BPC in Standard Mode or Embedded Mode - difference

There are many information on the web about different flavors of SAP BPC - Business Planning and Consolidation solution. I wanted to summarize the main differences between the two main favors plus a bit of information about the newest favors. By no means is this blog post intended to provide a comprehensive insight just basic overview and difference between the two. For much more detailed information refer to blogs listed under More information part. This blog is mostly abstract of the two mentioned blogs in there.

1. BPC Standard Model (or Classic): is a planning solution, which has its own functionality that creates and manages cubes in BW. The BPC standard is a planning (means also reporting and consolidation) solution based on BW technology mainly designed to be used by LoB.  The technical BW objects needed (like InfoObjects, InfoCubes, etc.) are generated and controlled by BPC and not directly exposed in BPC. BPC introduces BPC specific concepts different from BW concepts. Thus in the BPC standard model one has to copy over all master data, hierarchies and transaction data from BW to BPC and to align the copied data with the BPC concepts. In this sense thee BPC standard is a data mart solution. To support this the BPC standard’ implemented again a lot of existing functionality in BW although in the BPC way. The BPC Standard is sometimes called as Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver (BPC NW).

2. BPC Embedded Model: is a planning solution based around BW’s IP (Integrated Planning) functionality. The guiding principle of this approach is do not copy the data but use the BW objects and features instead. Therefore, instead of brining data over to BPC (as in the BPC standard model) it is leveraging existing data in BW. By nature, the BW is more IT driven whereas LoB drives in case of the BPC standard model.

The BPC Embedded is sometimes called as BW-IP/PAK (Planning Applications Kit).

Both of these flavors of BPC run on BW – they just use different features of the platform and have different design approaches.

With S/4HANA system there are even more options on how to run Business Planning and Consolidation solution. In S/4HANA “Simple Finance” there is Integrated Business Planning for Finance (IBPF) available. The purpose of IBPF is to leverage ERP objects for consociation. Later the IBPF was renamed to “BPC optimized for HANA” or “SAP BPC optimized for S/4HANA”.

3. BPC Optimized: It is the BPC Embedded version 10.1 installed on the BW engine present in S/4HANA Finance system. BPC Optimized is only available with S/4HANA. Its first purpose is to replace planning functions from FI/CO, which are not there anymore in S/4HANA Finance.

This favor of the BPC is also called, as Real-Time Consolidation (RTC) is a consolidation solution based on the deep integration between SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC). RTC takes both data quality and flexibility into account. It has the privileged direct access to universal journal entries, while leveraging the consolidation capabilities from SAP BPC. Unified staging and storage of finance data achieves high data quality and eliminates redundancy.

4. SAP BCS FOR SAP BW/4HANA (BCS/4HANA or BCS4HANA): although this is not directly related to BPC, the BCS (Business Consolidation) is solution to replace SEM-BCS. It is to support an automation of financial group close (consolidation). The BCS4HANA is a subset of the functionality of software components SEM-BW and FINBASIS related to consolidation.

5. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP BW/4HANA (SAP BPC 11.1 version for SAP BW/4HANA, BPC4HANA): both models (Standard or Embedded) can run in one system. If organization wants, the planning tool to be managed it in the centralized way -> Embedded; if the same shall be running by LoB (users) -> Standard one. That means planning and consolidation functionalities are now together (BI-IP or (BW-IP) and PAK are included in Embedded model now) so SAP calls it “Simplicity” – Simplified BPC.

More information:

Concepts compared: BPC standard and BPC embedded
Practical differences – BPC standard vs Embedded BPC (BW-IP/PAK)