After six months, the time had finally come again: the German-speaking user group for the SAP Financial Consolidation product met on November 27 to discuss current issues relating to their closing tool. This forum gives users the opportunity to discuss their own implementations, problems and innovations relating to the tool and to exchange information with SAP as a group.
The farewell approaches
As at the last meeting in May of this year, SAP presented the new state-of-the-art consolidation solution Group Reporting to the working group. It was confirmed once again that FC (Financial Consolidation) will be maintained until 2027 (extended from 2024), major further developments have already been discontinued since the last major release 10.1.
SAP consolidation - a rollercoaster of emotions
Since Financial Consolid ation (formerly known as Cartesis Magnitude, later BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation) was added to the portfolio of consolidation solutions as part of the BusinessObjects acquisition in 2007, SAP's announcements have been something of an emotional rollercoaster.
Initially, it was seen as the new tool of choice for group consolidation, there were attempts to integrate it into the SAP world, butto this day there is still no getting around redundant data storage, which is known to lead to repeated time losses and data reconciliations. SAP FCitself is a powerful application, leaving hardly a customer wish unfulfilled, especially in terms of customizing flexibility and comparatively fast simulation options. For example, how quickly the consolidated financial statements can be calculated in a different currency or with a different set of rules at the touch of a button !
The look and feelwhen navigating through the closing tasks using predefined, interlinked data input reports isalso appealing for company employees, validation logs are clear and allow you to jump to linked reports for direct correction.
What felt like half-baked interim solutions for an efficient IC reconciliation process were recently replaced by anon-the-fly solution, which has further optimized the solution .
Lack of integration into SAP BW and HANA
Despite all the positive aspects, it has become apparent over the years that genuine integration into SAP BW or HANA (without data replication) has not been achieved.
Why not combine the best of all worlds?
With SAP SEM-BCSand FC , SAP has two powerful, highly developed consolidation solutions, each of which is widely used on the market for a reason! Nevertheless, integration attempts in recent years have shown that it has not been possible to fully realize all the advantages of the other solution through further development of the individual solutions .
However, the know-how is there and SAP has presented the market with a new solution that is really something to be proud of. Integration into the new SAP HANA world means that the functionalities of both closing tools are combined and continuously developed further. According to SAP, the new solution should not be inferior to the functionalities of the old solutions.
Résumé and outlook
After several strategy changes in recent years, I often wasn't sure where the path was leading. The step towards a new, fully integrated consolidation solution that runs on the HANA substructure and thus fully utilizes the efficiency of the new database era is the only true direction!
Group Reporting currently already has numerous functionalities, is being used by the first groups (including SAP itself) and will be consistently developed further in the coming months in order to achieve the proclaimed goal of fully integrating all functionalities from the old and new worlds as quickly as possible.
The DSAG working group can do a lot to ensure that S/4HANA for GroupReporting develops into the best possible integrated, standardized and yet flexible and appealing solution. This eliminates the need to choose between good yet limited solutions. The future is a solution that combines the advantages of all current products in one!
I conclude with none other than Aristotle: "We cannot change the wind, but we can set the sails correctly."
S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting - we are on board!
We as CALEO Consulting, Gold Partnerof SAP, are already implementing the new consolidation product Group Reporting at our customers, creating internal representative prototypes, develop a best-practice procedure for the migration of obsoletesystems such as SAP FC and SAP SEM-BCS to SAP HANA, whereby very differently structureddatamodels(e.g. totals vs. delta data storage) areused in relation to FC . Thanks to our many years of expertise in the implementation of both SEM-BCS and SAP FC solutions for customers in a wide range of industries, we are your contact for the smoothest possible migration and a new setup withSAP Group Reporting.
