Your experts for consolidated financial statements.
Here you’ll find everything you need on the topic of consolidated financial statements—concise, clear, and to the point.
SAP BUSINESS WAREHOUSE (SAP BW)
SAP BW is a business intelligence tool from SAP that has been continuously developed since 1997 and enables the harmonization and consolidation of data in a uniform database. In addition to storing data, the tool includes extensive data transformation options and also contains integrated components for analysis and reporting. The extensive options for connecting a wide variety of data sources and the data processing options in BW combined with the analysis options have made SAP BW a very central tool in the field of data warehousing.
SAP BW is the abbreviation for SAP Business Information Warehouse, which was also known as SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP BI) for a time before being relaunched as SAP BW some time ago. The latest classic version is release 7.5. The next generation of BW is represented by BW/4, which is technically fully embedded in HANA technology.
Do you need support with the migration? The successor product [successor product name] is now available. Further information can be found here.
Bw4/hana and datasphere
BI PLATFORM
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform (BIP) is a programmable, web-based reporting interface that can pull data from SAP and non-SAP sources.
GENERAL
The BI Platform itself does not have a data storage layer and therefore does not offer data warehouse capabilities. However, it includes several report forms that can be run directly on the platform and can read data from connected systems on-the-fly, such as
- SAP HANA
- SAP Business Warehouse (BW)
- SAP Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC)
- SAP ERP & SAP S/4HANA
- External databases and OLAP sources
The platform runs on a JAVA-based application server that can be installed on various systems. "Single sign-on" options simplify the login process for heterogeneous data sources. The transport mechanism integrated into the solution is used to import reports from the development system into the production environment.
The BI platform is preferably used to store SAP Design Studio and Lumira content. Reports and analysis can be distributed via email using refined processes.
SAP LUMIRA
With SAP Lumira 2.x, SAP is realigning its front-end tools in 2017. SAP is creating a tool that combines the functionalities of Lumira 1.x with the Design Studio. In other words, a tool for self-service BI is being married with a tool that enables complex displays of management reports. Below we give you an overview of the product.
GENERAL
The functionalities of the former Lumira 1.x can be used by the specialist departments without the help of IT, while the functionalities of the former Design Studio generally always require the involvement of IT. What at first sounds impossible has been put on a uniform technical basis by SAP, even if the division of the tool into two components remains - but with the advantage that the results of one area can be used in the other. An example of this would be the further use of an ad-hoc report designed by the specialist department in a complex management dashboard. The two components of SAP Lumira 2.0 are SAP Lumira Discovery and SAP Lumira Designer.
Both components were not simply merged in SAP Lumira 2.0, but also fundamentally revised and improved. It is very clear that SAP is putting a lot of effort into this in order to not only keep up with the strong competition in the front end (e.g. QlikView, Tableau, TM1), but also to be able to offer even more added value.
SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS DASHBOARDS
As a flexible extension of the SAP Business Objects BI platform or the SAP BW Netweaver Portal, this software offers a user-friendly framework for creating interactive, high-gloss reports. SAP Business Objects Dashboards empowers experienced business users to create dashboards using an Excel-based editor. The product's core competencies include a wide range of visualizations, interaction options and the connection of various data sources.
EXCEL BASED CREATION
The biggest advantage of dashboards is that they are relatively simple to create for complex glossy reporting. No programming knowledge is required for this. To create a dashboard, however, the possibilities offered by Excel are used extensively and the visualizations provided are linked to cells. SAP BusinessObjects then creates dashboards in either Flash or HTML5 versions that can be published on the SAP Business Objects BI platform or the SAP BW Netweaver Portal.
SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS WEBINTELLIGENCE (WEBI)
SBO WebIntelligence is used for ad-hoc analysis of data from heterogeneous sources. It enables the intuitive creation of reports directly on the web, i.e. no client installation is required. WebI is part of the BusinesObjects Suite product range.
WebI makes it easy to create formatted reports on the web. Either BusinessObjects universes or direct access to BEx queries serve as data sources. The integration with SAP BW makes it an interesting tool for analyzing and reporting company figures that have been prepared on the basis of SAP BW.
Particularly noteworthy among the functionalities are the formatting options, the simple conversion of tables into charts and vice versa, the independent creation of formulas and calculations and the very intuitive drag & drop functionality for analyzing data according to different aspects.
SAP FC - FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION (BO-FC)
SAP Financial Consolidation (also known by the abbreviations SAP FC, SAP BOFC or SAP BFC) is part of SAP's consolidation suite, SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Solutions, alongside SAP ECCS, SEM-BCS and SAP BPC. This product emerged from the French company Cartesis back in the 1990s and was implemented worldwide under the name Cartesis ES Magnitude. When it was taken over by the BusinessObjects Group, which in turn was acquired by SAP in 2007, the software became part of its product range. Since then, it has been continuously developed in order to offer customers a fully integrated solution for actual reporting and planning, consolidation and reporting that accelerates the closing process.
CONSOLIDATION AT THE CLICK OF A MOUSE
Groups of all sizes around the world use the benefits of automated financial statement preparation for their external accounting and internal management reporting. Instead of starting each consolidation step individually, most process steps, including currency translation, IC elimination and capital consolidation, are carried out in SAP FC at the click of a mouse.
The software is installed separately on a server and can be set up directly on SAP HANA. In addition to BOFC's own reporting, all HANA-capable SAP front-end tools enable real-time reporting of consolidated data. Alternatively, SAP FC can be operated on an MS SQL or ORACLE database. In this case, SAP Financial Information Management (FIM) is used for integration with the SAP Business Warehouse.
SAP SEM-BCS - BUSINESS CONSOLIDATION SYSTEM
Alongside BPC embedded, SAP SEM-BCS (Business Consolidation System) is SAP's consolidation solution that is fully integrated into the BW platform. As the technological successor to the EC-CS and FI-LC solutions, SEM-BCS has a long history and is used by many medium-sized and large companies worldwide.
SAP SEM-BCS is a programmed solution that already contains the rules for mapping different use cases in consolidation. It is now necessary to set the predefined rules in Customizing so that the correct accounts and subassignments are posted. This is in contrast to rule-based systems (e.g. BPC and SAP FC), which do not have a predefined set of rules.
SAP SEM-BCS is a very powerful tool for consolidating company figures into consolidated financial statements. It is suitable for very complex data models and/or diverse business transactions in consolidation. It has a relatively old but very functional interface, which can be accessed either in the classic way via the SAP GUI or a WebDynpro application.
In terms of its character, SEM-BCS can be seen as a kind of continuation of the individual financial statements, but at Group level. It is characterized by
- Logic generates posting documents (debit/credit)
- Data model is based on FI processes
- Rather strict process management for actual financial statements
- Planning processes are more difficult to map (SEM-BCS)
- Automatic currency display
Due to the programmed approach, SEM-BCS is also to be understood as an IT-driven solution. The settings in the system are typically made by IT and not by the business. Changes to the system and/or new requirements are mapped by a CR process and implemented by IT. Reports/logic/master data are stored centrally.
SAP BW-INTEGRATED PLANNING (SAP BI-IP)
SAP BI-IP is an integrative component of SAP BW. It is based on the same databases and utilizes the possibilities offered by SAP BW in general. Read more about SAP BW. The integrated planning component enables data to be entered via reports or so-called entry layouts and stored in BW info providers. SAP BI-IP is the successor to BPS (Business Plan and Simulation), which was originally offered by SAP but is now of very little importance.
SAP BI-IP enables companies to combine actual and plan figures in an integrated environment without having to generate redundant data and manage it in different tools. In addition to the presentation and preparation of actual figures, which are usually loaded from operational source systems, plan data can be recorded directly in SAP BI-IP at the same time and reported together. In addition to recording plan data, SAP BI-IP offers functions for revaluating, enriching, updating and deleting recorded data. A blocking concept ensures that users do not overlap in their entries and thus block each other. The blocking concept can be applied very flexibly to the respective data model and its characteristics. Characteristic relationships can be used to enable validation and data enrichment, as data is usually entered at a lower level of detail than the data model is based on.
The same options are available for analyzing and reporting plan data as SAP BW, from the integrated SAP BEx to other SAP analysis tools such as SAP Lumira, BO Analysis, SAP Analytics Cloud, Crystal Reports and WebI.