- Press
- BW 4 HANA, Data Warehousing
- 2 min reading time
Michael May
Review of 2017
The turn of the year is a wonderful time to look into the future of the established and proven SAP group accounting solution SEM-BCS. SAP's current maintenance commitment for ECC 6.0 (incl. SEM-BCS) is valid until 2025 (see SAP Note 1223308). This is the known state of affairs. In recent years there has therefore been a lot of speculation about the future of SEM-BCS.
Release
Now it's official: The SEM-BCS group accounting solution is being converted for the SAP BW/4 HANA analytics platform and will also be further developed on this platform in the future.
What does this message mean?
Conversely, this means that the ECC 6.0 version will no longer be actively supported; EHP 8 will probably be the last enhancement package. Technologically, this step is an absolute milestone! On the basis of SAP BW on HANA, ABAP programming can be used, but without unleashing the full power of HANA technology. However, SAP BW/4 HANA is no longer based on Netweaver technology. Instead, it contains new technical options ("advanced DataStoreObjects" (aDSO)), which will also be processed and used by SEM-BCS on SAP BW/4 HANA in the future. It is expected that the new BCS/4 HANA will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2018 - SAP's obligatory disclaimer applies here (see, among others, SAP Note 2189708).
In the future environment, users will therefore also be able to use the extensive and advanced (programmed) consolidation logic of SEM-BCS on the new SAP BW/4 HANA solution. For all users who want to use a programmed instead of a rule-based consolidation solution, SAP offers BCS on BW/4 HANA as a powerful and long-term usable tool for optimised preparation of consolidated financial statements.
For many companies that have been relying on SAP group accounting solutions for decades, this is an absolute added value, as tried-and-tested and mature consolidation logics that are familiar to many employees are transferred to modern, up-to-date technology.
We are curious!
Sources: SAP Note 2189708 - SAP BW/4HANA Add-On Handling and Usage (as of 19.12.2017) || Saarbrücken Institute for Financial Reporting
