What is SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA

What is it?

SAP BW/4HANA – The NEXT GENERATION OF DATA WAREHOUSE – has been available since September 2016.   Most are aware of the benefits of SAP BW/4HANA by now= you may have noticed that with all the benefits of the new data warehouse platform, there was no mention of a very important piece of functionality – planning and consolidation

The good NEWS is that a new release of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (aka SAP BPC) is now available on this state of the art data warehouse – SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA!

Some important points about this new release of SAP BPC:

1. SAP BPC, version for SAP BW/4HANA (will be referred as BPC BW/4HANA for the rest of this blog) is a brand new release of SAP BPC, it is not a successor to BPC, version for SAP NetWeaver or BPC, version for the Microsoft platform
2. The 11.0 release offers Planning and Consolidation capabilities via the standard and embedded model. Much of it is based on functionality from BPC NW. There are some additional enhancements to be discussed later
3. Due to the fact that it’s BW/4HANA platform which leverages the SAP HANA database, BW-IP is no longer supported, and the BPC Standard model requires the SAP HANA platform

Timeline

Initial release of SAP BPC 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA was planned for June 20th 2017 and it will be followed by another three support packages until the end of 2017 (subject to change). Incremental changes can be expected within those SPs.

What’s the relation to S/4HANA?

A frequently asked question is, how does BPC for BW/4HANA relate to S/4HANA and BPC optimized for S/4HANA? Let’s start with below diagram

• The left grey box is S/4HANA with an ‘Embedded BW’ which include BPC 10.1 NW as planning and consolidation engine. It’s based on BW 7.5x(BW 7.51 for S/4HANA 1610 and BW 7.52 for S/4HANA 1709) which on SAP NetWeaver platform.
• The right blue box is SAP BW/4HANA with add-on SAP BPC version for BW/4HANA installed.
• BPC for BW/4HANA and S/4HANA  are on separate platforms – BPC for BW/4HANA is ideal for customers looking for a standalone deployment of BPC, leveraging BW4HANA, that can integrate with S/4HANA and other systems/data and BPC NW embedded within S/4HANA is for S/4HANA customers seeking real-time planning and consolidations on their S/4HANA data

What are the main new Features and Benefits of BPC for BW/4HANA?

Simplification

• Following the trend of BW/HANA, BPC for BW/4HANA focuses on simplifying the backend core as well as frontend
• Simplify the ad-hoc reporting with query enhancements in SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for Office
• New web worksheet concept is introduced to simplify web reporting/planning objects. Within one worksheet, you can have multiple grids and charts for reporting and data input
• Simplified data integration to reduce the effort and time it takes to load data from external sources into BPC

Modern Interface

• Deeper integration with SAP Analytics Cloud allows business users to quickly sync data back and forth between SAP Analytics Cloud and BPC. This also enables BPC BW/4HANA customers to leverage SAP Analytics Cloud web client as an alternative option for both planning and analysis with BPC data.

• Beautiful, brand new  HTML5 web interface provides a fresh new look and feel. new menu and bread crumb navigation  helps user to jump between different features with fewest clicks
• Brand new home page including nicely pinned  tiles for charts, quick access to any object and page via ‘Favorites’ and personal activities ordered by time. In additional, users can personalize the home page by re-ordering and re-sizing.

• New concept of web worksheet allows having multiple reports, input forms and charts.
• Re-signed ‘My Activities’ and BPF workspace design time.

Performance

• Push down query formula operations to SAP HANA
• Further push down of FOX formulas to SAP HANA
• Using advanced Data Store Objects (aDSO) and composite providers and no longer InfoCubes and classic DSO’s

Which Excel client shall I use?

SAP Analysis for Office 2.4 SP03(onwards) is the Excel add-in for BPC for BW/4HANA.

• EPM Plug-in used for BPC Standard models
• AO Plug-in e used for BPC Embedded models
• Note, the EPM Add-in 10.0 is no longer supported on BPC BW/4HANA

Regarding how  to move an existing BPC NW deployment to BPC BW/4, we are currently investigating a conversion tool. More info to follow in a later blog..

Additional information:

• SAP BPC 11.0, version for SAP BW/4HANA Product Availability Matrix
• BPC 11.00 Official Documentation
• BW4/HANA Official Documentation
• 2531382 – BPC 11.0 version for SAP BW/4HANA – Installation and Conversion Information