SAP is investing heavily in its ERP systems. Many ERP customers decide to use its CPM platform as well due to the proven quality of their current running SAP ERP applications and easy integration between the two systems. Which makes sense, you think, but we want to challenge this idea.
Because SAP has such a broad product strategy, EPM development does not always have the focus. For example, SAP BPC Microsoft goes out of support which means that all users have to migrate to a different product. Let’s see what happened.
The CPM market has been shifting from point solutions to unified platforms that integrate data from multiple operational systems, enable streamlined processes and deliver real-time management insights across these processes.
SAP covers multiple platforms and multiple version on which your CPM runs. They acquired Consolidation and Profitability and Cost Solutions from Cartesius, Disclosure Management from Cundus and Planning (BPC) from OutlookSoft. To use multiple, extra licenses are needed.
Also for SAP BPC there are 5 versions available in the market of which 1 of them is expected to go out of support by December 2022 (BPC Microsoft). These customers have to migrate to one of the other versions (SAP BPC 11.0, SAP BPC 10.1 Standard, SAP BPC 10.1 Embedded, SAP BPC 10.1 Optimized).
Nowadays also unified CPM solutions are on the market, with one solution covering all finance functions and platforms. Moreover, using a non-unified CPM system such as SAP a lot of time is spend on managing multiple products, integrating data from source systems and transferring data between CPM products. Whilst, this time can be spend on analyzing data and supporting decision-making.
More than 100 SAP ERP customers have already chosen OneStream over legacy solutions from SAP, Oracle/Hyperion, IBM Cognos and others.
The migration from SAP Microsoft to other SAP products will be sizable. Also, the new product will look completely different and new training for users is necessary. When dealing with this situation, it may be time to look at some of the newer vendors on the market that produced a unified CPM solution.
OneStream is such a unified CPM platform. The benefit of the platform is that all different finance functionalities will be within one platform. Thus, no need for extra tools for dashboarding, account reconciliation or lease accounting and all in one user friendly interface. Time is saved because the different processes are integrated in one workflow. OneStream also offers a direct drill down from the report to the source CSV file or database, which gives you great transparency of your audit trail. Furthermore OneStream connects seamlessly with your ERP systems like Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, Microsoft AX/Dynamics, JDE and Infor.
OneStream has 3 deployment options, an on-premise option, a hosted option or a cloud option hosted by Azure.
The vendor is developing its platform quickly. In the Marketplace XF partners can offer OneStream solutions for all kind of finance functionalities. On top of that, new self-service dashboards and analytical capabilities have been released, making other BI solutions unnecessary. Making use of these extra functionalities lowers the TCO as there is no increase in licensing costs.
In short the move from SAP BPC Microsoft to OneStreams unified CPM gives you: