Trusted Advisor – A Key Ingredient To Success

/in /by
Lourie_LouwBy Lourie Louw
Solution Architect at Infogility

Don’t fall in the trap of getting the latest fashionable planning tool and then adjusting your planning process to enable a successful implementation. Very often this leads to total loss of confidence in the system and end user resistance. Never forget to consider how a new application will fit into your overall Corporate Business Intelligence (BI) strategy and how it will interact with your existing systems environment.

How do you select the correct planning software?
  1. Always begin with the end in mind
  2. Identify your planning needs
  3. Evaluate your current processes to see if it meets your needs
  4. Identify and define what adjustments are needed
  5. Then look for a planning application that can complement, support and unify your process.

Don’t fall in the trap of getting the latest fashionable planning tool and then adjusting your planning process to enable a successful implementation. Very often this leads to total loss of confidence in the system and end user resistance. Never forget to consider how a new application will fit into your overall Corporate Business Intelligence (BI) strategy and how it will interact with your existing systems environment.

Several Software companies have proven planning applications that might work for you. But lately SAP seems to dominate, as such I will focus their solution offerings. SAP’s flagship planning applications are available on different platforms in the form of Business Planning and Consolidation(BPC) and Integrated Planning (IP) utilizing different underlying interfaces and technologies, in addition several solution versions or releases are currently in use:

  1. BPC for Microsoft – Driven by an MS Excel front end on a Microsoft platform
  2. BPC for Netweaver – Driven by an MS Excel front end on their Netweaver platform
  3. Integrated Planning (IP) – SAP’s first tightly integrated Business Warehouse (BW) planning solution
  4. BPC Embedded – Driven by a MS Excel or HTML5 front end, and an Integrated Planning (IP) backend on a SAP
  5. High-Performance Analytic Appliance(HANA) Platform.
Which release of BPC is right for you?

Sales talk and current implementation fads causes a lot of confusion, which is amplified by Systems Integrators pushing specific products purely because their area of expertise lies in the Netweaver or the Microsoft side or on a specific release.

Don’t get caught up in that, rather focus on what fits your corporate BI strategy, your existing environments and most importantly your planning process. For example if you have invested in a BW system, then the logical choice will be a solution on the Netweaver technology, since it runs on BW and leverages existing data staging.

Other factors to consider are the specific release of the software that’s need to support your planning process. Also specific releases have minimum requirements or prerequisites that need to be met before you can make use of it. For example if you would like to make use of BPC for Netweaver release 10, your BW system needs to be on BW release 7.3 or higher, or if you’re considering implementing BPC 10.1 Embedded release, you’ll need SAP HANA. These minimum requirements might not align with your current strategy, system architecture or budget.

You’ll need a trusted advisor to guide your organization through a potential mine field, but check the credentials of your Solution Integrator and make sure that they have the expertise to guide your organization’s selection.