All about the next release of EPM - what's the story?
With so much happening in the SAP world these days, and so little information necessarily forthcoming, what really is the scoop on EPM? Here's a little bit of an insider view into that world....
The Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) suite of products has gathered some momentum over the past number of months and is picking up speed as we move towards the launch of the next release. What's it all about, though?
A little background
The EPM suite has generally included two focus areas. The first is Financial Performance Management (FPM), which includes the following core products: SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management (PCM), which was originally acquired by BusinessObjects from ALG Software; SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management (SSM), which was acquired from Pilot Software by SAP; SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (FC), formerly Cartesis and acquired by BusinessObjects; the corresponding SAP BusinessObjects Intercompany (IC) too; and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC), formerly OutlookSoft, acquired by SAP. BPC, for those who aren't familiar, is offered on two platforms: the original MS SQL Server platform leveraging MS Analysis Services and also on the SAP NetWeaver platform, which leverages the BW data warehouse layer. Additionally, there is an ETL layer tool (for extraction, transformation and loading) named Financial Information Management (FIM). FIM leverages the BusinessObjects EIM (Enterprise Information Management) tools, specifically Data Services. FIM provides a finance-friendly layer for data movement and manipulation among EPM tools and into EPM from SAP and non-SAP source systems.
The second area of focus for EPM is Operations Performance Management (OPM), which includes Spend Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), and Sales Planning. The OPM suite of products is not governed by the EPM 10.0 initiative you may have been hearing about; the direction of OPM products is tracking separately from the FPM products.
With so much happening in the SAP world these days, and so little information necessarily forthcoming, what really is the scoop on EPM? Here's a little bit of an insider view into that world....
The Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) suite of products has gathered some momentum over the past number of months and is picking up speed as we move towards the launch of the next release. What's it all about, though?
A little background
The EPM suite has generally included two focus areas. The first is Financial Performance Management (FPM), which includes the following core products: SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management (PCM), which was originally acquired by BusinessObjects from ALG Software; SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management (SSM), which was acquired from Pilot Software by SAP; SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (FC), formerly Cartesis and acquired by BusinessObjects; the corresponding SAP BusinessObjects Intercompany (IC) too; and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC), formerly OutlookSoft, acquired by SAP. BPC, for those who aren't familiar, is offered on two platforms: the original MS SQL Server platform leveraging MS Analysis Services and also on the SAP NetWeaver platform, which leverages the BW data warehouse layer. Additionally, there is an ETL layer tool (for extraction, transformation and loading) named Financial Information Management (FIM). FIM leverages the BusinessObjects EIM (Enterprise Information Management) tools, specifically Data Services. FIM provides a finance-friendly layer for data movement and manipulation among EPM tools and into EPM from SAP and non-SAP source systems.
The second area of focus for EPM is Operations Performance Management (OPM), which includes Spend Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), and Sales Planning. The OPM suite of products is not governed by the EPM 10.0 initiative you may have been hearing about; the direction of OPM products is tracking separately from the FPM products.
