BPC vs Financial Consolidation

[Former Member]

Hi,

I urgently require a detailed feature-function wise comparison of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation and SAP Financial Consolidation. Can you please provide me the document.

Thanks in advance

[Former Member]

One of the main differences is the platform itself.FC sits on a microsoft SQL server, there are NO plans (per SAP rep) to convert this to the Netweaver. BPC you can get both versions - sql server and netweaver.

When you look at the functionality needed for consols or planning, you can do everything in both FC and BPC. The difference is in the configuration and the user experience.

From the user point of view, reporting is a lot easier and more intuitive in BPC. It will take some time to train a person in FC reporting (still a lot easier than BW!).

Configuration however, is a lot less painful in FC than in BPC. Remember, however, that once the config is done, it is the user experience that matters....we are implementing systems for the users!

Good luck

[Former Member]

Thanks Tara.

I could get 3 important points of difference from your post.

Are there any other important distinguishing features. It would be really helpful if they are complimented with suitable examples. I have to present them to one of my client tomorrow.

[Former Member]

Abinav,

You must first consider the problem your client needs to solve as BPC and FC are very different products.

SAP BPC is a unified solutiuon which supports Performance Management processes inlcuding budgeting, planning, forecasting as well as management and statutory reporting.

SAP FC is a point solution for statutory and management reporting, and while it is perfectly capable of storing data for budget and forecast categories as well as supporting any logic that may be required, it is not optimised to support the processes around these functions.

From this point you can then start to understand why you would propose one over the other. As a starting point, BPC would be the default option. You would then need to consider why someone might choose to use FC, and then you would consider some of the particular strengths of FC which are principally support for complex tax and statutory requirements. The emphasis here is on complexity, and from a statutory reporting perspective, you are probably talking about multiple hundreds/thousands of Legal Entities, multiple GAAP reporting requirements and with complex legal/ownership structures.

In reality, the majority of customer scenarios will be best suppported by BPC as this product has a broader capability. In addition, as it is a very flexible application which supports multiple business processes within the single environment, most organisations go on to deploy it for far more than they originally purchased it for (e.g. HR reporting, CSR data management and reporting etc...) benefiting from a significantly enhanced return on their original software investment.