Sneak Peek of New SAP Smart Accounting Functionality-2013 CO Conference

SAP Smart Financials 1.0

We see the next evolution of SAP Business Suite on HANA for Financials in Smart Financials 1.0

SAP Smart Financials 1.0 has new functional features, thanks to the underlying SAP HANA. The is to have

• More granularity for better reporting, and
• Faster close (by removing the reconciliation effort)

SAP Smart Financials is not just a technical change, to implement a good Change Management strategy and high adoption rate is required.

Financial Planning with SAP Smart Financials 1.0

1. The one area which interests me is Financial Planning, Smart Financial data is not available in ERP (as of release 1.0) . This is not a major issue if users report variance in BI. (The release note says the data is stored in BI). 
2. Any processing of financial planning is not supported. This implies users loose 'Integrated' planning scenarios in ERP. It is not good news for clients which use the Integrated Financial Planning feature in SAP ERP.

This above changes should not be a surprise as SAP has been commited on SAP EPM as the planning solution.

To read more about the release note click here SAP Smart Financial Release Notes. Select SAP solutions > SAP ERP Add-Ons > Smart Financials

Comparison of SAP Smart Financials, New GL and Old GL

	Smart Financials 1.0 (SAP ERP on HANA) (2013)	New General Ledger (2005)	Old General Ledger
	Compatible with New GL only
Data Storage	Document tables and line item tables	Document tables, line item tables, indexes	Document tables, line item tables, indexes, has different FI/CO tables
Totals table	None, no inconsistencies between FI documents and totals tables	Yes along with document/line item tables	Yes along with document/line item tables
Views	Tables (index) are replaced by views. View are available for BSIS, BSAS, GLTO, FAGLFLEXT
Special Purpose Ledgers (SPL)	Not available	Available, Can use ‘Ledgers’ concept	Available
Credit Management	Recommends FSCM-Credit Management (FSCM-AR)	FSCM-AR, FIN-AR-CR	FSCM-AR*, FIN-AR-CR
Asset Accounting	New Asset Accounting replaces Classical Asset Accounting	Classical Asset Accounting	Classical Asset Accounting
Constraints	-          Balance Sheet Planning no longer available -          Reports for comparing planning data and actual data in Profit Center Accounting -          Destruction of data or deletion of FI documents (Information Lifecycle Management)

New Features in SAP Smart Financials 1.0

New Asset Accounting: Ledger Approach and Accounts Approach

·         With Smart Financials both the actual values of the leading valuation and the values of parallel valuation in real time.

Line Item Based Controlling with Period Close Optimizations (Enhanced) 

Variance Calculation for Cost Centers (Changed)

·         Option to process the controlling area currency only or both the controlling area currency and the cost object currency.

·         The execution time for processing the controlling area currency only is around half that required for processing the controlling area currency and object currency

WIP Calculation and Results Analysis (Changed)

·         The production orders are valued at actual cost for the selected plant with the defined legal valuation for a single result analysis version

·         Customer enhancement and WIP calculation for product cost collectors and process orders are not supported

·         Multiple valuations is not supported

Variance Calculation for Production Orders (Changed)

·         Accelerated collective variance calculation on production orders compares the target costs (in the form of standard costs) with the control costs (actual cost less scrap cost) of all production orders in the plant, and assigns the resulting variances to variance categories

Smart Financials Reporting (New)

·         Line items reports supported SAP HANA

Integrated Business Planning (New)

·         In the first release of this new planning solution, the development of functionality has been focused on enabling plan data capturing in a very user-friendly way.

·         If further plan data processing is necessary, releasing them to the classic FI/CO plan data tables may be considered in future releases

SAP EPM 10- Matrix Security

I have posted a video here, to demonstrate the Matrix Security in SAP EPM10. You can use multiple dimensions to build you data access profile. This allows administrators to have a complex scenario, and also reduces the total number of data access profiles.

In the video i have demonstrated, how you can create a DAP using a Region and Product combination.

Data Access Profile	Footwear	Apparel	Accessories
VP_Sales	World	World	World
Apparel_Sales	Africa, AsiaPac, Europe	Africa, AsiaPac, Europe, N America, S America	Africa, AsiaPac, Europe, N America, S America
Footwear_Sales	N America, S America	Read Only	Read Only

Is it possible to create a Matrix Profile with three dimensions- Region, Product and Time?

The above scenario will be useful when e.g. a Footwear Sales Manager's role evolves (FY 2015, FY 2016

) and is responsible for apparel and accessories in three year planning cycle. Or a Sales Manager's role will be shrunk  (in FY 2015, 2016) to only Footwear, as the company grows it adds apparel and accessories to a new sales manager.

Link to the YouTube Video

Profitability Analysis in SAP BPC with HANA

If you have a background in SAP COPA (Controlling-Profitability Analysis) and wondered if similar planning can be done in SAP BPC, you will find this article interesting.

SAP COPA is a great tool to collect the actual data, but does not have a good user interface for planning. Users of COPA usually plan in Microsoft Excel sheet and plugin the values in COPA planning templates. This defeats the whole purpose of interactive planning. This is due to the fact the templates are not flexible and cannot be generated dynamically.

In earlier blog we discussed about 'Key Figure' limitation in BPC. 

The other limitation is COPA can have 50 Characters, whereas a BPC Model ('Application' in 7.5 am older versions) can have only 20. An Environment ('ApplicationSet' in BPC 7.5 an older versions) can have 50 or more dimensions, if required we can create multiple Models each with different sets of COPA characteristic (or Characteristic groups) and join them using a common denominator (e.g. a segment).

We have helped clients to address COPA planning limitations in BPC. Contact us to discuss your case scenario.

With HANA, many limitations of COPA using traditional database can be overcome. We will cover COPA+HANA in over next blog. 

Google BigQuery, SAP HANA- Cloud Solutions

Week of May 13th, 2013 was a big deal for SAP and Google. Two major events were held-SAPHIRE in Orlando and Developer I/O 2013 in San Francisco. 

I was lucky to get a Google I/O 2013 ticket, and be on of the 6000 participants. My objective was to learn about Google BigQuery and Google Apps Script.

Both companies are competitors in Cloud based 'Analysis or massive database' , SAP HANA has two product versions 'Appliance ' (Hardware and Software) and 'Cloud'. Where as Google has Cloud solution BigQuery. 

SWOT	SAP HANA Appliance	SAP HANA Cloud	Google BigQuery
Strengths	- Strong SAP Products/Branding	- No downtime - Good for Ad hoc requirements	- Good Enterprise Cloud offerings - No downtime - Good for Ad hoc requirements - Good Developer community
Weakness	- Maybe costs and downtime	- Dependency on AWA (Amazon web services) for cloud storage	- Provides tools, not business suits - some products are evolving (e.g. Data Visualization)
Opportunities	- Increase production adoption - Conversion from Cloud version - Use as database for other applications	- Use as database for other applications - Convert clients with web security concerns - Encourage Developer community to build solutions	- Use as database for other applications (using Compute Engine) - Convert clients with web security concerns
Threats	- Cloud products, and other Appliances	- Google BigQuery, Maybe Amazon	- Maybe Amazon

There were two client presentations on BigQuery - Gamesys and Shutterfly, these clients also use Google Apps Script for data visualization/reporting.

Here are the two Google BigQuery recordings
Big Data Mashups: Enabling Next Generation Analytics Using BigQuery
Here Be BigQuery: Building Social Gaming Infrastructure on the Google Cloud Platform

Another interesting project was All the Ships in the World: Visualizing Data with Google Cloud and Maps, which integrate many Google technologies to visualize real time Data.

I see SAP ideologically now being more open, proving more resources to developers and planning more Cloud based products.

It will be interesting to see how enterprise Cloud database and analysis tools will evolve and their acceptance.

Real-Time Data in BPC

Real-Time data is required for some organizations for tactical Sales & Operational Planning, a good example is FMCG industry.

I have seen requirements in these scenarios,
- New customers added in source system, need to update daily or weekly sales plan NOW in BPC
- Competitive Analysis, need to update this to my sales force NOW
- Month-end, Quarter-end top-end adjustment entered, I have to finalize forecast NOW

There are two issues
1. How to get the data in BPC, and
2. How to collaborate-Real-Time

How to get the data in BPC

If you use SAP BW, you can achieve it with some effort. It's called 'Real-Time Data Acquisition'. This was available in BW 3.5 with restrictions, in BW 7.0 and later versions it got better. You can get Real-Time data from source system using this technology. This is not out of the box solution, customization's and development effort are required.

I am not aware if this can be achieved with BPC Microsoft version, would like to know if you have experienced with this.

How to collaborate-Real-Time

The limitation of BPC is, one has to refresh the report to see the Real-Time data.  In collaborative planning when a team member is updating plan data, others have to wait for their turn to update. When planning portfolio of products and customers, collaboration is slow.

I see a great potential if everyone can see the same data and collaborate Real-Time, just like this Google Drive Real-Time API

Do you have a requirement for Real-Time Planning in BPC?

SAP BPC NW Consolidations Movements in Flow or Account Dimension?

Whats the advantage of flow dimension over accounts?

In my experience is Flow makes things application complex, Account is relatively easier to report and manage.

Account movements are required for many Balance Sheet accounts- e.g. Cash, Fixed Assets. These movements are reported in financial statements in cash flow and disclosure sections.

I believe capturing movements in accounts is much efficient because

1. Reporting is much simpler, no need to remember which flows are valid for which accounts.e.g. Cash account do not need retirements, additions flows dimensions. 
2. If you have flow dimension, then users have to be careful ion which flow they enter data. Overload on Business User.

What's your take?