. NET.  WebTV.   The Newton. 

These are just a few examples of how even the best, most innovative, promising technologies can fail…or at least fail to reach their full potential.  It’s not enough that a technology be “cool” in order to get the market to bite.  There needs to be a perceived value that goes beyond the “cool” factor.

This scenario is being played out at the enterprise level with SAP HANA. 

Just two years ago, SAP launched its revolutionary in-memory computing platform and along with it, a marketing and awareness blitz designed to get HANA in the door at as many large companies as possible.  Early presentations and demos from SAP were focused almost exclusively on speed.  See HANA analyze data and provide results in minutes, or even seconds. 

In early 2012, it was no secret that SAP was putting a lot of its revenue eggs into the HANA basket. And in the first quarter of 2012, the financial results weren’t promising when SAP North America missed its revenue projections. Uncertainty resonated throughout the IT and business community: Perhaps SAP had made a mistake counting so heavily on HANA.  Sure, the platform could process and analyze data really fast, but was the price tag worth it?   Could—or would—IT executives justify HANA’s expense for speed?

SAP didn’t give up.  In early 2012, it announced HANA as the basis for a host of business applications.  CO-PA on HANA.  BW on HANA.  BPC on HANA.  And those were just the tip of the iceberg.  Revenue results were better in Q2, and by late in Q3, there were already rumblings of  a much bigger announcement that came at SAPPHIRE Madrid:  SAP Business Suite on HANA.

On the heels of this announcement, SAP finished the year with a strong Q4 and overall growth for the entire fiscal year.  It seemed that SAP heard its customers loud and clear:  Unless HANA was linked to specific business process improvements and achievement of business goals and objectives, it could only go so far.

Today in Prague, SCM 2013, PLM 2013, Procurement 2013 and Manufacturing 2013 keynote speaker Kai Finck, SAP Senior VP of LoB Solutions for Corporate Functions revealed SAP’s plans for revolutionizing its planning technology by running it on SAP HANA, clearly demonstrating that SAP understands very well the necessity of proving HANA’s business value to customers.

Take Faurecia, a global supplier to the automotive industry. The company runs MRP on HANA in the form of an MRP Controller cockpit, which provides updated service level, inventory turnover, open sales, open purchase, and actual inventory KPIs—in real time. 

The results? A reduction in stock and improvement of on-time delivery in a “just-in-time” and “just-in-sequence—“ all critical factors to compete and win in highly competitive industry with a complex supply chain.

Then there’s HSE24.  For Europe’s largest home shopping network, HANA’s analysis speed was attractive but only part of the story.  The company’s head of broadcast and IT, Norbert Paulus, was quoted in a video, saying basically that HANA’s ability to quickly analyze unstructured data from social media sources has empowered the company to know its customers better and respond to market feedback in real-time, thereby protecting its competitive advantage.

For Bayer, the goal was all about simplification.  The global pharmaceutical giant is using SAP HANA to simplify its landscape and reduce data infrastructure cost, reducing the IT burden by eliminating cumbersome batching and indexing processes, and providing users with a simpler experience by giving them access to real time information.

In none of these cases did a company adopt HANA simply because it was faster or to keep up with the “cool,” cutting-edge technology. 

They are leveraging HANA as a driver of cost savings, customer retention, revenue growth, and overall business value.   This is the key to justifying new SAP HANA investments.  And by keeping its eye on the ball, SAP just might outrun its competitors—and win.

Follow the latest from SCM 2013, PLM 2013, Procurement 2013 and Manufacturing 2013 Prague on Twitter at #scm2013

1. Plan and standardize the layout of your SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards worksheets to save you from a debugging headache
2. Less is more when it comes to the complexity of the BEx queries you use in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
3. If you want faster dashboards, look to Query Caching or SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator
4. Uncap the power of writing back to a BW DSO from SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards using Web services and the BPS Function Module
5. Standardize the look and feel of your WebI reports to help promote familiarity of the tool with the business
6. If you want faster WebIs, query strip them!
7. SAP Crystal Reports and BW Publisher is the way forward if you want to use your Crystal Reports in a Publication along with WebI Dynamic Recipients

Find out more about this session and BI 2012 in Singapore.

Chart of accounts best practices 

Determine the scope that the chart of accounts must support:  The scope should begin with US GAAP/IFRS legal reporting requirements.  Management reporting requirements are Geography, Product, Profit/Cost Centers, and Projects.  Tax/Statutory reporting is usually by Legal entity, exclusively.

Design a flexible chart of accounts to accommodate future process and organizational changes.   Size of field – 5, 6, or 7 digits is typical, fewer is better

Leave room for expansion – If values 65000-65999 might represent a specific type of expense, ensure there will be no more than 999 different expenses of that same type in the future

Use sub-ledgers when available, remove embedded dimensions. Ensure optimal utilization of sub-ledger (e.g., Assets) and minimize number of G/L accounts required. Fields used for more than one dimension limit the use of standard default values and complicate reporting by making data difficult to isolate. This also complicates the processing of consolidations and allocations, validation/security rules, and reporting

Avoid using intelligent numbers in the design. For accounts, where intelligent numbers can help to identify a particular account grouping, use both non-intelligent and intelligent numbers for a particular product, i.e.,120xxx for AR.

Avoid using alpha characters – they will create problems in sequencing and sorting data in reports, assigning codes, using ranges, and when creating validation and/or security rules.

Functionally align team members in the chart of accounts design process, as opposed to geographically – this facilitates the aim of developing a standard COA across global boundaries.

SAP-specific chart of accounts best practices

Consider mapping Group chart of accounts (GCoA) to Operational chart of accounts
in SAP ERP.  Ensures accuracy by mapping at source in SAP ERP.

Use condensed form of the SAP ERP operating chart of accounts for
consolidation.  Very large group chart of accounts affect consolidations performance and are cumbersome to maintain.  Keep in mind level of detail required in Consolidation – less is better, typically.

Consider aligning and synchronizing SAP ERP Group chart of accounts with SAP BusinessObjects EPM chart of accounts via SAP NetWeaver BW. Creates systematic updates to chart of accounts in all reporting systems.

Country chart of accounts for local GAAP – Use local chart or map externally?Useful when entities adopt the same operative COA – Multi-national company. Use country COA and maintain Financial Statement items with alternative account number. China Golden Audit can be met in SAP or via external package.

Be aware that the Consolidation system manages retained earnings and net income for the year as independent value items, as opposed to balance amounts used in the FI System, where no post-able corresponding accounts are represented.

Find more information about this session or Financials 2012 in Singapore.

Ross Wilson, Sr. Director of SAP Business Processes for McKesson, a major medical supply manufacturer based out of California, recently shared lessons his company learned as it implemented SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards for financial analyses and KPIs.    There was “standing room only” at his sessions, and feedback from those who attended indicated that the presentation was immensely valuable. 

SAPinsider is delighted that Ross will join us in Singapore, 16-18 October for BI2012.  Here’s just a sample of lessons learned from McKesson’s dashboard project: 

It’s critical to design connections for high volumes/performance, including:

• Query stripping for WebI performance against BW cubes
• BICS connections for Xcelsius 

The company found that using dedicated consulting resources was critical to prototyping success, could focus and drive issues, and brought knowledge of new technology to the organization 

The project team at McKesson worked hard to engage the team in terms of user acceptance testing and RAD (rapid application development) to get requirements.  Their advice?

• Be prepared to show lots of demos and prototypes
• With RAD, multiple iterations on design were expected
• KPI formula definitions required further research and definition 

Building dashboards while building underlying systems (i.e., BW and/or ERP) adds complexity and can lead to project delays

They closely checked the correct versions of SAP BusinessObjects and SAP

• Moved from XI 3.1 SP2 to SP3 to support query stripping
• Had to also install current fix pack (FP6)
• Integration kit issues delayed timingIntegration testing problems with their third-party report bundling solution were further source of delay 
• Installation of SAP BusinessObjects technical upgrade to production required separate scheduling with multiple parties, delaying go-live 

It's important to understand underlying BW data and volumes

• Performance considerations taken into account upfront
• High volume ª BWA and summary cubes needed to get decent Xcelsius performance

To learn more about Ross Wilson's presentation at BI 2012, 16-18 October, Singapore, or to view the program and register, please visit www.bi2012.com/singapore

When I think of accounting, I think of neat ledgers filled with rows and columns of figures that are correct to the penny, and crisp reports that accurately display the financial health of a company at any given moment. And if you ask me how I would describe accountants, I might say that they are very precise, dealing only in black-and-white facts, with no room for shades of gray. 

So when I opened this morning’s Accounting and Tax Newsletter from CFO Magazine, I was immediately intrigued by the headline:  “The Imprecise World of Accounting.” 

According to Hans Hoogervorst, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the math needed to make accounting work is very scientific; however, the various accounting methods, measurement techniques, and reporting standards in place around the world are not. Some of the areas most likely to trip up companies include: 

Asset valuation—should it be based on market value or historic cost? 

Intangible assets—how are they identified, and how should they be recorded on the balance sheet? 

Other comprehensive income (OCI)—how is it defined, and what is its relationship to net income in indicating the performance of a business? 

Clearly, these are questions that must be answered before the math can be applied.  As domestic and global accounting standards fluctuate, and as new standards, such as IFRS, are introduced, accountants and other finance professionals must be able to deal with uncertainty and imprecision.