Questions About BPS v/s BCS

[Former Member]

Hi Gurus,

Currently, I’m in the middle of a BPS project and my client also bought BCS. The purpose of the proyect is to be abble to planning cost center account, and then retract data to the operational system (ECC).

In the middle of those process they also want to make the consolidation of planning data, and the doubt is which the best choice for that task is? I'm a novice in BPS and I haven´t got much knowledge about BCS, and I’d like to know whether you can give me an advice regarding this decision.

I hope you can guide me in this matters.

Thanks in advance

Inge Eichhorns

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You need also to consider whether the organisation structure used for BCS is the same as that used in BPS: (BCS is more targeted at the legal structure f the company.)

You may be able to run eliminations in BPS by writing FOX code to execute them - it depends how sophisticated the eliminations need to be.

Stephen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

That's something that I did´t considered, FOX code...

But, if we already make the elimination in BCS for the real data, we can use the same task to eliminate at the planning data, because we are planning cost centers

Am I right?

Best regards

Inge

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi, you may well be right. I haven't been involved with BCS for 3 years now, and we only ever have had actuals with a legal consolidation structure in BCS. All the plan data is in BPS in a management organisation.

The eliminations we have in BPS are simple, as we are only interested in eliminating at group level, and don't do things like reconcilations between units or eliminations at lower levels.

Regards

Stephen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

I need eliminations of intergroup (intercompany) operations, consolidation of investments, then I think that eliminations are more natural at BCS, because there are many companies involved.

Best regards

Inge

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Following the issue raised by Inge and the answers to it, just another question:

Are all the basic tasks of a Consolidation department covered as standard functionalities of the BCS? When I say "basic tasks" I refer to: elimination of intercompany operations, elimination of markups intercompany trading, re-allocation of amounts in order to populate different P&L structures, etc.

Thanks, of course rewards if helpful.

[Former Member]

Hi Inge,

Actually, it's a typical solution of using BPS for creating plan/budget data and consolidation it in SEM-BCS.

What is your doubt?

[Former Member]

Hi Eugene,

My doubt is what is the best way to consolidate BCS or BPS, and in which case you use one or another.

Thanks

[Former Member]

The right solution depends on the answers to the following questions:

1. Are you planning by company or just cost center?

2. Do you need to perform eliminations?

3. Do you need to run consolidation of investments - COI (relating to partially owned subs etc.)

The value in taking the data to BCS is that you can perform all the accounting related entries relating to 2 and 3 above.. prior to running reports etc. You can have comparison reports with both Actual and Plan data easily. You could also leverage the reports created for BCS just by changing version. However, you would have to configure at least a basic BCS.

If the accounting entries of eliminations and COI are not important to you, then you are really only talking about an <u>aggregation vs. a consolidation</u>. In that case you might be better off staying in BPS.

All the best.

[Former Member]

Hi,

We need to make an agreement in our terms.

Consolidation -- what do you mean under this term? If you are just talking about arithmetical summaring of data of different companies (or profit centers, or whatever) -- just go for ANY application that allows it. In my opinion, BW is the best solution for it. Because BPS is just planning data and has no decent functionality to do it.

If, in addition to mentioned above summation, you need eliminations of intergroup (intercompany) operations, consolidation of investments (as was mentioned by Tara), then in SAP environment you have no other possibilities that using of SEM-BCS yet.

Just remember that BPS in the 2nd sense of consolidation (see above) has nothing to do with it.

There is NO SEM-BCS VS. BW-BPS COMPARISON regarding consolidation.

Hope this clarifies the matter.

[Former Member]

Thanks guys, it was truly helpful yours answers.

Inge