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With the business content “Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA,” SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) offers a valuable starting point for establishing integrated business planning. The pre-built applications, models, and stories enable quick and easy access to individual scenarios and provide optimal support for the entire planning process. The content package maps integrated business planning using five SAC models with various stories and data actions. The stories contain tables for entering planning data and starters for data actions that execute planning logic. The underlying SAC models represent a multidimensional data model that contains the respective master data dimensions, such as cost center, company code, product, etc.
Learn how to create content versions for business content in SAC
Adapting to individual needs
To use the business content “Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA,” companies must first import it from the content network. Once imported, it can generally be used immediately. However, it is usually necessary to adapt the business content to the individual requirements of the company first. Typical adaptations include, for example:
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Adding attributes to dimensions
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Creating your own dimensions
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Extending the models with your own dimensions
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Adapting the layout of stories
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Including your own dimensions in the tables of the stories
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Adapting data actions
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Creating your own data actions and using them in the stories
Caution when repeatedly importing business content
A key issue when using business content is how to deal with repeated content imports. If adjustments are made directly to the imported objects, there is a risk that repeated content imports will overwrite your own adjustments, resulting in the loss of the changes you have made. It should also be noted that different content packages sometimes contain the same objects, especially public dimensions. This can result in different content packages unintentionally overwriting each other’s public dimensions if, for example, they are imported by different people.
How to prevent content from being overwritten
Repeated imports of business content are sometimes unavoidable in order to use new features and, if necessary, combine them with your own customizations and enhancements. Lifecycle management via a version concept, as available in SAP BW, is not available in SAP Analytics Cloud. Therefore, another solution must be found to safeguard individual customizations.
IBsolution’s best practice approach involves copying the content entirely into a customer namespace, thereby protecting the customizations from being overwritten. This concept has already proven its worth in numerous projects. How it works exactly is described in detail in a white paper, which is available for free download.
Best practice approach is efficient and saves time
This approach has proven to be a very efficient way to create a copy of business content in SAP Analytics Cloud. This copy can then be customized without fear of it being overwritten by subsequent content imports. The process is so flexible that it is not necessary to copy the entire content package at once, but only the parts that are needed at any given moment. Additional parts can be copied later or added to the copies created in the first step. Previously, companies only had the option of recreating the content from scratch, which was very time-consuming. In this respect, IBsolution’s best practice approach represents a significant simplification and time saving.
