Faster & More Agile Planning
Ability to plan at greater speed and with more agility with enhanced analytic capabilities.
Central Bank Planning Transformation from SAP BPC to SAP Analytics Cloud
Modernized enterprise finance planning, budgeting and forecasting with SAP Analytics Cloud, integrating S/4HANA and creating a scalable foundation for future SuccessFactors and Ariba integration.
- SAP Analytics Cloud
- FP&A
- Budgeting
- Planning
- Workforce Planning
- CAPEX
- OPEX
Client Overview
A leading central bank in the Middle East embarked on a finance transformation initiative to modernize its planning, budgeting, and forecasting environment for its 50+ users across the whole organisation, both finance and functional managers. The organization was operating on SAP BPC planning platform but supported by parallel heavily manual Excel-driven processes. As planning requirements became more complex, limitations around scalability, workflow management, forecasting, and security began affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning and forecasting across the finance organization.
The objective was to establish a more connected, flexible, agile and scalable planning environment using SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) integrated with S/4HANA and create a platform that can be integrated with Succes Factors and Ariba.
Customer
Leading Central Bank
Industry
Banking & Financial Services
Location
Middle East
Organization Size
Large Enterprise with 5000+ Employees
The Challenge
The existing planning business processes and SAP BPC planning environment presented several operational and technical limitations that made it difficult to scale planning and reporting processes efficiently or address some of the key planning challenges that has emerged since SAP BPC was implemented 10 years ago.
- Heavy reliance on manual Excel templates within SAP BPC to support the planning and budgeting process.
- Complex internal order mapping and maintenance issues when it came to budgeting for purchase orders and purchase committments.
- There was no structured long-term forecasting framework in the existing system.
- Challenges with the performance of the BPC system in the legacy infrastructure.
- Lack of matrix-based role security to meet the complex needs of the business environment where security was a key issue.
- Ongoing significant challenges managing SAP BPC EPM Add-In deployments across multiple users, including conflicts in the Excel environment with other required add-in's.
- Challenges with maintaining the SAP BPC solution, making changes to reflect evolving business needs and maintaining skills and engagement with end users.
What CloudScouts Delivered working with the client planning team
CloudScouts partnered with the organization to design and implement an SAP Analytics Cloud-based integrated planning and reporting solution which addressed all the shortcomings of the legacy SAP BPC solution and also met the new demands of senior management.
The engagement focused on modernizing the finance planning landscape, exploiting the more modern approach to workflow in SAC, improving visibility and introducing more automation and integration across the organisations budgeting and forecasting processes.
“Replacing the excel based elements of the legacy process and updating the workflows with the new SAC approach has been a dramatic improvement compared with the legacy BPC solution and the modern dashboards we can create in SAP Analytics Cloud are enabling much better tracking and analysis of the planning process. We look forward to halving our annual budget creation cycle and getting much better insights to our planning information.”
An Integrated Planning Environment across systems and functions
The solution established an integrated data flow between SAP Analytics Cloud and S/4HANA (the organisations ERP system) enabling connected planning and reporting across finance operations and putting in place the platform for further integration with Ariba and SuccessFactors.
Key Solution Areas
Design and delivery of the SAP Analytics Cloud solutions
Exploiting SAP Analytics Cloud Advanced Planning Capabilities to drive efficiency and agility
The new solution introduced several new planning features to drive process improvement and shorten budget timescales, including:
The engagement also delivered four integrated planning modules so that changes in any of the functional models, after appropriate approvals, could be integrated into the consolidated budgets quickly and efficiently. The modules covered the following functions:
Operating Expenses Planning (OPEX)
Enhanced Capital Expenditure Planning (CAPEX)
Workforce Planning at a cost centre level
Revenue Planning
Strategic & Non-Strategic Initiatives
Value added beyond traditional Planning using Dashboards
The project exploited the data visualization and enhanced reporting capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud and introduced interactive planning and reporting capabilities designed to improve financial visibility and support faster and more agile decision making.
Key Solution Areas
Success Delivered
The transition from SAP BPC to SAP Analytics Cloud significantly improved the organization's planning capabilities.
Scalable Planning Environment
A more scalable and maintainable planning environment.
Forecasting Visibility
Introduced forecasting capability with appropriate visibility and transparency.
Reduced Manual Effort
Removed dependency on manual Excel-based processes, reducing time spent on low value activities by the finance teams.
Better Collaboration
Better collaboration and coordination across the planning cycles and different functions.
Stronger Governance
Stronger governance through approval workflows and role-based security.
Integrated Planning
Integrated planning across finance functions and systems.
Enhanced User Engagement
Enhanced end user engagement with the planning tool and supporting processes thanks to SAP Analytics Cloud's modern cloud capabilities.
The implementation also established a foundation for further long-term forecasting and driver-based financial planning capabilities, enabling the organization to support more agile and data-driven decision-making across all of its finance operations.