At TechEd 2012 SAP made several pronouncements about the benefits of using SAP HANA in a nondisruptive way to expedite business processes. The conference also was the venue for the SAP HANA Real-Time Data Challenge, in which teams from Bluefin Solutions and Optimal Solutions battled each other to see which team could deploy SAP BPC data sets on SAP HANA more effectively. Optimal Solutions emerged as the winner of the contest.

To learn more about the benefits of deploying BPC data sets on SAP HANA, I asked Dmitry Faybysh, vice president at Optimal Solutions and a member of the winning team at the SAP HANA Real-Time Data Challenge, to respond to a series of questions.

Am I correct in assuming that most of the work for preparing to run SAP BPC on SAP HANA is on the back end? Is a significant amount of configuration or customization necessary to run BPC on SAP HANA?

Most of the work was on the back end. The amount of work to run BPC on HANA was not significant, but you need to know what you are doing. The right configuration will make a significant difference.

To benefit from running BPC on SAP HANA, users first have to implement SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) on SAP HANA. How involved is this process?

The process for implementing BW has not changed, and even putting it on HANA does not really alter the implementation. The challenge for most customers is that BPC on HANA requires the latest and greatest release of BW, and in many cases, we will add a separate instance of the correct version of BW so that our customers can plan accordingly in upgrading their current version.

What technical challenges have businesses faced implementing SAP BW on SAP HANA?

Technical challenges are minimal, mostly due to right sizing.

Could you cite an example of how a company’s finance department became more efficient by using BPC on SAP HANA?

BPC on HANA provides organizations the ability to break down organizational silos between finance, sales, marketing, and operations. You now have the capability to process large volumes of data faster, and BPC on HANA becomes a platform across the different departments, not just finance.

Are there cloud computing solutions available that implement BPC and SAP HANA?

Everyone seems to be getting into the cloud computing game. Amazon, ATT, FIT are a few companies that have a cloud solution for BPC and SAP HANA. It’s really becoming more cost effective and with less infrastructure to maintain. The financial data in BPC is the primary reason organizations are not “running” to the cloud when it comes to BPC.

What concerns about running BPC on SAP HANA have you heard from customers?

The main concern is that it’s new and different. The question becomes: Do we have the right people? The right processes? Both analytics and decisions will happen much faster. Organizations will need the right infrastructure to support it.

What advice would you give to a finance team in a company that has just started to run BPC on SAP HANA?

Bring BPC on HANA to your meetings. It will become the single version of the truth for your organization. It will keep the meetings on point, and more importantly, you won’t lose the moment of someone having to go back and research or investigate the data. Fact-based decisions will happen faster.

Gary Byrne

Gary is the managing editor of Financials Expert and SCM Expert. Before joining WIS in March 2011, Gary was an editor at Elsevier. In this role he managed the development of manuscripts for Elsevier’s imprint responsible for books on computer security. Gary also has held positions as a copy editor at Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based IT market research company, and as an editor at Internet.com, a publisher of content for the IT community. He also gleaned experience working as a copy editor for International Data Corp., a Framingham, MA-based IT market research company. He earned a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Suffolk University in Boston. He enjoys traveling, sailing as a passenger onboard schooners, and helping his wife, Valerie, with gardening during summer weekends. He’s a fan of all the Boston sports teams and once stood behind Robert Parish in a line at BayBank. He felt small and didn’t ask for an autograph. You can follow him on Twitter at @FI_SCM_Expert. His online footsteps can also be found in the SAP Experts group on LinkedIn.

You may contact the author at gary.byrne@wispubs.com.

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