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former_member5472
Active Contributor

As we are about to say good bye to FY 2015 and welcome FY 2016, I would like to    re-iterate EPM’s journey for Year 2015 and how EPM’s market share will change in future years. Based on EPM’s road map, I have I have tried to identify knowledge gap that EPM consultants will face.


2015 – Year that was

  In FY 2015, EPM space has been through a roller coaster ride. With advent of 10.1 Classic and Embedded Model, release of IBP (Simple Finance), BI-IP/PAK, SAP Clouds for Analytics and BW 7.5, EPM has come a long way. By Looking at the product timeline below, it is clearly visible that SAP has improved its release frequency throwing a lot on EPM consultants to catch up in a year.


                         


With all these releases, SAP on one hand is addressing market demand but on the other hand, SAP is putting a lot of pressure on EPM consultants to get acquainted with. Here in this article, I call them as “Fields of Play (FOP)”.


                                             




Consultants needs to spend time learning these new FOP even if the requirement is not eminent. Some of them are closely related like BPC10.1, Analysis for Office, BW 7.5 etc. but there are others like Fiori, Predictive Analytics which are not related but may be required in near future. Similarly, EPM Addin and Analysis for office 2.1 may have some similarities but again AO is new for EPM consultants. BW 7.5 was introduced with much more advanced features including features like ADSO, Composite provider, Hadoop Integration etc.

In 2015, In addition to enhancements in Embedded BPC, SAP came up with sFIN 2.0 and IBP which opens up altogether a new avenue for EPM consultants. Since Simple Finance provides integrated business planning directly off of the same transnational database as ECC, enabling real-time planning and actual-plan comparison with drill-down to line item detail. This is probably, SAP’s biggest bet in decades. Quoting Mr. Hasso Platter "If this doesn’t work, we’re dead. Flat-out dead. It’s that simple". This makes lot of sense and one need not be Nostradamus to predict future of BPC. So what does it mean for EPM consultants? What are these new fields of play and the knowledge gap current EPM consultants have.



EPM Market Share- Current Vs Future

Let’s look at how the current EPM market is spread across. Based on some basic assumptions, I have put down EPM market share as below



                                 



Majority of SAP EPM market is concentrated around BPC classic as this is the most comprehensive product in the market addressing both planning, consolidation and reporting needs. However, market is slowly moving towards BPC 10.1 Embedded. Even though Embedded 10.1 is fairly new (Planning only), lot of traction is going on in this space. Based on current road map of SAP, BPC Embedded will have all features of BPC classic (including consolidation, business rules etc.) in FY 2016. We are already looking at some sap notes talking about the consolidation features in BPC 10.1 Embedded. SAP note 2218893 and 2218894 confirms this assumption. Based on these notes it looks like with next release BPC 10.1 Embedded will have basic consolidation features. This takes away the biggest disadvantage of BPC 10.1 Embedded w.r.t Classic.

Secondly, I have put IBP into early adaptors section because this where the future is. IBP has got huge potential as explained in many blogs. It’s needless to say that SAP is heavily investing in IBP and some point of time, BPC Embedded and IBP will converge.

Last, I have put Predictive analytics and BPC into innovators. A consolidated product with integrated features of predictive analytics is few years out but consultants needs to be prepared for these new technologies to have the “First Mover Advantage”. 

For years 2016-2017, the EPM market share will shift towards Embedded and sFIN 2.0 and trend will follow the same pattern going forward.


                                         



EPM Knowledge Gap

Based on predicted EPM market share, majority of EPM consultants needs to get trained in these technologies. Current knowledge gap looks as below:

Module

Future

Technical Background

EPM Consultant’s Knowledge Gap

SAP BPC 10.1 Classic

Embedded

  1. BPC Configuration,
  2. Script Logic,
  3. EPM Reports
  1. Integrated Planning
  2. Bex
  3. Analysis for Office
  4. ABAP
  5. Forecasting Model using PAL
sFIN 2.0

Embedded      ( Planning & Consolidation) in sFIN

  1. Integrated Planning
  2. Bex
  3. Analysis for Office
  4. ABAP
  1. sFIN
  2. ECC Functional
  3. sFIN data Sources, Tables
  4. BPC Embedded
  5. Fiori
  6. Forecasting Model using PAL
PBF

BPC 1.0

  1. IP
  2. Visual Composer
  1. BPC
Predictive Analytics

Integrated with BPC

  1. Predictive Analytics
  1. R
  2. Statistics
  3. Visualization
EPM Addin

Analysis for Office

  1. EPM Addin
  1. Analysis for Office
  2. Lumira
Fiori

Fiori

  1. UX
  1. Fiori 2.0

Conclusion

To conclude, there are new Fields of Play that consultants needs to gain access to. With Embedded, IP, Bex, ABAP will come back into BPC design. sFIN 2.0 will force EPM consultants to get acquainted with ECC functionality to design and develop IBP solutions. This will also give opportunity to traditional ECC functional consultants to learn and implement IBP. Last, EPM consultants with knowledge of predictive, analytics will have definite edge over others. Analytics is next big thing.



Bibliography

  1. http://www.businessinsider.com/sap-founder-hasso-plattner-if-this-doesnt-work-were-dead-2015-2
  2. http://events.sap.com/teched-global/en/tracks?bc=5%2%0
  3. https://www.asug.com/myasug













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