SAP BPC Business Process

Flow (BPF); an Overview!

Business Process Flow, a component (Web based user interface) within
SAP BPC. Why is it required? What it does and what it takes to get it ready
to work. Lets have a look.
Before we do that; lets try to understand different Forecasting & Planning
Cycles possibly an organization can have. Budget is generally done once a
year. Forecasts can be done either monthly or quarterly depending on the
need of the organization. Effort required to complete these budgeting &
forecasting cycle vary depending on the nature of the business, size of the
business, product-market matrix and so on, so forth. Employees, Managers,
Budget Holders, Department heads, Division heads from different divisions
located in different countries participate, contribute in order to achieve one
single consolidated Budget or Forecast for the parent organization. This is
quite a task, which requires a lot of coordination. Literally impossible to
coordinate these activities in time, with accuracy and manually.
There comes the need of a tool like SAP BPCs Business Process Flow (BPF),
which is: A workflow driven component of BPC:
Which guides users, reminds the users to complete the task, review
the inputs/tasks/data, reminds what to complete, the sequence of
these tasks to execute.
Through email notification, monitoring ability & status tracking, it helps
in coordination.
Real time simulation, helps in early detection of potential issues during
a planning cycle
Integration with Consolidation central solves issues by working out;
Opening Balance, Closing Balance, Reclassification figures, which were
not possible from Consolidation central alone. So the entire set of
tasks for a month-end process or year end process or Actual
submission or Forecast submission or Budget Submission can be done
from BPF window, seamlessly and efficiently.
The tool can be used for user assignment to specific tasks & assigning
authorizations to these users, within the scope of a particular
forecasting cycle.
The concept of Data Locking from previous SAP Planning tool (BPS or
IP) has been provides in BPC, as part of BPF component.
Detailed report delivery & Work status integration are some of the
essential features, which provided completeness.









SAP BPC Activity flow
An overview!
By Corporate Performance Intelligence
Large part of professional life; I continued to wonder what is the difference
between Planning and Forecasting? How are they different? Asked many and
never found a suitable answer, until I studied chartered accounting. Answer
is not much. Planning is a combined terminology used for the Monthly &
Quarterly process of Forecasting and annual process of Budgeting. Just a
term, thats all.
There is a BIG difference between BPC and all other planning tools, SAP has
ever produced, in terms of features, in terms of technical options, in terms
of data granularity with which planning can be done, seamless integration
between planning functions, integration of planning & consolidation, and
most importantly empowerment of the business departments to manage the
planning process, without being too dependent on the project/support
teams. BPC V10 is just an incredible tool, in my opinion. Perfectly
designed/fits to the need of large, complex, matrix and global organization.
Having said that; it also accommodates the need of SMEs, also quite easily.
So first thing comes into mind; what exactly is done in BPC? Answer
is Financial Planning of organizations. And in order to work out the
financial planning; process has to touch upon other plannings such as Sales
Planning, Inventory Planning, Manufacturing planning.name it
If I have to quickly list, activities takes place in BPC at a high level
Load data (actual from previous year, Forecast/Budget data from
previous year) in BW from source systems or ERP systems or external
systems
Transform the data / prepare the data in BW, in a format required by
BPC
Import the data into BPC and prepare the same by adding versioning,
allocation, top down, bottom up, type of data processing
Submit the final version of the data in various models or functions
such as HR, Overheads, Project systems etc
Transform (Smoothing process to make the data accurate & reflect a
true view of internal & external business situation/condition) the data
using Script Logics or ABAP BADI using DATA PACKAGES.
Version /Label the dataset such as Initial version, working version,
optimal version, pessimistic version, or other choose time based
versions etcbefore using them further.
Once the initial versions of dataset are prepared, there comes the
need of script logic, which are required to help in the copy process, to
apply various seasonality, to reflect external conditions in the plan
data, to calculate various rebates, discounts & offers etc, Anything that
your company participates in a normal business scenario can be
integrated into the plan data, automatically using script logics. Script
logics can also be used for on-the-fly-calculation (real-time) nature
and also for obvious/automatic data transformations such as currency
transformation, consolidation etc at a chosen/scheduled time.
TRANSFER / REFERENCE the data between various model to help with
granular/aggregated planning and finally to the central model, where
these data is applied to the financial statements such as P/L account.
Check the correctness of the data by doing few tests and running few
calculations, accessing the projections WRT the previous financial
years and current state of the Actual world with respect to the running
Budget/Forecast. Make amendments if necessary (APPLY: trend
analysis, apply a top-down number, incrementing numbers based on
micro/micro economic conditions of the market etc etc).
Submit the final version of Budget/Forecast.
Retract the data into BW or ECC if required for further processing and
reporting purpose.
At this point in time, all types (Actual, Budget, Forecast) & up-to-date
data is available in BW centrally. And BW is a data warehousing
system, which takes care of all complex enterprise reporting needs,
very easily with its array of tool-sets; such as: Business Objects
(WEBI, Crystal Reports, and Dashboard), BW-BEX, BW-WAD, Portal,
and Enterprise Portal.
Manage the submitted Budget/Forecast regularly; by comparing it with
various internal & external influencing factors.
Process for forecast is repeated once in every month or once in every
quarter depending on the need of the organization.
Process of Budgeting is repeated once in every year, for the next year.





Some important SAP BPC
Transaction codes
By Corporate Performance Intelligence
BPC TRANSACTIONS:
1. UJ00 ::BPC Configuration
2. UJFS :: File Service
3. UJBR :: P&C: Backup & Restore Tool
4. UJKT :: Script Logic Tester
5. UJLD :: Auto update msp file upload
6. UJQ0 :: Query Runtime Parameters
7. UJR0 :: Write back Runtime Parameters
8. UJBPCTR :: Transports Create Request
9. UJETC :: UJE Transaction Data Check
10. UJSTAT :: Performance Statistics Report
11. UJUT_DATA :: Unit Test Data Maintain
12. UJ_VALIDATION :: Validation / CONTROLS in BPC 10
13. UJ0_IMG_01 :: BPC Parameters
14. UJ0_IMG_02 :: BPC AppSet Parameters
15. UJ0_IMG_03 :: Model Parameters
16. MDXTEST :: Measure Formula
17. UJA_MAINTAIN_MEASURE_FORMULA :: Measure Formula
BPC TABLES:
1. Table TSTC - List of all transaction codes
2. Table UJA_APPL - Query Technical Name
3. Table TCURR - Foreign Currency Exchange Rates.
4. Table UJR_PARAM - BPC System Parameters
5. Table UJA_APPL - Stores the technical name of the InfoProviders
6. Table UJ0_ACTION - Lists the actions for which you can collect statistics.
7. Table UJ0_EVENTS Displays the list of events that is used in SAP BPC.
8. Table UJ0_STAT_HDR & UJ0_STAT_DTL After the web parameter for
collecting statistics for a model is set to On for a model, statistics data is
collected in Tables UJ0_STAT_HDR and UJ0_STAT_DTL.
9. Table UJU_AUDACTHDR, UJU_AUDACDET, UJU_AUDDATAHDR,
/1CPMB/KIABGAD, and Table /1CPMB/KIGTQAD Activity audit data is
stored in Table UJU_AUDACTHDR and Table UJU_AUDACDET. Data audit
data is stored in Table UJU_AUDDATAHDR, Table /1CPMB/KIABGAD, and
Table /1CPMB/KIGTQAD.
BW TRANSACTIONS:
1. SE01
2. SE03
3. RSA1
4. SE38
5. SE37
6. SLG1
7. SE16
8. SE12
9. SE11
10. RSRT
11. RSPC
12. RSPCM
13. SM36
14. SM37
15. SPRO
16. RSA11
17. RSA12
18. SE19
19. SE24
20. SE09
21. SE10
22. RRMX
23. RSANWB
24. RSD1
25. STMS
26. SM21
27. ST22
28. SU01
29. SU01D
30. PFCG