Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud

In the past, decisions were easier: the data situation was relatively clear, the most important key figures in the head. Decisions could therefore often be made out of the stomach. In times of rapidly growing data volume, the resulting insights are becoming increasingly important. Identifying trends and patterns in time can better plan, manage, and stay ahead of the competition.

SAP Analytics Cloud is a software-as-a-service solution. SAC brings together business intelligence (BI), advanced analytics, predictive analytics, and enterprise planning. It can connect data from internal and external sources and create visualizations of that data in the SAC.

SAP Analytics Cloud solution focuses on data reporting and analysis and brings together multiple tools in one cloud environment:

• Predictive Analytics
• Business Intelligence
• Business planning
• Extensive planning functions
• Machine learning.

As the analytics layer of SAP Business Technology Platform, it supports advanced analytics across the enterprise.

SAP Analytics Cloud is more self-service and less skilled staff is needed.

Mobile working is also supported optimally:

• Only a Web browser with Internet access is required.
• In addition, collaborative collaboration is encouraged by the integrated collaboration tools: chats, presentations, shared calendar, and commentary.

With SAP Analytics Cloud, it is relatively easy to connect to different data sources and thus include all relevant data in the analysis, which increases the quality of the results.

Live Connection enables you to analyze data in SAC in real time. The data remains on the enterprise servers and is not uploaded to the cloud.

For the creation of analytics and dashboards, SAP Analytics Cloud provides two options:

• With the help of stories and models, the specialist department can create SAC stories without programming know-how
• The Analytics Designer enables developers to create analytic applications through enhanced functions and connections.

Business Content for SAC is provided, that is, Models and Stories as a starting point for project implementations.

SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP's strategic tool when it comes to a planning application that is tightly integrated with SAP S/4HANA or a single cloud-based solution. SAC includes planning, reporting, and analysis in one platform.

BPC, version for B/W4HANA, on the other hand, is recommended as a point solution for on-premise planning and consolidations.

SAP BPC Optimized for SAP S/4HANA, a mature, fully functional planning and consolidation application, can still be used for real-time planning on SAP S/4HANA on-premise as it continues with enhancements and mainstream support until at least 2027. This protects BPC investments.

Please refer to the SAP Product Availability Matrix for the support dates according to product versions.

If you want to gain experience with the cloud solution, you can move functions from SAP BPC Optimized for SAP S/4HANA to SAP Analytics Cloud and start with hybrid planning and/or advanced reporting scenarios.

In SAP S/4HANA, the data for financial planning is based on the ACDOCP table, which is the most important table for planning. It is the single source of truth for planning data and supports the connection of predecessor and successor processes.

The preceding figure shows that you can manage financial plan data in SAP S/4HANA using various apps to import, copy, and delete plan data into the ACDOCP table. You can also import plan data into the ACDOCP table using OData APIs (Application Programming Interface).

For a complete list of APIs (master and transaction data), see the documentation: https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/b3438d89db5040508a3873ad6c6e55bc/2021.000/en-S/500bb85a61604b0882be6ad0411e4538.html.

Instead of planning directly in S/4HANA (table ACDOCP), you can use SAP Analytics Cloud for cost center planning, product cost planning, sales and profitability planning, and project planning.

There is a complete integration between SAP Analytics Cloud and S/4HANA using OData (Application Programming Interfaces) APIs regarding master and actual data (comparative data for planning) that can be imported from S/4HANA to SAP Analytics Cloud.

The content Odata Services to import Master Data from SAP S/4HANA to SAP Analytics Cloud can be checked in the following documentation: https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/48f4b4785b8e45938ac44a67be8032d9/2021.000/en-US/0920cbbd90824cf596335f30786bde8c.html.

For financial planning, SAP S/4HANA provides OData services to import transaction data into SAP Analytics Cloud models. You can import the data once, or on a recurring schedule.

Check the following documentation: https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/48f4b4785b8e45938ac44a67be8032d9/2021.000/en-US/647247dc5cf0407b9310bb033e04cbfa.html.

After planning in SAP Analytics Cloud compared to the imported actual data, the planning results can be exported back to SAP S/4HANA.

For Financial Planning, SAP provides the following OData services to export data from SAP Analytics Cloud to SAP S/4HANA:

Customers who have previously planned with SAP BPC Optimized for SAP S/4HANA, now have the option of hybrid planning. This means that functions from SAP BPC Optimized for SAP S/4HANA are moved to SAP Analytics Cloud and written online to the ACDOCP table via a virtual provider.

Plan data that was planned using SAP Analytics Cloud and exported to ACDOCP can then be forwarded to Info Providers of a BW/4HANA system using a CDS view-based extraction.

The scenario is appropriate for:

• S/4HANA Cloud customers
• New S/4HANA On Premise customers
• Customers converting and SAP ERP system to S/4HANA On Premise that want to implement a new planning solution.

Typical Setup:

• SAC is the primary planning tool, complete financial planning is done in SAC.
• After planning round is finished, plan data, activity cost rates and statistical key figures are exported to S/4HANA.
• Embedded Analytics (e.g. plan-actual comparisons) runs in S/4HANA.
• In certain scenarios Universal Allocation is used in S/4HANA:
  • When it is crucial that actual an plan allocation run with the same rules and when it is too much effort to replicate the allocation rules between SAC and S/4HANA
  • When required allocation features are missing in SAC
• Transfer programs between new tables (ACDOCP, ACCOSTRATE) and classic tables are not needed.

The scenario is appropriate for customers converting an SAP ERP system to S/4HANA On Premise who want to modernize the existing, classic planning implementation.

Typical Setup:

• In a transition phase, migrate some planning areas to SAC and leave others with classic planning.
• Move planning results from new planning to classic planning to be consumed in processes like activity confirmation or cost estimate.
• Leave dedicated planning tasks with classic planning, e.g. activity cost rate calculation with iteration and cost component split.
• Use data transfer programs between classic and new planning.

Migrate some planning areas to SAC, leave others with classic planning.

• Example: Sales and profitability planning with SAC combined with classic cost center planning and product cost estimate
• Perform Classic cost center planning
• Transfer plan data from CO-tables to ACDOCP
• Perform cost estimate based on activity cost rates from classical planning
• Import cost estimate into SAC product plan model
• Copy cost estimate into profitability model
• Perform sales and profitability planning in SAC
• Export profitability plan data to ACDOCP
• Embedded Analytics for both cost center and profitability plan data based on ACDOCP.

Activity cost rate planning or calculation in SAC:

• Complete cost center planning in SAC
• Export plan data to ACDOCP and cost rates to ACCOSTRATE
• Transfer cost rates from ACCOSTRATE to COST
• Use cost rates in COST for actual posting like activity allocation and for cost estimate.

Activity cost rate calculation with iteration and/or splitting:

• Expense and activity quantity planning in SAC
• Export to ACDOCP
• Transfer from ACDOCP to CO-tables
• Activity cost rate calculation on CO-tables, result is written into COST.
• Option 1:
  • Perform cost estimate based on activity cost rates from classical planning
  • Import cost estimate into SAC product cost model
  • Copy cost estimate from product cost model into profitability model
  • Perform sales and profitability planning in SAC - ultimately based on S/4 product cost estimate
• Option 2 (Only in case splitting was not used):
  • Transfer cost rates from COST to ACCOSTRATE
  • Import cost rates from ACCOSTRATE to SAC
  • Use cost rates in SAC for product cost planning
  • Perform sales and profitability planning in SAC - based on SAC product cost planning

Classic plan allocations:

• Reasons:
  • Allocations across company codes
  • Actual allocations still classical and not One allocation based
• Expense and activity quantity planning in SAC
• Export to ACDOCP
• Transfer from ACDOCP to CO-tables
• Run classic allocations on CO-tables
• Transfer allocated costs from CO-tables to ACDOCP to do Embedded Analytics.
• Optional:
  • Import allocated costs from ACDOCP to SAC
  • Use them for subsequent planning tasks.

With Scenario 2 a transfer of Financial Plan Data between the old CO tables and the ACDOCP table in SAP S/4HANA might be necessary.

Use the following programs for this transfer:

SAP Analytics Cloud is fully integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Human Resources, and SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) and enables integrated financial planning and budgeting processes. To exchange data, SAP Analytics Cloud connects to ODATA services in SAP S/4HANA.

SAP delivers the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content which already includes a model, stories, data actions, demo data for your planning in SAP Analytics Cloud and allows you to import your own data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Human Resource, and SAP IBP and to export your planning results back.

The processes included in business content in SAP Analytics Cloud are:

• Cost Center Planning:

  You manage the costs for different areas within a company. In addition to cost centers, other cost objects such as internal orders or projects can be used as well. Cost center planning serves as an important input for product cost planning because it determines the activity cost rates, such as a machine hour to calculate the activity costs.

• Product Cost Planning:

  You calculate the costs of products. The two main components of product costs are the raw material costs and the activity costs, such as machine costs.

• Sales and Profitability Planning:

  You calculate the revenues, deductions, and costs based on the planned sales quantities. Product-related costs originate from product cost planning whereas product-independent costs such as administration costs originate from cost center planning directly.

• Project Planning:

  You plan the costs associated with a project or program. A work breakdown structure (WBS) is used to capture the project activities. The WBS consists of WBS elements that describe the tasks to be completed as part of the project.

• Internal Order Planning:

  You enter costs that you expect to incur during the life cycle of an order. Using internal order planning, you can plan and compare your costs on G/L account basis.

• Capital Expense Planning:

  You plan profit center expenses for acquiring, maintaining, or improving fixed assets such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land.

• Financial Statement Planning:

  You do profit and loss planning with trading partner allocation, balance sheet planning, and cash flow calculation.

• Integration to Workforce Planning:

  This process is integrated with SAP SuccessFactors as well as with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA, allowing you to plan resources and calculate personnel expenses. These expenses can be transferred to the cost center planning model within Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA content.

• Integration to SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP):

  This process enables the integration of SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) and with SAP S/4HANA, allowing you to copy the consensus demand plan quantity from SAP IBP to SAP Analytics Cloud and perform the profitability calculation in SAP Analytics Cloud. The result (revenue and cost of goods sold by product) can be passed back to SAP IBP.

• Group Reporting Planning for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA:

  This process enables you to perform profit and loss and balance sheet planning for the dimensions of group reporting.

Cost center Planning involves entering plan figures for costs, activities, prices or statistical key figures for a particular cost center and planning period.

You can then determine the variances against plan when you compare the plan values with the actual costs. Variances serve as a signal to make the necessary changes to your business processes.

Cost center planning forms part of the overall business planning process, and is a prerequisite for standard costing. The main characteristic of standard costing is that values and quantities are planned for specified time frames, independently of the actual values from previous periods.

You can use plan costs and plan activity quantities to determine the (activity) prices. These prices can be used to value internal activities during the ongoing period, that is, before the actual costs are known.

You can do the following with the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content for Cost Center Planning in SAP Analytics Cloud:

• Expense planning
• Allocations
• Activity quantity planning
• Activity cost rate planning
• Activity cost rate calculation.

After import of the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content, the following content model and stories for cost center planning are available:

Model:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER

Stories:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_PLAN_ADMIN - Administering Cost Center Planning.
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_ADDON_COPY_EXPENSES_FROM_WFP - Performing Workforce Planning Transfer to Cost Center Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_EXPENSES - Planning Cost Center Expenses
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_ACTIVITYPRICE_INPUT - Planning Cost Center Cost Rates and Output Quantities
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_ACTIVITYPRICE_CALCULATION - Calculating Cost Center Cost Rates
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_BUDGET - Setting Up Cost Center Budgeting
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_ANALYTICS -Performing Cost Center Analytics
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_COSTCENTER_REPORTS - Performing Cost Center Reporting.

Product Cost Planning

You calculate the costs of products. The two main components of product costs are the raw material costs and the activity costs, such as machine costs.

Product cost planning involves calculating the non-order-related cost of goods manufactured and cost of goods sold for each product unit. You can establish how the costs are broken down for each product, and calculate the value added for each step of the production process. This enables you to optimize the cost of goods manufactured and support make-or-buy decisions. In addition, product cost planning provides information for sales and profitability planning as part of an integrated planning process.

The following features are supported:

• Simulation of product costs based on raw material prices and activity cost rates
• Calculation of product costs based on raw material prices and activity cost rates
• Activity cost rates as an output of the cost center planning process.

After import of the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content, the following content model and stories for product cost planning are available:

Model:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST

Stories:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST_PLAN_ADMIN
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST_RATES
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST_RESOURCES
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST_ANALYTICS
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PRODUCTCOST_REPORTING

Sales and Profitability Planning

You calculate the revenues, deductions, and costs based on the planned sales quantities. Product-related costs originate from product cost planning whereas product-independent costs such as administration costs originate from cost center planning directly.

Sales and profitability planning allows you to plan sales, revenue, and profitability data for any selected profitability segments. It is generally perceived as an integrated process involving different roles within profitability and sales accounting (such as sales manager, regional manager, and sales employee).

Distinctions are often made between the different approaches used, such as central top-down planning and local bottom-up planning.

Many companies have implemented an iterative process consisting of a number of individual planning steps, in which existing planning data is copied, projected into the future, revalued, adjusted manually, and distributed top-down until they obtain a sales and profit plan that fulfills the company's requirements.

The following features are supported:

• Sales price and sales quantity planning
• Calculation of revenue and deductions
• Simulation based on past actual data.

After import of the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content, the following content model and stories for sales and profitability planning are available:

Model: 

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PROFITABILITY

Stories:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PROFITABILITY_PLAN_ADMIN - Administering Sales and Profitability Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PROFITABILITY_PROF_INPUT - Performing Profitability Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PROFITABILITY_ANALYTICS - Performing Sales and Profitability Analytics
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_PROFITABILITY_REPORTS - Performing Sales and Profitability Reporting.

Project Planning

You plan the costs associated with a project or program. A work breakdown structure (WBS) is used to capture the project activities. The WBS consists of WBS elements that describe the tasks to be completed as part of the project.

Project planning is used to plan the costs associated with a project or program. A work breakdown structure (WBS) is used to capture the project activities.

The WBS consists of WBS elements that describe the tasks to be completed as part of the project. Project planning in SAP Analytics Cloud enables planners to capture project expense budgets and plans based on WBS elements.

Project planning in SAP Analytics Cloud is integrated with availability control functions and budget consistency checks in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Internal Order Planning

During internal order planning, you enter costs that you expect to incur during the life cycle of an order. Using internal order planning, you can plan and compare your costs on G/L account basis.

Capital Expense Planning

You plan profit center expenses for acquiring, maintaining, or improving fixed assets such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land.

Capital expense planning (CAPEX) makes it easy to plan profit center expenses for acquiring, maintaining, or improving fixed assets such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land.

Capital expense planning also allows the resulting depreciation plan amounts to be calculated using the straight-line or accelerated depreciation method. The results can be transferred to the Financial Statement Model.

After the import of the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA a business content, the following content model and stories for capital expense planning are available:

Model: 

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_CAPEX.

Stories:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_CAPEX_PLAN_ADMIN - Administering Capital Expense Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_CAPEX_PLANNING - Performing Capital Expense Planning.

Financial Statement Planning

You do profit and loss planning with trading partner allocation, balance sheet planning, and cash flow calculation.

Financial statement planning enables you to do profit and loss planning with trading partner allocation, balance sheet planning, and cash flow calculation in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Planning administrators can pre-populate planning screens based on past actual data and on plan data from the cost center, profitability plan, or investment plan.

After the import of the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content, the following content model and stories for financial statement planning are available:

Models:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_FINANCIAL_STATEMENT

Stories:

• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_FINANCIAL_STATEMENT_PLAN_ADMIN - Administering Financial Statement Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_FINANCIAL_STATEMENT_PLANNING - Performing Financial Statement Planning
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_FINANCIAL_STATEMENT_REPORTS - Performing Financial Statement Reporting
• SAP__FI_BPL_IM_FINANCIAL_STATEMENT_ANALYTICS - Performing Financial Statement Analytics.

To get a deep dive into the delivered content check the following links:

• Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA - Documentation - Process:https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/48f4b4785b8e45938ac44a67be8032d9/2021.000/en-US/64a273e7bc2143f0930e2c3509888169.html
• Architecture Overview: Financial Planning:https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/48f4b4785b8e45938ac44a67be8032d9/2021.000/en-US/f900a12c7abf4c91957478cd6f6e48e8.html
• Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA - Documentation: Introduction Videos:https://help.sap.com/viewer/DRAFT/48f4b4785b8e45938ac44a67be8032d9/2021.000/en-US/a2b35263477b4895a301a8d544dea775.html

• SAP Analytics Cloud integrates business intelligence, predictive analytics, and enterprise planning in a single cloud environment.
• SAC supports real-time data analysis with live connections, enhancing decision-making and planning accuracy.
• SAC facilitates collaborative planning with integrated tools like chats, shared calendars, and commentary.
• SAC offers flexible planning options, including stories for non-programmers and advanced applications for developers.
• SAC seamlessly integrates with SAP S/4HANA, enabling comprehensive financial planning and data exchange.