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SAP BPC – What is Business Planning and Consolidation?

What is SAP BPC?

SAP BPC is a SAP module that provides planning, budget, forecast, and financial consolidation capabilities. SAP BPC meaning Business Planning and Consolidation. It provides a single view of financial and operational data and a unified solution that supports Performance Management processes like adjust plans and forecasts or speed up the budget and closing cycles.

It delivers built-in functionalities for

• Strategic Planning
• Forecasting

There are two platforms in SAP BPC finance. About 80% of its functionality is same except the difference in the back-end. In each platform, there is two version.

• SAP BPC MS (Microsoft Platform) – SAP BPC 7.5 MS and SAP EPM 10
• SAP BPC NW (Net Weaver Platform) – SAP BPC 7.5 NW and SAP BPC 10 NW.

Like any other module, SAP BPC module too holds master and transaction data. BPC in SAP is divided into two components namely “ Administration ” and “ Reporting “.

SAP BPC Overview

For any organization to run a business successfully financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting are important attributes. SAP BPC software provide everything in one package.

• Unified – Planning and Consolidation in One Product. Single application lessens maintenance, enhance data integrity, and simplifies deployment. It also enables flexible planning & consolidation functions
• Owned and Managed by Business Users : – Business users manage processes, models & reports with little IT dependence.
• An open, adaptable application : – Extends the value of your investment in both SAP and non-SAP environments
• Familiar, Easy to use : – It is easy to use and support native Microsoft Office tools (e.g. Excel) and web browsers accessing a central database.
• Align Financial and Operational plans : – It helps to determine financial goals and operational plans with strategic objectives.
• Reduce budget cycle time : – It helps to reduce budget cycle time.

Let’s see each attribute of SAP BPC in detail,

It helps management team to formulate its vision, mission, core values, and objectives. The team develops strategic plans to uphold its competitive advantage in the marketplace. It helps them to answer the following questions.

• What does corporate want to be?
• What to do?
• How to measure what we do?
• What do operating units need to do to achieve corporate objectives?

It is not just a prediction of future results. It is also a plan of actions and expected operations of the organization over the next year. Budgeting is done for proactive management and measurement of corporate performance.

• How to execute corporate strategy at operating unit level?
• How to measure what operating units do?
• What is the quantitative execution plan of operating units?

It ensures performance progress is monitored, problems are anticipated, and continuous improvement efforts are promoted.

• How to measure that we perform towards achieving our targets and objectives?
• What information would help management decision making?
• How to control performance of corporate?

It is the act of predicting outcomes. It is done throughout the year to reflect changes that have occurred both in the internal and external environment. It determines how the internal or external environment impact on the original plans and budgets? The main objective is to provide more accurate information for less risk management planning and decision making.

What is EPM in SAP?

The EPM solution use is widening over the financial divisions. It is similar to CPM (Corporate Performance Management), BPM( Business Performance Management) and FPM (Finance Performance Management). EPM is being used as a unique repository to manage relevant information.

SAP BPC Architecture

SAP BPC Architecture. It uses various business rules and script logics for doing the planning. The key components in BPC architecture are shown in the image below.

BPC Administration

BPC Administration allows administrators to perform maintenance and setup tasks for BPC client applications.

How to start BPC administration

BPC financial administration has two interfaces; a client application and a web interface. The administration action pane lists the available tasks for both interfaces

To start BPC administration

• Open a browser and type http://<server name>/osoft, where <server name> is the name of your BPC server.
• From the Windows Start menu, select SAP > BPC
• From your Windows Desktop, click the BPC icon
• From the Launch page, select BPC Administration
• From the Administration action pane, select the desired task

The console client is a Microsoft explorer-like window. Where we manage items such as application sets, applications, business rules, dimensions and business process flows. The browser client allows to control application set and application properties, as well as maintain BPC web parameters.

Creating a new dimension

Dimensions represent the entities of a business (e.g., accounts, company codes, and categories). They represent the master, text, and hierarchy data for each of the business entities.

It is possible to create new dimensions in a BPC application set. There is no restriction to create a number of dimensions in SAP BPC. These dimensions then become shared dimensions that are available for use in any application within the appset.

Some dimensions are required dimensions. It must exist in all the applications within an application set. While the dimension type determines the default properties to be included in the dimension. It is possible to add additional properties as needed.

Dimension types

Required in each application

• A = Account type dimension
• C = Category type dimension
• E = Entity type dimension
• T = Time type dimension

Required in each application set

• R = Currency type dimension

Needed to validate currencies that are input in Entity type dimension. This may not be part of any applications within the application set

Required for Intercompany Eliminations

• I = Intercompany

It is also possible to create additional dimensions as a requirement

Un = User defined dimension type. For each user-defined dimension, the number ‘n’ will be incremented. For e.g; U1, U2, U3 and so on

Creating Dimensions

Select Dimension Library on the left side. The action pane will display the related dimension tasks.

To create a new dimension, click on “Add a new dimension”.

Similarly, it is possible to copy, modify, process and delete dimensions. While adding dimensions, you need to enter reference type.

Next in this SAP BPC training, we will learn about BPC reporting.

BPC Reporting

BPC for Office combines the power of BPC with the rich functionality of Microsoft Excel , Word, and Powerpoint. With BPC for Office, we have all of the Microsoft functionality we are used to. On top of it documents, worksheets, and slideshows can be linked directly to the BPC database that has Company’s reporting data.

BPC for Office allows to collect data, build reports, perform real-time analysis and publish reports in a variety of formats. You can save your reports so that you can use them disconnected from the database. You can take reports completely offline and distribute them based on user access rights

A sample layout looks as follows

BPC Security

BPC security is managed in Administration Console. There are four key components in BPC security?

• Users : It is used to add users to the environment and manage their access rights
• Teams : You can define a group of users with same access rights
• Data Access Profiles : It enables setting up profiles for tasks to be performed.
• Task Profiles : It is used to set up profiles and enable access to data in models.
• BPC definition or SAP BPC means: A SAP module that provides planning, budget, forecast, and financial consolidation capabilities.
• BPC stands for Business Planning and Consolidation.
• SAP BPC provides you with a single view of financial and operational data.
• SAP BPC delivers built-in functionalities for
• SAP BPC Administration is a tool that allows administrators to perform setup and maintenance tasks for BPC client applications.
• SAP BPC supports Microsoft Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. SAP Business Planning Consolidation for Office allows to collect data, build reports, perform real-time analysis and publish reports in a variety of formats.

We will contact you in the near future.

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Your Guide to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) has gained popularity as businesses recognize the value of reporting, forecasting, budgeting, and planning. This is an application that is designed to handle financial practices on an integrated platform. It supports financial, consolidation, and planning reporting.

Organizations now integrate operational and sales planning and financial planning to attain better control over their business processes. SAP BPC solutions allow companies to restructure and computerize their financial processes. They offer a variety of benefits to businesses that want to integrate their consolidation and planning to allow them to focus on creating growth.

The use of SAP BPC allows organizations to spend more time on activities that grow the business. The solutions are designed to reduce the amount of time and effort that is put into closing books. All the business processes are streamlined and automated to offer shorter budget cycles and better regulatory compliance. This allows operations and finance managers to collaborate in one setting, which simplifies the budgeting process.

Information is vital for decision making within an organization and the SAP business planning and consolidation solutions can allow companies to make improved decision. An organization can base its decisions on the scenario planning and what-if investigation. When all the functions are managed from a single application, it makes it easy for stakeholders to see how external and internal factors influence business projects. This allows organizations to adapt to suit the changes, which helps to lower risk.

Organizations can also benefit from increased collaboration when they apply SAP BPC. The solutions enhance planning and accountability accuracy. These solutions offer a single view of all the operational and financial data. They also standardize the management processes and come up with what-if scenarios that organizations can use to make decisions. Management, statutory reporting, and consolidation functions are all provided from one application. Streamlining business functions helps to reduce risks.

SAP BPC allows companies to reduce their information technology needs. This is because all the budgeting and planning functionalities are carried out in one intuitive and easy to use application. Managers do not have to rely on manual consolidation using a variety of sources.

Employees can also increase their productivity with the use of an intuitive application like SAP BPC. The innovative office computerization tools and perceptive interface can help an organization to improve employee efficiency.

Who Can Use It?

SAP BPC is a comprehensive consolidation and planning software that offers versions for small, medium size, and large businesses. Organizations have to keep up with the changing business environment. Economic conditions are dynamic and businesses have to adapt in order to remain relevant. Conventional financial closing, planning, and budgeting tools and processes are not effective.

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What Is SAP Business Planning and Consolidation?

SAP is one of the leading providers of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It’s better than similar services in its category; SAP even outperforms Oracle ERP . 

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC), one of the top corporate performance management (CPM) systems, is another of its high-quality offerings. It enables companies to create and adjust strategic plans, speed up budget and closing cycles, and ensure financial reporting standards. 

It’s a great module to add to your existing SAP Business ByDesign ERP, letting you consolidate all your business processes into a single all-in-one solution—without significantly affecting your SAP ByDesign implementation costs .

SAP BPC is a planning and consolidation solution that greatly benefits fast-growing and rapidly changing small to mid-market businesses. It delivers operation and financial capabilities, including planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidation functionalities, allowing enterprises to improve strategic planning and results to drive revenue and profitability.

Benefits of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

SAP BPC can be greatly advantageous, directly affecting how your business makes decisions, collaborates between departments, and achieves its goals. Here are some reasons why you should consider adding it to your SAP Business ByDesign ERP:

High Usability

SAP BPC is a single-deployment solution for various planning and financial tasks. These include planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and management consolidations. It has various uses that can increase efficiency in different departments.

Better Decision Making

SAP BPC can provide budget plans, forecasts, and analysis that can help you derive better insights to inform your business decision-making. You can base plans on what-if analyses and scenario planning for better outcomes, as well as assess budgets and forecast models in real-time, adjusting as needed.

Improved Collaboration

Your teams can work together on a single viewpoint in SAP BPC. This lets you break down communication barriers and information silos, improving accountability and work accuracy with it.

Increased Efficiency

Connect your departments to the same data points and processes with SAP BPC, allowing you to shrink cycle times, close the books fast, reduce your forecasting cycle, and accurately align your plans with strategic goals.

Flexible Deployment

SAP BPC is available as both on-premise and cloud deployment. Being able to choose your method of implementation allows you to increase accessibility on your own terms.

Key Functions of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation

SAP BPC helps you create an even more integrated ERP system. Here are the key functionalities that you can benefit from after implementation:

Unified Planning and Collaboration

SAP BPC, added to SAP Business ByDesign, completes an all-in-one integrated software solution for business planning and consolidation. This allows you to save time and reduce errors as you come up with strategies and achieve your goals.

Financial Intelligence

SAP BPC comes with robust financial intelligence tools that enable you to automate aggregations, allocations, and other manual processes. It allows you to speed up planning cycles and identify quick course corrections for every what-if scenario.

Microsoft Office and Web Reporting

SAP BPC can help you engage stakeholders across finance touchpoints and throughout the platform with Microsoft Office and HTML5. It also gives you enhanced visualization with SAP Analytics Cloud.

Management Consolidations

Complete all your financial reporting requirements with speed and accuracy with SAP BPC’s management consolidation functionalities (which include automation).

Budgeting and Forecasting

Generate what-if models and scenario plans to assess your business’s budget suitability in real-time. SAP BPC also lets you build forecast models that you can update and adjust as you go.

Get SAP ERP With Navigator Business Solutions

SAP Business ByDesign consolidates all your business processes into one system. The all-in-one solution meets all your departmental needs, and this is made even easier with SAP BPC.

Find out how SAP Business ByDesign and SAP BPC can fit your business requirements and how you can get started in integrating its modules into your operations.

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Stress, confusion and uncertainty as borrowers navigate Biden debt relief plans

When student loan repayments began last October, Rachel Grace was faced with a painful financial choice: start making payments or drop her health insurance coverage. She chose her loans and has since been crossing her fingers that she stays healthy.

“We’re already all pinching pennies. It was that big health insurance cost every month that I thought was the one place where, at least for now, fingers crossed, I can do without so that I can tackle this loan payment,” said Grace, who is 39 and works in marketing communications in Nebraska. “Of course, that could change in an instant, and that’s scary.”

But this week, Grace got the news she'd been in financial limbo over for months — her federal loans were being forgiven, wiping out a roughly $300 a month payment, under a Biden administration plan to clear the loan balances for those who have been making payments for at least 20 years.

After the Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s sweeping debt forgiveness proposal and a Covid-era pause on student loan payments expired , millions of borrowers have been faced with tough financial choices and a web of new debt relief plans and administrative delays that have left many in limbo over if and when their debt will be forgiven, said student debt counselors and borrowers.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” said Betsy Mayotte, the head of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that provides free student loan advice. “I have seen a significant number of borrowers who have had relief, but on the flip side, because everything has had to happen really fast, it’s also caused some confusion for borrowers and it’s caused some bumps in the road.”

But the effects of that relief are starting to be felt by more borrowers like Grace, something the Biden campaign is working to capitalize on in the months leading up to the election.

Biden’s efforts to provide relief to student loan borrowers has been a top policy priority during his time in office. The Biden administration says it has provided student debt relief to 4.6 million Americans through more than two dozen different programs, including fixes to a pre-existing loan forgiveness program for public service workers, erasing debt for borrowers defrauded or misled by their school and expanding debt forgiveness for people with disabilities.

Last month, Biden proposed additional plans he said would reduce or erase the student loan debts for millions more as early as this fall, an Education Department official said.

But many borrowers have struggled to make sense of what all those initiatives mean for them or see the full benefits as some programs continue to be implemented, said Robert Farrington, who counsels student loan borrowers and is editor-in-chief of the website The College Investor.

“There is a firehose of announcements and new programs and so many various nuances to all of these things. There’s different repayment plans, there’s different forgiveness programs, different lawsuits,” said Farrington. “It’s hard for borrowers to even know what applies to them. It’s so confusing.”

Education Department officials say borrowers who believe they are eligible for debt relief but haven’t received it yet should contact their loan servicer or the department ombudsman ’ s office .

Amid the confusion, the Biden campaign has been seeking to show the real-world impact on borrowers who have received debt forgiveness in its pitch to voters for a second term, a campaign official said. Biden and other top administration officials have fanned out across the country to tout their efforts.

In one instance, Biden visited the home of a former school principal in North Carolina who had $90,000 in debt erased under the public service loan forgiveness program, a decades-old program the Biden administration has made changes to in order for more borrowers to qualify. A TikTok video of the visit made by the man’s son got millions of views.

Still, the majority of voters have said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of the student loan issue — with 44% approving, making it Biden’s strongest area among registered voters, according to an NBC News poll last month. In a separate poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics, just 39% of voters under age 30 said they approved of the job Biden has done on student loans. But like in the NBC poll, it was a higher approval rating than on other key issues.

The campaign official said it will take more time and aggressive messaging to get the attention of voters, whom the campaign believes are not yet paying close attention to the election. The campaign is also seeking to contrast Biden’s policies with those of former President Donald Trump, who has opposed student debt relief programs and actively sought to eliminate funding for them while president.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a close Biden ally, said he expects tens of thousands of additional borrowers to see debt relief ahead of the election as Biden’s programs continue to be implemented, giving the campaign more opportunities to highlight the contrast with Trump’s opposition to such programs, he said.

“Who do you want to put in charge of that program?” Clyburn said in an interview with NBC News. “The guy who refused to implement it?”

Biden “has implemented the program that [Trump] tried to get rid of,” Clyburn continued.

But for the millions of borrowers not eligible to have their debt cleared, they have been required to make payments since October, creating an additional financial strain for many. Around 40% of borrowers who have resumed payments said they are cutting back on spending while 29% said they were reducing the amount they were saving, according to a University of Michigan survey released in January.

The survey found that borrowers who had lower incomes, less education and weaker income prospects were more likely to increase their use of credit to maintain their spending amid the resumption of loan payments.

Others have opted not to make their payments. Around 64% of borrowers who had payments due were current on their student loan payments as of the end of December, according to the Department of Education.

The Biden administration has said it will hold off until this fall on enforcing the harshest penalties for nonpayment, like reporting delinquent borrowers to credit rating agencies and using forced collections.

Mayotte said a number of borrowers she works with have been holding off on making their payments because they can’t afford them or have opted to use the money to pay down higher-interest debt or to invest in high-yield savings or investing accounts until the administration’s nonpayment penalties kick in.

Once that happens, the wider implications of the restart in payments could be felt, but so far it hasn’t appeared to have had a significant impact on the wider economy, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo.

For Grace, who took out around $40,000 in private and federal loans to attend a four-year public university in 2003, she said her monthly loan payments have been a heavy burden on her finances since she first started making them more than a decade ago.

At the start of her career, her loan payments amounted to more than 15% of her take-home pay, preventing her from being able to build up an emergency fund for unexpected costs, like a car repair, and causing her to rack up credit card debt. For years, she said, she had to work a second job on the weekends to cover her expenses.

But her financial picture drastically changed during the pandemic when the Covid payment pause began. Without that monthly loan payment, she said she was able to start building up her savings and pay off credit card debt. Eventually, she was able to buy her first home.

“Prior to that pause, things were pretty dire,” Grace said. “And so this gave me the opportunity to really finally start to catch up. It’s amazing what happens when you don’t have hundreds of dollars month after month going to this.”

Grace said she knew the payment would eventually restart and didn’t take on any additional monthly expenses. But with inflation driving up the cost of everything from groceries to utilities, the resumption of the payment was an even bigger strain on her budget than before.

When it came time for the payments to restart in October on the $10,000 she still owes, Grace was also making a decision about signing up for her employer’s health insurance plan for 2024. She opted to take the risk of going without health insurance to continue making progress on paying down her debt.

With her federal loan payment now forgiven, she knows what she will do with the extra next month.

“I won’t be going to Target with that money, I won’t be going on vacation,” she said. “I will be enrolling in health insurance.”

Shannon Pettypiece is senior policy reporter for NBC News digital.

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Meliá Hotels International: Connecting data from on-premise systems and third-party cloud software with analytics solutions

Explore meliá hotels international’s journey with sap.

Meliá Hotels International is one of the largest hotel groups in the world. It wanted to integrate the data from on-premise and third-party systems with its cloud solutions to enable centralized planning and reporting. The group’s analytics architecture now comprises the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions to meet this need.

data-source connections to the SAP Datasphere solution.

hours to connect a new data source to SAP Datasphere.

sustainability and social KPIs centralized in SAP Datasphere.

Integrating disparate systems to build a business data fabric

Founded in 1956, Meliá Hotels International (MHI) is a leading Spanish hotel group that has grown into one of the largest and most respected hotel chains worldwide. It operates a diverse portfolio of more than 340 luxury and escape hotels and resorts in 45 countries, and it employs over 39,000 people. Several of its brands cater to different areas of the hospitality market, reflecting the company’s strategy of growth and its focus on the luxury and premium segment.

To remain competitive, MHI continues to modernize its systems. Having previously used SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions, the company needed a product with tight integration to both. Additionally, it was important to gain smooth connectivity between the on-premise SAP products and third-party cloud-based software it used, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and its in-house cloud solutions. It wanted to be able to integrate these data sources with its planning and reporting processes. So, the group’s data and advanced analytics department carried out several proof-of-concept projects with software providers.

Embedding advanced analytics into the IT architecture

Meliá Hotels International began using analytics tools more than 20 years ago when it adopted the SAP Business Warehouse application to manage its financial, budgeting, and purchasing information. It gradually upgraded to the SAP BW/4HANA solution that it uses today. The proof-of-concept projects yielded strong interest in the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions to meet the group’s new needs in data warehousing, consolidation, planning, and reporting. It recognized the high potential of these solutions as self-service tools for advanced analytics, especially in the HR and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) areas. The two offerings now form the group’s analytics architecture.

SAP Datasphere offers native integration with SAP BW/4HANA, where financial data is kept. And it enables connectivity and cross analytics with information from SAP and third-party software and reporting tools, such as SAP Analytics Cloud and Microsoft Power BI. MHI has produced an internal HR model in SAP Datasphere and its first dashboard version in SAP Analytics Cloud. With this, the HR department now has a better overview of employee recruitment and training and can more easily analyze and drill down into that data with regard to each hotel. Also, employees can work with the tools they prefer, such as SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office software.

After implementation, the group carried out a project to connect the two analytics solutions with its ecosystem, including the SAP ERP application, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, and the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application, version for SAP BW/4HANA.

IBSap Consulting S.L. supports MHI in the basic tasks necessary to create data-source connections and single-sign-on configurations. SDG Group developed HR models in SAP Datasphere and stories in SAP Analytics Cloud. And AC eSolutions developed sustainability models and stories in SAP Analytics Cloud for ESG annual reporting.

Streamlining and centralizing planning activities

One of the main advantages for Meliá Hotels International of using SAP Datasphere is the centralization of information in one place for planning and reporting. Also, the data can be displayed to users through different service models depending on their needs. By connecting SAP Datasphere with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, the group’s HR master data can be maintained in the data warehousing cloud solution, SAP BW/4HANA.

MHI is developing a global project to assess the analytics reporting in SAP SuccessFactors offerings, including the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, and SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals solutions. The project started with the business content offered by SAP Datasphere and adapted to the group’s needs. The development model created in SAP Datasphere was enriched with data from sources external to SAP SuccessFactors, such as the Cornerstone Talent Experience platform or e-Motiva, to provide timely and current information. In addition, the business connected the model with previously created Microsoft Power BI dashboards to analyze their performance and information.

Accommodating planning activities under one roof

Meliá Hotels International plans to gradually integrate SAP Datasphere into its analytics processes. It’s involving the main business units as part of the adaptation plan and aligning with its supply-side platform evolution. The group hopes to deliver its information-reporting project before the end of the year, based on the development data model and using sustainability data from SAP BW/4HANA. And it’s working to migrate customer relationship management data from third-party software to SAP BW/4HANA using SAP Datasphere. Next year, the main objective is to integrate new business data for self-service models for MHI analysts. The group is also considering an internal control system for nonfinancial information.

In 2025, the group intends to conduct proof of concepts for SAP Analytics Cloud for planning. It will use the data in SAP Datasphere to evaluate the migration from the embedded SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP BW/4HANA to the planning capabilities. For secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) development, it’s hoping to use the planning capabilities to save data in SAP Datasphere instead of SAP Analytics Cloud, allowing the data to be combined with other information types. The group would ultimately like to have all planning activities carried out with SAP software.

After the planned migration of its ERP system to SAP S/4HANA, MHI will be able to connect the management of data loads from the core data services (CDS) views of SAP S/4HANA to the operational data provisioning (ODP) report directly through SAP Datasphere. And it will move group reporting from SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office to the cloud ERP.

Featured partners

IBSap Consulting S.L. has been partnering with MHI for 10 years, developing different projects with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation applications.

SDG Group started working with MHI three years ago, helping the company with a proof of concept for the SAP Datasphere solution.

AC eSolutions, a Spanish company that provides experience and knowledge in data and analytics products and services, has worked with MHI for 12 years.

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12 Major Challenges Facing the Healthcare Industry in 2024

Healthcare was a $4.3 trillion industry in 2021 for the United States alone, accounting for 18.3% of the country’s gross domestic product. From primary care to life-saving emergency treatment, healthcare provides essential services to people in need — and jobs that require a wide range of skills and expertise. As such a large and impactful industry, healthcare faces a host of challenges, from delivering high-quality and equitable care to managing and securing data and supporting its workforce. Beyond that are challenges stemming from government agencies seeking to increase their influence over how those trillions could be better spent and a growing number of disruptors from outside the industry that all want a piece of the pie.

What Are Healthcare’s Top Industry Challenges?

Hospitals and health systems are challenged by maintaining continuous operations, keeping patients safe and ensuring their data is secure. Those challenges come at a significant cost in terms of hiring the right personnel, deploying strong technology and making clinical and business processes efficient without compromising care quality. What’s more, healthcare institutions must do their work while responding to an ever-changing regulatory environment and facing new kinds of competitors that promise patients more convenience or less costly care. So healthcare providers must find a balance between provisioning care that meets the needs of patients and expectations of regulators and maintaining financial strength.

Key Takeaways

• Many healthcare industry challenges stem from a need to respond to external forces, be they from regulators, competitors or cybercriminals.
• Inefficient workflows for documenting patient appointments, submitting insurance claims and normalizing unstructured data add to organizations’ expenses.
• From telehealth to electronic health records, hospitals and health systems face looming questions about how to deploy technology to improve patient experience without further burdening clinical staff.
• Healthcare providers stand to benefit from adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that can offer systemwide insight into operational performance.

Healthcare Industry Challenges Explained

Healthcare comes with the highest stakes: people’s lives. The dozen healthcare industry challenges outlined below cover a wide range of areas. Some are the result of external forces, such as cybersecurity, competition and government regulation. Others stem from internal processes that need improvement, such as inefficient workflows for documenting clinical care or submitting claims. Others, still, may be influenced by internal and external forces, such as the adoption of telehealth or the movement to provide more equitable care. But woven through them all is the common thread of uncertainty: uncertainty about disruptive competitors, the next cyberattack, the future of telehealth services and a whole host of other technology innovations that hold great promise. There’s also uncertainty about how providers can move to value-based care without creating a back-breaking administrative burden — and that’s only one of healthcare’s many regulatory-induced challenges.

Each of these challenges is significant on its own but, together, they create a tough environment. Not meeting these challenges could harm patient care, financial stability and the reputation of a health or hospital system’s reputation. Successfully meeting the challenges requires a proactive approach. Providers must embrace technology that supports their ability to make decisions based on data. They need to foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement and prioritize patient-centered care. Collaboration — both within healthcare organizations and with external partners — is vital. As the landscape continues to change, flexibility and adaptability will be key for successful healthcare providers.

12 Healthcare Industry Challenges

A wide range of challenges impact healthcare organizations and will impact how they provide care, use technology and otherwise do business in 2024.

1. Cybersecurity: The healthcare industry is especially susceptible to cyberattacks due to the volume of personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) that hospitals and health systems store. Research has shown that 60% of healthcare organizations have been hit with ransomware attacks in the past 12 months, while the number of successful attacks targeting the healthcare industry has more than doubled in the same time frame.

It has become crucial for healthcare companies to address their cybersecurity issues because more than financial consequences are at stake: Patient outcomes are affected and, sometimes, it’s literally a matter of life and death. Roughly 80% of ransomware attacks that hit hospitals disrupt patient care, with disruptions typically lasting two weeks. These disruptions often force organizations to divert care to other facilities, which has been linked to increased complications with medical procedures and higher mortality rates.

Meanwhile, the cost of mitigating a data breach in the healthcare industry is more than $10 million, and the potential loss of annual operating income from a single ransomware attack is as much as 30%. With hospital and health system operating margins at less than 2% and still recovering from largely negative margins in 2022, that is a cost few organizations find themselves able to pay.

2. Telehealth: The healthcare industry was quick to embrace telehealth in the early days of COVID-19; in April 2020, its use was 78 times greater than it was two months prior. That said, the gradual return to in-person care coupled with the expiration of the public health emergency, which relaxed many restrictions on when and how telehealth could be used, has led to increased doubt about telehealth’s future.

Currently, telehealth use represents about 5% of all medical claims. However, nearly 70% of all telehealth claims represent mental or behavioral health appointments, which suggests that other medical specialties haven’t fully embraced telehealth use. It’s also possible that utilization will drop in 2024 and beyond given uncertainty about what services Medicare will cover, how much physicians will be paid for telehealth visits and whether providers will be able to prescribe controlled substances in telehealth visits.

Further complicating telehealth’s future matters is the potential for vendor churn. Many hospitals and health systems are nearing the end of the contracts they signed with telehealth vendors early in the pandemic. As these organizations reevaluate the technology they have and whether it meets their needs, the healthcare industry may need to prepare for significant disruption in telehealth.

3. Competition: Brick-and-mortar health systems increasingly face competition and disruption. Standalone urgent care clinics are growing at a 7% annual rate, and today 80% of the U.S. population lives within a 10-minute drive of an urgent care center. (Notably, that total excludes clinics inside retail stores, which number more than 2,500.) The popularity of these clinics comes from convenience, as they tend to be open longer than the typical doctor’s office.

In addition, retail companies that have not traditionally provided care delivery services are getting into the game. Amazon acquired primary care provider One Medical in 2022, both CVS Health and Walgreens have acquired primary care and home health companies, and Best Buy has focused on supporting in-home remote patient monitoring. To top it off, venture capital firm General Catalyst has recently hinted that it may purchase a hospital.

All these moves are poised to have a significant impact on the healthcare industry in 2024 and beyond. Hospitals and doctor’s offices with long wait times to schedule an appointment or to see a doctor may have trouble competing with clinics that have longer hours or are even willing to send a care provider into someone’s home.

4. Invoicing and payment processing: The healthcare industry is especially susceptible to revenue leakage , with as much as 15 cents on every dollar earned going uncollected. The primary challenge organizations face is an inefficient revenue cycle management (RCM) process. Manual workflows are common for tasks such as verifying a patient’s insurance information, obtaining prior authorization, checking the status of a claim and appealing denials. These manual processes are time-consuming and subject to human error, so they lead to added expenses — most notably, in the form of employee time. This contributes to payment delays, which means it takes healthcare organizations longer to get paid for the services they provide. Unfortunately, about 75% of providers use manual processes for collections and, as a result, about 70% need more than 30 days to collect payments from patients.

It is possible to streamline these processes using electronic invoicing and invoice processing , which automatically tracks invoices from the time they are received. This can reduce errors, shorten time to payment and improve a healthcare provider’s cash flow. It’s worth noting, however, that certain claims or prior authorization denials will still require manual intervention.

5. Price transparency: Two U.S. regulations aim to help patients understand the cost of healthcare services and avoid unanticipated bills. First, the Hospital Price Transparency rule requires hospitals to provide both machine-readable and consumer-friendly lists of prices for common services and procedures. Second, the No Surprises Act requires hospitals to provide good-faith estimates of what services will cost and bans out-of-network charges for services provided at an in-network facility.

While organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association support these regulations, they have also noted the strains they can put on healthcare providers. For example, it’s difficult to determine a single, fixed rate for a medical service, as organizations often negotiate different rates with different insurance companies. In addition, creating price transparency tools takes time and requires financial and staff resources that are in short supply in healthcare organizations. Finally, the arbitration process for insurers and providers to negotiate a “surprise bill” issued to a patient is likely to result in lower payments, which could adversely impact the hospitals and health systems that provide the services.

6. Big data: The average hospital system produces 137 terabytes of data every day. This data is valuable for many reasons: It documents the care that has been delivered, it offers insight into a patient’s overall health and wellness, and it provides an audit trail for compliance and legal purposes. The healthcare industry struggles to manage big data because as much as 80% of its data is unstructured, such as free-text physicians’ notes or medical images, and cannot easily be captured in the rows of a database. Normalizing unstructured data to look like structured data makes it more useful for clinical and business decision-making, but the normalization process is expensive and time-consuming when done manually.

Here, data crunching is necessary to convert raw data into a machine-readable format. Key to successful data crunching is knowing the use case, understanding the data sources and documenting the process to help make it more efficient in the future. Data crunching will be an important consideration for the healthcare industry in 2024 as organizations seek to study their data to better understand clinical and financial outcomes.

7. Health equity: The negative impact that economic and social marginalization have on health outcomes was well documented prior to the 2020 pandemic. However, higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 among non-white Americans — coupled with lower vaccination rates — further highlight the healthcare industry’s ongoing struggle to provide equitable care. Other examples include higher rates of death from cancer and higher maternal mortality rates.

In response, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has set five priorities for improving health equity in the United States over the next decade. These priorities include collecting more accurate data about patients’ barriers to receiving care, building the capacity to address disparities in care and making healthcare services more accessible.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that addressing health equity “requires ongoing societal efforts” to remove barriers to care and address long-standing injustices that patients face based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status or other factors. The healthcare industry has an important role to play, but institutions in education, government, public safety and the private sector also need to be involved.

8. Slow clinical workflows: Nearly 80% of office-based physicians and 96% of hospitals in the United States use electronic health record (EHR) systems. This is a significant increase from less than 20% of physicians in 2001, influenced largely by federal reimbursements allocated in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. In terms of clinical workflow, EHR systems appear to come with both yin and yang. They have improved care delivery by streamlining note-taking, improving decision-making and providing reminders and alerts to clinical staff. However, multiple features of EHR systems have been linked to an adverse impact on clinical workflows, ranging from long load times to information overload. Clinical staff also spend more time looking at their computer screens and less time with patients, and more time completing their clinical notes or documenting visits to submit bills.

A range of technology innovations have the potential to improve the clinical workflow within EHR systems, including the use of generative AI to automate documentation and make it easier to search for information. The challenge for the healthcare industry in 2024 is to determine the appropriate use cases for such innovations — and ensure that using them does not further distract clinical staff during patient visits.

9. Provider shortages: The healthcare industry faces a significant shortage of qualified professionals to deliver care. The Association of American Medical Colleges has projected a total shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034. Meanwhile, a 2023 analysis of data from the 2022 National Nursing Workforce Survey showed that more than 610,000 experienced registered nurses — nearly one-third of nurses in the U.S. — are considering leaving their jobs in the next five years due to stress directly linked to the pandemic.

Several factors contribute to these expected shortages. Chief among them is burnout, fueled by a combination of increased workloads during the pandemic and the growing number of administrative tasks that clinical staff are forced to complete. Additionally, nearly 45% of physicians are over the age of 55; as these physicians reach retirement age, there are not enough medical school and residency program graduates to replace them.

The shortage of physicians and nurses is hitting rural areas of the United States especially hard. Nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed since 2005 and another 600 are at risk of closing, in part because they struggle to compete with the higher salaries and better working conditions of suburban and urban hospitals. This will have a significant impact on the healthcare industry in 2024 and beyond. Patients in rural areas will have to travel farther to get the care they need, which contributes to poorer health outcomes.

10. Patient experience: Slow clinical workflows and provider shortages have contributed to declining satisfaction with the patient experience. Also bringing down patient experience are long wait times — nearly a month (26 days), on average, between scheduling a new-patient appointment and the appointment date — and persistent manual processes for managing appointments, renewing medications and discussing test results. These increase the likelihood that a patient will switch doctors, which leads to lost revenue and hurts the reputation of a hospital or health system.

The healthcare industry will continue to respond to these challenges in 2024 through physical changes, such as state-of-the-art facilities, and a range of technology offerings. Self-scheduling capabilities, automated reminders, digital check-in and real-time payments are some examples of technologies that can improve the patient experience. Increasing the level of care provided in the home, whether through home visits or telehealth appointments, can also help.

For many organizations, these are large-scale changes. Leaders must ensure that new technologies or workflows to improve the patient experience do not adversely impact the experience of clinical staff, who are already feeling overwhelmed.

11. Move to value-based care: CMS has set ambitious goals for transitioning the healthcare industry to value-based care, which reimburses providers based on the clinical outcomes they achieve and not simply on the volume of services they perform. For example, the agency hopes all Medicare beneficiaries and most Medicaid beneficiaries will be enrolled in value-based programs by 2030.

Healthcare providers face two core challenges in achieving this goal. One is the volume of value-based care models that CMS has created. The accountable care organization (ACO) is the most notable, but there are also separate models for certain chronic conditions, prescription drugs and medical procedures, as well as models for specific types of Medicare and Medicaid health plans. A patient seen by a hospital or health system could conceivably be part of multiple value-based care models, which makes it difficult to document where, when and from whom they receive care.

The second challenge is the amount of documentation required to demonstrate value. There are several components of quality care, including safety, equity, timeliness and cost. Organizations must report their performance on these metrics, and many others, to show both CMS and commercial insurers that they are delivering high-value care. This is creating a significant administrative burden likely to leave hospitals and health systems with fewer resources to devote to patient care.

12. Regulatory changes: Healthcare, of course, is heavily regulated, as patients’ lives are at stake. The pace of regulatory change has picked up since the pandemic, partly to give healthcare organizations greater flexibility to provide necessary care and partly to give patients improved access to their own health records — while keeping that information secure. But regulations covering the use of telehealth, transparent pricing, health equity and value-based care continue to evolve. In addition, the healthcare industry must contend with recently passed regulations, such as the information blocking rule (which requires organizations to share patients’ records with them), and new requirements for documenting evaluation and management (E&M) care encounters more accurately.

The healthcare industry is struggling to keep up with this pace of change. Staff need to be educated about the new rules, particularly if their day-to-day roles are directly affected. Legal and compliance teams, meanwhile, need to review and update policies on everything from releasing information to documenting care — and often must sort through multiple regulations that apply to the same process.

How ERP Can Help Solve Healthcare Challenges

While healthcare’s challenges have disparate origins and require different mitigation strategies, a common thread is the pitfall of inefficiency. Manual workflows for submitting claims, departmental data silos, time-consuming processes for normalizing data and outdated practices for engaging with patients all result in healthcare providers operating less efficiently than they could. Furthermore, that inefficiency makes it difficult to provide high-quality care, meet compliance requirements and adapt to competitive pressures.

But unifying data and automating manual processes is where enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems shine. An ERP system can bring together previously siloed data from across the healthcare organization. Through this unified view of data, executives have greater oversight into administrative and clinical operations, while hospital leaders have greater access to the information they need to make informed decisions quickly. Oversight and informed decision-making improve efficiency, which enables high-quality care, reduces costs and sets the stage for growth.

ERP systems support growing healthcare organizations in at least three important ways. First is their easy scalability. Cloud-based ERP systems help organizations deploy a single system across multiple locations without the need for additional infrastructure or resources. Second is unification. With ERP, reporting, purchasing, accounting and many other departments are served from a single platform, removing the inefficiencies and redundancies of managing dozens of different applications. And third is integration with external systems. ERP systems are designed to facilitate that integration, so they can automatically extract data from business and clinical systems, eliminating the need to pull manual reports and getting data into decision-makers’ hands faster.

Adapt to the Ever-Changing Healthcare Landscape With NetSuite

Healthcare organizations must do business in a complex and dynamic environment where it’s imperative to respond to changing market conditions, industry regulations and competitive pressures, all while providing quality care to patients in need and supporting the staff that do this meaningful work. NetSuite cloud-based ERP software for healthcare and life sciences is well-suited to help providers adapt to change through workflow reconfiguration, process automation, real-time reporting and better visibility into data across the enterprise. Leveraging NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) empowers the data-driven decision-making that health and hospital systems need to maintain operations at a time of great uncertainty.

For example, using NetSuite, Ohio-based Crossroads Health , a provider of behavioral health and mental health services, was able to submit stronger applications for grant funding, refresh its annual budgeting cycle and prepare budget reports that are individually tailored to the interests of board members. This has supported Crossroads Health as it doubled in size, expanded into primary care and added pharmacy services even as it managed increases in wages and expenses that outpaced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements.

The healthcare industry faces no shortage of challenges to how it documents, delivers and pays for patient care. Health organizations must prepare to expect the unexpected — whether in the form of new regulations, new competitors or new cyber threats — while maintaining the level of service their patients expect and improving access for those who have been underserved. While there is no single solution for addressing all these challenges, greater visibility into clinical, operational and performance data enables healthcare providers to take proactive steps to meet the heady challenges they face.

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Healthcare Industry Challenges FAQs

What is the biggest challenge in the healthcare industry?

Healthcare organizations’ greatest challenge is adapting to pressure from a wide range of external stakeholders that they cannot control, from government regulators, to competitors in adjacent vertical markets, to cyberattackers seeking valuable financial and personal information. This is a difficult and expensive challenge for organizations that must maintain 24/7 operations while providing high-quality patient care.

What are the biggest issues in healthcare 2024?

The healthcare industry maintains many inefficient workflows. Some, such as processes for submitting claims to insurance companies or sending bills to patients, are largely manual. Others have been automated but remain challenging due to requirements for clinical and administrative documentation. In some cases, such as leveraging big data, the inefficiency is a by-product of the nature of healthcare. Because the bulk of the industry’s data is in unstructured formats, it can be difficult and time-consuming to normalize it for interpretation and analysis.

What are three common barriers to growth in the healthcare industry?

Healthcare organizations struggle to grow due to inefficient workflows that make it difficult to see more patients or pay bills on time. In addition, new documentation required as part of the transition to value-based care and other regulatory requirements has pushed the healthcare industry to add administrative personnel, which means fewer resources are available to hire physicians and nurses. Finally, the healthcare industry must continue to address inequity in access to care, which contributes to poorer outcomes in marginalized and underrepresented communities.

What is a major disruptor facing healthcare currently?

Traditional providers of healthcare services, such as hospitals, health systems and physicians’ offices, face increased competition from retailers, urgent-care providers and direct-to-consumer telehealth providers. These competitors aim to provide more convenient care at a lower cost than a trip to the doctor’s office or emergency room. At the same time, these entities often lack the brand awareness and market presence of health systems that have been part of their communities for decades, if not centuries.

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How to Consolidate Student Loans

Student loan consolidation vs. student loan refinancing.

S tudent loan debt consolidation uses slightly different terminology than what you might see with other debt consolidation loan . This is to help borrowers differentiate between what happens when you consolidate federal vs. private student loans .

• Consolidation . This is the most common term used for federal student loan debt consolidation. All of the loans you choose are brought under one roof with a single payment and one interest rate. You typically get a new loan term while retaining access to federal programs like student loan forgiveness , income-driven repayment and automatic deferment in certain situations.
• Refinancing . When talking about student loans, this usually refers to private debt. Refinancing a student loan involves getting approved for a bigger loan. You then use the proceeds from the bigger loan to pay off all your smaller debts. Now you have a new loan, with a new interest rate and monthly payment. But with private student loan refinancing, you don’t have access to federal student loan programs.

It’s possible to include federal student loans in a private refinance, but you can’t consolidate private student loans into a federal Direct loan program. And if you refinance federal loans using a private lender, you no longer have access to federal student loan forgiveness and income-driven programs.

How to Consolidate Federal Student Loans

When you consolidate your federal student loans, you use what’s called a Direct Consolidation loan. With this loan, you can combine your loans into one payment with new terms.

Start by going to StudentAid.gov and signing into your account. You’ll be able to access the Direct loan consolidation form and begin filling it out. In many cases, you can complete the steps online. Here are some of the things you’ll need to do as you consolidate your federal student loans.

Choose Which Loans to Consolidate

When you look at your record, you’ll see a list of student loans spanning your college career. You might even have older loans from the old Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program and not just the Direct program. For a limited time, it’s possible to consolidate FFEL loans into the Direct program to receive an adjustment that could move up the timetable to forgiveness for some borrowers.

Regardless, you can decide which loans you want to include in your consolidation. You can even arrange to do more than one consolidation if you have Parent PLUS loans and want to take advantage of the double consolidation loophole .

Review your strategy and decide which loans should be consolidated together. Additionally, you’ll need to decide whether to continue online or use the paper application. (For most borrowers, the online method is likely best; for Parent PLUS loan borrowers, it might make more sense to complete the process using paper.)

Choose a Repayment Plan

Next, you can choose a repayment plan. The Department of Education can help you figure out what is likely to work best for you. With a Direct Consolidation loan, you can choose up to 30 years for repayment.

If you’re concerned about the impact on your budget, you can choose an income-driven repayment program. Income-driven repayment, including the new SAVE plan, has requirements, so you’ll need to fill out a request form. The request form is readily available and you’ll be taken through the steps for filling it out.

Once you’ve completed all the paperwork and accepted the terms, submit your consolidation form. Keep making your payments until you receive an update from your student loan servicer that the process is complete on their side and your new payments have been provided.

What About Defaulted Student Loans?

Consolidating student loans in default requires extra steps. Student debt consolidation can help you rehabilitate your loans and get them back on track. Your record on StudentAid.gov can show you which loans are in default. Before you can include them in a consolidation, you need to make three on-time and in-full payments on the defaulted loans. Once you’ve done that, you can include them in your federal student loan consolidation.

How to Consolidate Private Student Loans

The process of consolidating private student loans is usually referred to as student loan refinancing. Getting your private student loans in one place, with a (hopefully) lower interest rate and different term length can potentially lead to more manageable payments. The steps are pretty straightforward:

• Compare student loan refinance lenders. Shop around to see what programs are available and which lenders refinance private student loans. Consider factors like whether they refinance loans from any school, if they offer hardship programs, whether you need a co-signer and what interest rates they offer.
• Get preapproval from three to five lenders. Next, look for lenders that will give you an interest rate quote without doing a hard credit inquiry. You’ll have to submit basic information about your finances and credit.
• Choose your lender and loan. After comparing lenders and interest rates, decide which is best suited to your needs and fill out an application. Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to proceed with paying off the smaller student loans with your new refinanced loan.

Note that, unlike federal student loan consolidation, your credit will be taken into consideration with private student loan financing. You can be denied a loan, or you might be required to get a cosigner.

Pros and Cons of Student Loan Consolidation

When figuring out how to consolidate student loans, consider the advantages and disadvantages.

Pros and Cons of Federal Student Loan Consolidation

• Simplify monthly debts by combining multiple payments into one
• Potentially reduce your monthly payment by increasing the term length
• Improve eligibility for programs like income-driven repayment
• Potentially in debt for a longer time period
• Could pay more in interest over time
• May not be eligible for income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness programs

Pros and Cons of Student Loan Refinancing

• Reduce the number of student loan payments
• Potentially reduce your interest rate, saving money over time
• Potentially help your monthly budget with lower payments
• Must be approved, which means you generally need good credit or a co-signer
• May lengthen the amount of time you’re in debt
• May lose access to federal forgiveness and income-driven repayment programs

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to consolidate student loans.

Consolidating student loans can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. For federal student loans, it depends on how many servicers and loans are involved and whether you submit your application online or on paper. In general, it takes about 60 days to process a federal Direct Consolidation Loan. For private student loan refinancing, the process is usually faster as long as you’re approved.

Should I Choose Federal Student Loan Consolidation or Private Student Loan Refinancing?

Whether you choose federal student loan consolidation or private refinancing depends on your situation and goals. If you have federal student loans and want to make one payment instead of multiple, and you want access to benefits like income-driven repayment, federal consolidation might make sense.

If you have good credit and don’t qualify for income-driven repayment and student loan forgiveness, you might decide that student loan refinancing is worth it to get a lower interest rate and get out of debt faster.

Will Loan Consolidation Affect Credit Toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness?

Depending on the situation, student loan consolidation can reset the clock on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). But if you submit your consolidation by April 30, 2024, you could potentially receive an adjustment that won’t penalize you. If you consolidate your federal loans using private lender student loan refinancing, you’ll no longer be eligible for PSLF.

The post How to Consolidate Student Loans first appeared on Newsweek Vault .

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George leads the Finance Technology capability within Financial Services at Ernst & Young LLP (EY UK) and has more than 20 years experience in delivering change across the finance landscape. He leads transformation programs for clients in both banking and insurance, helping to drive lasting change to their finance operating model.

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• Mike Perera, Global Managing Director SAP, IBM
• Stacy Short, Strategic Partnership Leader, IBM

Cloud-based platforms that enable AI-infused workflows are delivering digital transformation and productivity at speed and scale. Learn how the RISE with SAP offering is streamlining IBM’s move to SAP S/4HANA. Delve into IBM’s transformation strategy to unleash productivity and fuel growth investments in talent, acquisitions, and innovation.

Session PAR298.

• Joanne Wright, Senior Vice President, Transformation & Operations, IBM,
• Simone Porcu, Delivery Partner, IBM SAP S/4HANA Program, IBM Consulting

Business agility demands finance processes that allow you to respond to rapid market changes. Hear how Boston Consulting Group (BCG) modernized and automated finance processes with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to increase efficiency and reduce risk. Learn how the group manages stakeholder expectations, mitigates risk and prepares for the go-live.

Session PAR297.

• Juliet Grabowski, Managing Director and Partner, BCG
• Bill Piotrowski, Senior Partner, Americas SAP Leader, IBM

IBM streamlined its massive SAP S/4HANA migration while maintaining business velocity using the Automated Dual Maintenance solution from smartShift Technologies, an SAP partner. Hear how IBM’s collaboration with smartShift provided the insight to reduce TCO and remediate five million lines of code in a compressed timeline.

Session PAR200 .

• Scott Loose, Vice President of Solutions, smartShift

Liberty Utilities Co., a diversified energy and water company, transformed its business across eight operating companies and functions including customer experience, meter to cash, finance, accounts payable and receivables, treasury, controlling, asset and work management and supply chain. Find out how SAP S/4HANA enabled the transformation.

Session ERP206 .

• Jody Allison, Vice President of Transformation, Liberty Utilities

Find out from our ASUG experts how the SAP Analytics Cloud solution can serve as the nexus for financial planning and analysis (FP&A). Explore the potential of truly integrated business planning and gain insights into orchestrating cross-functional scenarios. Come prepared to participate in the discussion and have your questions answered.

Session ASUG300 .

• JS Irick, Associate Partner, Data Scientist TruQua, an IBM Company

IBM shares insights from its quote-to-cash evolution to support recurring revenue models. Hear how SAP solutions for quote-to-cash management support subscription order and lifecycle management, high-volume billing data management, real-time usage rating, complex sales quote configuration, entitlement tracking and customer care automation.

Session ERP104 .

• Prasad Chenuru, Chief Architect, IBM
• Heidi Zhao, Director Global Solution Management, SAP

IBM experts available to discuss:

• AI and generative AI
• Rapid discovery & business case development
• S4 implementation approach (Greenfield, Bluefield, Brownfield)
• Change management   
• Data and analytics   
• Finance transformation
• Supply chain transformation
• Procurement / Ariba transformation
• HCM / SuccessFactors transformation
• CX solutions transformation
• Clean Core, next-generation architecture, modern integration and BTP
• Cloud comparison for SAP (public, private, hybrid + platform type: AWS, Azure, Google, SAP HEC, IBM Cloud / Power)
• Security transformation
• Sustainability
• Business process orchestration and management (Signavio, Celonis and more)
• Managed services (application and technical)
• Industry innovations / industry intelligent solutions

Chief Architect IBM

Associate Partner, Data Scientist TruQua, an IBM Company

Senior Vice President Transformation & Operations, IBM

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