SAP Conference for Financial Planning, Consolidation, and Controls

It was time for the SAP EPM conference again, exciting time for those of us focused on FP&A, Strategic Planning, BI, and looking at applications such as SAP Strategy Management (SSM), Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), SAP Cloud for Analytics (C4A), among others. Cipher had the opportunity to attend this conference again, this time not only as speakers but also as sponsors.

 

SAP EPM Conference

The agenda, which was previously focused only on Enterprise Performance Management, now it included Governance, Risk and Compliance. As explained by many of the speakers, those two topics are getting closer as organizations mature and understand that Financial Planning cannot be a standalone process.

 

Before continuing we want to thank the City of Henderson, NV for presenting with us their success story about SAP Strategy Management and the integration with individual performance. Read the case study  here.

SAP Strategy Management with the City of Henderson, NV

The star of the two day conference was once again SAP Cloud for Analytics. We are proud of the Cipher team that presented the C4A demo during one of the breaks. We showed the attendees part of the data modeling functionality, talked about the integration with Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) and showed how to create input tasks for specific regions or departments within the organization.

SAP Cloud for Analytics Demo

Below we share some key remarks made by the participants:

  • SAP Cloud for Planning now becomes SAP Cloud for Analytics and each user can be licensed depending on their role (ex: Cloud for Analytics for Planning and/or for BI).
  • Strategic Planning was a key topic, which has been neglected for quite some time when talking about Financial Planning, but again, organizations are reviewing their current processes to make sure Risk and Corporate objectives are included as part of this process.
  • With the lack of Strategic Planning, the budget serves as a proxy and key decisions are made on the fly by the budget responsible purely based on financial factors.
  • Including risk as part of the budget process is very difficult without a Strategic Plan.
  • Key issues when going through the financial planning is not having a link with corporate objectives.

For more information about Strategic Planning solutions from SAP, check SAP Strategy Management.

  • As many more topics and requirements keep merging and falling on the CFO’s laps, it is really key to have an embedded solution that can facilitate the integration and empower the business users to configure and analyze the information. That is where SAP Cloud for Analytics comes into play.
  • With the previous topic in mind, the team also talked about the SAP Boardroom which is powered by SAP Cloud for Analytics. Imagine having all the KPIs and drivers that impact your future and be able to see contributions, impacts, etc. all without switching a screen and without deviating the conversation at any point. No need to imagine anymore!

Remember that you can always contact us to schedule a demo of these applications.

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