We all love familiarity, especially when it comes to things like software and its corresponding user experience. You’re familiar with brands like SAP and Oracle and the solutions they provide within the corporate performance management (CPM) space — so why would you move to a software package you’re less familiar with?
Besides its growing customer base and increasing familiarity within the industry, there are many reasons why those using SAP’s CPM software should consider OneStream and its unified platform. In this blog post, we’ll cover the major reasons why SAP customers should consider moving to OneStream, including…
- OneStream’s understanding of the CPM space
- Doing more with OneStream
- Integrating SAP ERP with OneStream
- Migrating SAP BPC to OneStream
- SAP customers who use OneStream
1. OneStream and the CPM Space
Going back to the subject of familiarity, OneStream is incredibly familiar with CPM solutions and how these applications have traditionally worked together. The founders and creators of OneStream are also the inventors of two Oracle on-prem CPM solutions — Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) and Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM).
As you’re probably aware, SAP has multiple CPM products similar to Oracle’s on-prem Hyperion solutions. These include SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (BFC) and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). They also recommend using their partner, BlackLine, for account reconciliations.
OneStream and their team of professionals have decades of experience in the CPM industry. They understand the problem with having several different CPM products, including multiple points of maintenance, the data integrations as well as process issues that arise because of that.
Which brings us to the next section…
2. Doing More with One Solution
The founders of OneStream are incredibly familiar with all the challenges that come with traditional CPM — improper integration leading to time management issues and data that you’re not sure you can trust.
Their solution was to make CPM software one solution. You can do everything you need to — Planning and Forecasting, Financial Consolidation and Close, as well as Financial Reporting and Analysis — all on one platform. This eliminates the need to integrate multiple CPM solutions and helps bring the office of finance together.
OneStream also includes embedded Financial Data Quality Management, providing validations, audit controls and repeatable processes. This also means that you can directly integrate with multiple GL and ERP sources, including…
- Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Fusion
- SAP R/3, BW and S/4 HANA
- Microsoft Dynamics and others
You can also look forward to features like drill through and drill back, as well as complete audit trails for data, metadata and process changes.
3. Integrating SAP ERP with OneStream
As stated in the previous section, OneStream can directly integrate with your SAP ERP and other systems. This means that if your organization uses multiple ERPs, OneStream can seamlessly connect with and map data from each system, creating a single source of truth so that you can complete integral processes, including…
- Financial consolidation
- Financial planning
- External and internal reporting
- Operational planning
- Analysis
At the same time, you can connect OneStream with other data sources, including SAP sources, such as…
- SAP R/3
- ERP Central Component (ECC)
- A1 (Business All-in-one)
- Business Intelligence (BI)
- Business Warehouse (BW)
- SAP S/4 HANA
- SAP BW/4HANA
- HANA 1.0/2.0
As stated above, you can also drill back to your source data and see the details. You can learn more about the drill through and drill back features in this blog post.
4. Migrating SAP BPC to OneStream
There are many different versions of SAP BPC out in the market, including…
- SAP BPC for Microsoft
- SAP BPC for Netweaver/BW
- SAP BPC for S/4 HANA Finance
Under Netweaver/BW, there’s BPC 11 for BW4/HANA and BPC 10.1. Under S/4 HANA Finance, you have BPC Optimized and Embedded.
There’s also the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), a planning and analytics solution hosted on the cloud, and a new SAP Group Reporting solution which is tightly integrated with S/4 HANA Finance.
So, what you have is a lot of different versions and a confusing roadmap. You should also know that the Microsoft version of BPC (10.1) is “in maintenance,” and the end of mainstream maintenance is scheduled for December 2022. You could migrate to BPC 11 for BW or S/4 HANA, but SAP plans to decrease maintenance efforts for BPC in 2024.
You also could move to SAC, but it hasn’t reached the standards you’re used to with BPC. According to our friends at OneStream, BPC customers are hearing that they should consider a hybrid environment of BPC and SAC until the cloud solution’s functionality stacks up.
You might be finding that this is all a bit much. Something this important to your business shouldn’t be so complicated and confusing. It should be simplified. That’s what OneStream does — it simplifies your processes and solutions into one platform, without all the “end of life” scares. You can also deploy the very same platform in the cloud or on-premises. So you have no pressure to move to the cloud, but it’s there if your organization decides to go in that direction.
Plus, there’s the fact that SAP to OneStream projects have already been successfully completed…
5. SAP Customers Who Use OneStream
OneStream has been implemented at more than 100 organizations who have SAP ERP, and many who previously used solutions like BPC and BFC. These references are available to you once you start evaluating OneStream, so you can hear it straight from organizations who have been through a very similar situation.
If you want to learn more about OneStream and its functionality, download the eBook…
US-Analytics is a full-service OneStream consulting partner. To ensure end-to-end coverage of your technology, we provide a complete range of services: process and advisory, infrastructure, implementations, upgrades and migrations, training, and managed services.
