Darwin Blog

After my last blog post, How to Improve the SAP BPC User Experience, Part One: Without a Developer, I’d like to share five ways to improve it WITH the help of a developer!

 A developer can assist in enhancing your BPC experience, as they have seen a variety of ways to utilize BPC across companies and can apply different ideas to improve your BPC interface.  In addition, based on our experience, Darwin EPM has created tools to improve the Excel interface, as well as the experience for BPC users and administrators.

1. Utilize an Add-in as a Navigation Tool in Addition to the EPM Add-in

Navigation, especially for first-time SAP BPC users, can sometimes be frustrating, even for basic things like finding the right place to enter data or run a report.  The screenshot above is an Excel add-in (like the EPM Add-in) with quick access shortcuts to models, templates and data manager packages.  This add-in ribbon provides easy-to-reach action buttons to refresh data, send data, show logs, etc.

SAP BPC users know that its user interface is built on the Excel platform – making it user-friendly for accounting and finance professionals who already work in Excel for financial statements and other reporting.  But how can you improve the Excel experience, either with or without a developer?

There are many answers to that question, depending on your budget and your BPC users’ experience. Let’s start with four ways to improve the Excel experience using your company’s existing resources.

1. Use EPM Formula-Based Reports Instead of Dynamic (expansion) Reports

BPC and the EPM Add-in come with two powerful tools for creating Excel-based reports (also in addition to a web-based reporting interface):

• EPM Reports – which use an editor or drag and drop to build reports
• EPM Formula-Based Reports (e.g. EPMRetrieve)

Capital Project Planning in modern organizations is a year-round process, not just something that is undertaken once a year during the budget cycle.  So why do many EPM processes make it difficult for users to plan projects year-round?  By doing so, that forces user to resort to offline spreadsheets with little organizational visibility until the budget cycle begins.  When an individual has an idea for a project that would streamline a business process, the organization cannot afford to wait for three months until budget season.  An integrated approach to project planning allows users to take a project from conceptualization through approvals and execution.  This approach brings the tracking of capital projects into a standardized system, allowing for visibility throughout the organization during all phases of the project.  A key to the success of this approach is having separate but integrated BPC input schedules and reports focused on the level of detail appropriate to the different phases of a project.