features required by the project. From a technical standpoint, the 2 products are similar. The difference is really more on the business content that each provides and the existing IT landscape.

SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03

We continue to deliver on our goal to modernize and enlarge the scope of functionality of SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation. Today, we are happy to announce the general availability of release 10.1 support package SP03 on July 13, 2016. With this new product version you can:

• Benefit from a smoother, more beautiful, rejuvenated HTML5 web user interface now upgraded to SAP Fiori 2.0 and providing additional capabilities such as manual journal entries and consolidations
• Leverage the new Dynamic package reconciliation and Dynamic currency conversion features to help you streamline the intercompany reconciliation process
• Reinforce your SOX compliance with a new User Management function which simplifies the external and internal auditability processes
• Perform smart data management with the SAP HANA multi-temperature archiving of consolidated data
• Get support for SAP HANA SPS11, Windows 10, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft SQL Server 2014, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2016

Enriched HTML5 web user interface for smoother web experience

In SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03, the overall HTML5 Web user interface is upgraded to SAP Fiori 2.0. All existing features have been enhanced. This version also delivers on new web capabilities.

Illustration: SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03 HTM5 web UI login page

[Enhanced] Home Page

• New Consolidation section regrouping tiles for accessing consolidation features

[Enhanced] Packages

• New criteria to sort the package list
• Reworked package editor
• Choose to refresh data manually or automatically
• Multiply and divide displayed amounts by factors
• Improved control widget
• Improved multi-user support for simultaneous data entry by multiple users
• Set variables when running schedules, including for hierarchical dimensions
• Enter Group comments in packages
• Display existing local manual journal entries within the package
• Create new journal entries
• Validate new journal entries using the control widget
• Duplicate and delete journal entries
• Publish the package from within the package editor

[Enhanced] Analysis Reports

• Set variables when running reports, including for hierarchical dimensions
• Display headers and footers in reports
• Multiply and divide displayed amounts by factors

[New] Consolidations

• Display and filter the list of existing consolidation definitions
• Open consolidation definitions and display their details
• Run full and incremental consolidations
• Display progress bar when the process is running
• Lock and unlock consolidation definitions

[New] Reconciliations

• Display and filter the list of existing reconciliation definitions
• Open reconciliation definitions and display their details
• Run reconciliations
• Display progress bar when the process is running
• Lock and unlock reconciliations

[New] Notifications

• Receive notifications when a task is finished (i.e. consolidations or reconciliations)

[New] Central Manual Journal Entries

• Display and filter the list of existing ledgers
• Display and filter the contents of ledgers
• Create new journal entries
• Validate new journal entries using the control widget
• Post and unpost journal entries
• Protect and unprotect journal entries
• Duplicate, reverse and delete journal entries
• Enter comments on manual journal entries

[New] Central Manual Journal Entries Import

• Import journal entries from txt and csv files
• Validate, post and protect journal entries after import
• Display import results and analyze rejects

[New] Conversion Rates

• Display and filter the list of existing conversion rate tables
• Display conversion rate tables in read only mode
• Display information on data

[New] Tax Rates

• Display and filter the list of existing tax rate tables
• Display tax rate tables in read only mode
• Display information on data

[Optimized] HTML5 Performance

• This support package introduces a series of HTML5 performance optimizations.

Illustration: SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03 HTM5 web UI home page

Dynamic package reconciliation & Dynamic currency conversion to streamline the I/C process

In SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03, two new features are available to help you streamline the intercompany reconciliation process. The Dynamic package reconciliation has been developed to check the completeness and accuracy of intercompany positions in a package. There is no need anymore for running a specific reconciliation process to see the I/C counterpart information. Data entered by the partner are now directly visible within a package. In addition, the Dynamic package currency conversion feature enables the end-user to convert package amounts into a chosen currency directly within the package, which was not possible previously. The illustration below shows how Dynamic package reconciliation / currency conversion are used in a package to display all counterparts in the partner local currency as well as converted in the entity currency.

Illustration: SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation Dynamic package reconciliation

Other SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03 key new features

• A new User Management feature is available to grant different sets of rights to the same user for multiple entities; this new function is the outcome of a Customer Connection Program with our main user groups
• Our archiving tool is enhanced with SAP HANA multi-temperature archiving of consolidated data. Due to information life cycle management, customers often apply multi-temperature strategies, whereby data is classified by access frequency as either hot, warm or cold. Depending on this classification and data usage, this data is stored in different memory areas. In SP03 our archiving tool is able to automate the move of data from Hot to Warm, helping you to reduce TCO.

Platform support

SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03 supports the following platform and technologies:

• SAP HANA SPS11
• Windows 10
• Microsoft Edge
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014
• Microsoft Office 365
• Microsoft Office 2016

More information

• Download 10.1 SP03 and 10.1 SP03 patch 1 from SAP Service Marketplace
• 10.1 SP03 installation procedure
• 10.1 SP03 release notes
• 10.1 SP03 patch 1 release notes
• 10.1 SP03 limitations and known issues
• 10.1 product documentation and user guides
  

© 2016 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.

You are implementing BPC 10.1 Embedded Model and would like to know the official SAP recommendation for the Office front-ends / client.

In SAP Note 2312162, we have clearly recommended Analysis for Office (AO) plug-in. This recommendation is based primarily on some architectural advantages of the AO plug-in on SAP BW meta model - compared to the EPM plug-in.

However, you can still use EPM plug-in/add-in on BPC Embedded Model if you are aware of these architectural (functional and performance) limitations listed in that note.

Please note that with the next support packages of EPM Add-in (EPM 10 SP27, RTC planned in September) and Analysis Office (2.3 SP 2, RTC planned in September), the access to an BPC 10.1 Embedded Model is deactivated by default.

If you are already using or if you plan to use the EPM Add-in/plug-in on top a BPC 10.1 Embedded model, please follow the process described in SAP Note 2327742.

The latest version of SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (release 10.1 SP03) delivers on an enriched rejuvenated HTML5 web user interface (UI) upgraded to SAP Fiori 2.0 and providing new features for the consolidation process. In the video tutorials below you'll see how the new UI simplifies both the data collection and the consolidation processes.

Load, correct and publish data with the new HTML5 web UI

Check rates, post journal entries, consolidate data and run reports with the new HTML5 web UI

© 2016 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 seehttp://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.

Welcome to SAP Disclosure Management 10.1 Service Pack 07

With our 7th feature and enhancement-driven Service Pack, we continue to deliver great customer-focused added value for the strategic product version SAP Disclosure Management 10.1.

Themes

SP 07 is generally available from 16 September 2016 and has a focus on

• Performance
• New XBRL Scenarios
• Security
• HANA

Scenarios Covered

With these and other themes in mind, SP 07 brings added value to all customers in the scenarios of

• Annual Statement Word Reporting
• EU XBRL Filings
• Filings to the Bank of Israel
• E-Bilanz Tax Filings
• US SEC Filings
• Corporation Tax Online Filings to HMRC
• Filings to the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia
• Filings to the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores
• Italian Civil Code Filings

Further Information

The following SAP Notes will tell you the more technical details:

• Release Note 2316234
• Installation Note 2316228
  
• Stack Note 2138656- Service Pack 07 marks Stack 700

Enhancements

Let us have a look at the new features and capabilities in detail.

HANA as a Data Source: CDS Views and Entities

After enhancements in SP06 (HANA SQL Queries fetching data from SQL Table Views or SQL Tables), DM now supports as well HANA CDS Views and Entities as a data source. See SAP Note 2282283 for details.

Filings to the Bank of Israel

A new entry in our list of supported XBRL scenarios is "Filings to the Bank of Israel". The process is similar to EU XBRL filing, however in this new case the input schedule templates are not provided by SAP but SAP Disclosure Management enables you to create templates on your own. Please contact SAP Support by logging an incident in SAP ONE Support Launchpad for more information.

Italian Civil Code Filings

Just another scenario makes our current list complete: Italian customers / subsidiaries can now use SAP Disclosure Management to file their XBRL report to InfoCamere according to the Italian Civil Code.

Adjustable Row-Height with Excel Templates

After "Adjustable Column Width" we are completing the picture with "Adjustable Row Heigth". - What it does? Well, in the object overview and object details there now is an additional checkbox with the same name. Once checked, the row height defined in the target Word chapter will not be adjusted according to the source Excel chapter anymore. Instead you have the freedom to choose the desired row height right in the target Word chapter.

Adjustable Row-Height with Word Templates

Guess what, the same functionality as described above is available for the "Word Template"-way to datalink. In this case - once checked - the row height defined in the source Word template will be ignored giving you the freedom to choose an intended row height right in the target Word chapter.

Approval Inbox with Downloads

To make this app even more usable, "Approval Inbox" now offers you to download revisions of all non-XBRL reports. This works on PCs as well as on mobile devices. For the latter, make sure that an app is installed to view the revision content.

App Manager

A new app called "App Manager" allows you to install and update DM Apps. In the future, a lot of DM Apps will be available from Service Market Place. To make things simple for you, they can be installed and updated independently.

US SEC Validation with arelle®

Besides the existing validation engine, Fujitsu XWand®, it is now possible to validate US SEC filing instances with the help of arelle®. Available validation types can be pre-selected by choosing from the drop-down in "Administration" -> "Plugins". Depending on your selection, the content of all validation reports from then will change. If you select both engines to be used, validation reports will include both results on separate sheets.

Enhanced Publishing Support for Excel Templates

Published HTML documents based on reports with datalinks using the "Excel Template" method are now easier to layout. You will find the same style names in Word - and the published HTML - as in the source Excel chapters. This makes it easy to apply perfect layouts to DM's published output and eliminates the need of manual adjustments.

More Supported Systems

We enhanced the variety of supported 3rd party software as follows:

• Microsoft Office® 2016 (32- and 64-bit version) is now supported, both under the classic Microsoft license model and the newer Microsoft 365 license model. For details, read Release Note 2316234
• Microsoft Windows® 10 is now supported
• Microsoft Edge® is now supported
• Microsoft SQL Server® 2014 is now supported
• Support of Java Runtime Environment SE 1.7 has been discontinued - see SAP Note 2303796

Restrict Formatting in Word

It is now supported to protect Word chapters and reports via the "Protect Document" -> "Restrict Editing" -> "Formatting restrictions" option in Microsoft Word.

Support for Multiple Chapters per EU XBRL Table

For customers with highly distributed ownership of data and responsibilities it is now possible to have more than one chapter to report facts for a single EU XBRL table. To represent these in an Excel Preview as well, the ZIP now contains several Excel files for several chapters and the files name include the chapter name next to the table name.

Improved Security for WebAPI

All WebAPI calls are now secured by an access token that is encrypted and signed by a certificate. For productive environments, it is strongly recommended to use a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority. For more information read SAP Note 2365878.

Improvements

Besides added features and capabilities we have improved a lot of what has been there.

Faster Content Refresh

By internal and external caching we enabled a content refresh that is up to 5-times faster as in previous SPs for datalinks pointing to internal data sources.

Faster Report Deletion

The deletion of reports has been speeded up by factors between 2 and 20.

Faster Local Permissions

The assigning of a lot of local permissions at once will now take significantly less of your time.

Identification of Circular References

For internal datalinks, DM now identifies circular references between chapters and warns you accordingly.

Reset of all Workflows

Used to reset the long list of all workflows inside a period one by one? With SP07 this became a 1-button click to save your time.

Assembly Version Information

To allow product and development support to better know the exact version you are talking about, the "About" dialogs and the area "Administration" -> "Plugins" now show both Build Version and Assembly Version.

ERiC in Plugin

The 3rd party component provided by the regulator, "ELSTER Rich Client - ERiC", is now included in DM E-BILANZ PLUG-IN 10.1 rather than in DM SERVER - APPLICATION SERVER 10.1. This makes it easier for you to apply updates of ERiC as they will require only a plugin upload instead of a server component update in most cases. As a nice side-effect, some parameters of the DM E-BILANZ PLUG-IN 10.1 have become obsolete and you will not find them in the DM E-BILANZ PLUG-IN 10.1 configuration anymore.

XBRL Renderer in Plugins

Likewise, the XBRL rendering algorithms have been moved from the server components to the plugins they are needed for. This enables us to deliver adjustments for new taxonomy versions to you via a smaller set of component updates which will lower your maintenance efforts.

Custom Errors

A lot of custom error pages have been added to give you a better hint to the root of an issue at the first possible occasion.

Legal Changes

SP 07 serves you in fulfilling some legal obligations as described in the following.

Solvency II EU 2.1.0

EIOPA supervisory reporting is now supported using the top regulator's taxonomy 2.1.0. The patch released on 30 August, 2016 is already covered so that you are good to go for your filing period starting 01 January 2017. See as well SAP Note 2364093.

Solvency II FR 1.0.0

French Solvency II regulator Banque de France released an own taxonomy to be used in combination with the original EIOPA taxonomy. SAP is supporting this taxonomy with the initial release of a new component together with Stack 700: SOLVENCY II FR BUS. CON. 1.0. See as well SAP Note 2362932.

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Since version 10.1, released about two years ago, BPC exists in two versions: classic and embedded.

We observed that although there’s a rich knowledge sharing content available - either from SAP or from our ecosystem - it looks like the overall maturity level on embedded is still lower than for classic.

This is how the idea of this blog came out: provide an entry point to the available resources, and maybe elaborate on some aspects.

One product / different flavors

SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC) comes in different flavors: BPC version for Microsoft, BPC version for NetWeaver, BPC version for SAP HANA, BPC classic (aka standard), BPC embedded, BPC on HANA, and recently, BPC optimized for S/4 HANA.

It looks cumbersome, but is actually pretty simple, and extremely well explained in this short article http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-74089.

Now, as BPC embedded gets more and more traction, we think it’s time to regroup all available material so that partners and customers more familiar with the standard version can understand when and how position BPC embedded.

One entry point / two tracks / many bloggers

To provide a 360° view, I’ve asked a set of experts to share their knowledge on BPC embedded through two tracks:

• one strategic / functional track which will focus on the business aspects and detail the strategy of BPC embedded,
• one technical track which will give detailed insights and “how-to” implement BPC embedded.

Both tracks will start during the week of September 26^th, and you can expect to read about topics as diverse BW, S/4 HANA, budgeting process, migration path and much more.

Follow this one

I’m happy to share that Kirk Anderson, VP Solution Management  and Uwe Fisher, head of BPC development, will respectively kick-off both tracks next week.

After each new blog post, I will update this one by adding a links so that you have a single entry point to the whole series.

As SCN is all about sharing knowledge, we expect you to ask questions, recommend topics you would like us to cover and provide feedback.

Looking forward to reading your comments… and stay tuned!

Watch this 2-minute video and see what’s new in SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation 10.1 SP03: enhanced new HTML5 web user interface, live package reconciliation and currency conversion, user management and SAP HANA multi-temperature data archiving.