The importance of benchmarking and measuring KPIs, doing more with the available resources, and improving the quality of the output cannot be overstated. Whether fast-growing or struggling, all enterprises know that periodic performance monitoring and continuous management are instrumental to their survival.
SAP Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) helps enterprises with the indispensable function of keeping the KPIs in check to allow them to operate with agility and precision. The solution assists an enterprise in aligning the critical aspects of business processes such as planning and budgeting, production control, and financial and risk management.
What Does an SAP EPM Implementation Look Like?
It’s critical for an enterprise to boost its competitiveness by reducing waste, errors, and rework in order to increase profit margins. Indeed, a successful business obtains its competitive advantage by focusing on performance management and empowering key stakeholders to take action to improve various aspects of operational systems.
To that end, here’s what successful EPM implementation looks like:
Seamless Harvesting of Massive Amount of Data
SAP EPM implementation enables real-time monitoring, aggregation, and cross-referencing of data residing in various systems. This data is streamlined, i.e., cleaned and synchronized to expedite readily accessible information and put at the disposal of authorized users, who can make well-informed decisions.
Holistic Visibility Into Enterprise-Wide Performance
SAP EPM software is placed at the intersection of several business modules. It grants organizational entities access to a standard, unified repository for all their enterprise data. So, the visibility into the performance of an organization is holistic, i.e., the full business picture can be ascertained in one view. This means that a business can dynamically respond to changing circumstances.
Real-Time Contextual Information
Using SAP EPM, a business can view performance indicators such as financial and operational KPIs along with relevant contextual information. For example, the enterprise can view quantitative and qualitative information on demand, the underlying drivers impacting the core metrics, and eventually embed these insights into its decision-making processes.
How Does SAP EPM Implementation Prove to be a Key Differentiator?
An enterprise that has implemented SAP EPM becomes efficient, effective, and nimble with a firm grasp of fine-grained information. To sum it up, an enterprise that has implemented SAP EPM can outperform its peers by reducing time-to-information.
And this knowledge forms the bedrock of the following facets:
Business Agility
The agility of a business is determined by its ability to respond in real-time to changing circumstances. The longer it takes the enterprise to notify managers, execute plans, and obtain feedback, the less timely its response will be. SAP ERP implementation helps curb this by improving situational awareness, reducing time-to-decision, and boosting flexibility.
Regulatory Oversight
If an enterprise processes and manages sensitive data, it must comply with all the applicable laws. And EPM solution is a great enabler here as well. It helps businesses meet compliance, auditing, and reporting requirements by supporting a multitude of regulatory standards.
Stakeholder Confidence
SAP EPM empowers business managers, finance teams, and external stakeholders with a single source of truth. This makes it easy for them to operate and take crucial decisions with full confidence in the data that forms the foundation of their decision-making.
Collaboration
The ability to exchange data with others boosts communication and enhances collaboration. SAP EPM is an extremely valuable tool for collaborating in real-time and communicating on data trends and anomalies.
SAP EPM Implementation Challenges
It’s no surprise that implementing such an advanced system would not be easy. But the impact of a robust solution can be felt across functions.
Absence of Planning and Budgeting
If an enterprise doesn’t have a performance measurement system in place—in other words, if it’s operating on gut-feeling and anecdotal data, then it’s severely handicapping its ability to keep up with its competitors. Implementing SAP EPM would help it define financial strategies, budgets, and reports that can be tracked against KPIs.
Fragmented Data and Applications
A common ailment plaguing businesses with burgeoning operations is the proliferation of data silos. The information that’s required to make decisions and take action is scattered across various systems and sub-systems. EPM implementation can help correct this by providing the enterprise with a single repository of information, which is scalable to accommodate any type of data; however, it would require a well-thought-out strategy to achieve this.
Existing Legacy Systems and Limited Technological Infrastructure
How SAP EPM affects an enterprise depends on how well it can interface with existing legacy systems and the level of technological infrastructure currently at the company’s disposal. To that end, especially in a scenario where an enterprise already has an existing ERP implementation, SAP EPM implementation would require well-planned integration and carefully planned change management.
Partner With Groupsoft for Results-Driven SAP EPM Implementation
From KPI-driven planning and forecasting to 360 degrees visualization and budgeting, our SAP EPM implementation paves the way for comprehensive and flexible business intelligence and equally robust performance assessment and decision-making.
We focus on standardizing your data across the enterprise, creating a single source of truth, and bringing you closer to precise, fact-based information that can be utilized at all levels.
We also take into account your existing infrastructure and provide an opportunity to extend them. So, whether you choose to roll out your SAP EPM implementation in a phased manner or as a single project, we ensure that your planning and budgeting efforts are aligned with your overall business goals.
For more information on SAP EPM Implementation, get in touch with us.