Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

Applies to:
SAP BPC 5.1, BPC 7.0 MS, and BPC 7.0 NW.

Summary
In the past, planning was very often a static process carried out once a year that intended to form the basis
for the next year’s execution and budgets. Dynamic environments and fast-changing business situations
force companies to think of strategies to react to changing conditions. Rolling forecasting is an ongoing
process that compares the plan with the actual and derives an expected further evolution of the plan figures.
If the deviation between plan and forecast extends beyond a certain range, the strategy has to be
reevaluated in order to take appropriate measures or adjust the strategy. Rolling forecasting, thus, should be
designed in a dynamical manner.

Author: Nilanjan Chatterjee

Company: Satyam Computer Services Limited
Created on: 29 December 2009

Author Bio
Nilanjan Chatterjee is an Associate Consultant with Satyam Computer Services Limited. Nilanjan has more
than 2 years of experience on Business Process and Simulation (BPS) and Business Planning and
Consolidation (BPC).

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 Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

Table of Contents
Dynamic Design for Rolling Forecast ................................................................................................................. 3
System Design ................................................................................................................................................ 3
BPC Admin Tasks ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Designing the Input Schedule ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Disclaimer and Liability Notice .......................................................................................................................... 10

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 Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

Dynamic Design for Rolling Forecast

In the past, planning was very often a static process carried out once a year that intended to form the basis
for the next year’s execution and budgets. Dynamic environments and fast-changing business situations
force companies to think of strategies to react to changing conditions. Rolling forecasting is an ongoing
process that compares the plan with the actual and derives an expected further evolution of the plan figures.
If the deviation between plan and forecast extends beyond a certain range, the strategy has to be
reevaluated in order to take appropriate measures or adjust the strategy. Rolling forecasting, thus, should be
designed in a dynamical manner.
The Rolling Forecast will be done based on the Products, for the Accounts – “Raw Material”, and
“Packaging”. It should also include the member, “Direct Cost”, which is the Parent of Raw Material and
Packaging. The Input Schedule, to be designed, will have Products in the ROW and Time, Account, and
Category in the COLUMNS.

System Design
The simulation of Rolling Forecast can be achieved with the help of an input schedule in which the data for
the actual posting periods should be locked for any further changes and the data for the forecast months
should be enabled for any kind of manipulation.

BPC Admin Tasks

In the BPC Admin Console, create a dimension called Product and maintain few members for the same. In
the Category dimension, create new members in the form of FCST_JAN, FCST_FEB, and so on. These
categories will be used for doing the Rolling Forecast on a monthly basis. Forecasting for the entire year,
done on each month, will be saved in the corresponding categories.

Designing the Input Schedule

Create a blank Input Schedule. On the first cell, A1, enter “=EVDRE($B$6,A17:B24,A27:B33)”. In this
statement, the cell B6 contains the application name, A17 to B24 forms the RANGE and A27 to B33 forms
the PARAMETER.
Specify the Application name in the cell B6. The Structure of the Input Schedule should look something like
below.

Fig - a

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 Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

The parameters of the EVDRE function can be modified based on the cells occupied by the RANGE and the
PARAMETER sections. For the above example, the EVDRE will look like

Fig - b

Keep the Product in the Row. Maintain Time, Account and Category in the Column. Note that the expansion
has been done only on the ROWS and not on the COLUMNS.

Fig - c

For designing the Columns, look at the below screen

Fig - d

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 Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

In the above screen, we have Time, Account, and Category in the Columns. To populate the members for
the Time dimension, a function has been used (highlighted in the above fig). The next two columns (M6 and
N6) also have the same formula to get the same member as in L6. For getting the members in O6, P6, and
Q6, the formula used is

Fig - e

Similarly, the other columns are also populated. In this example, the Column goes till AU (3 columns for each
month, starting from Column L).
In the Row 7 for these Columns, “RawMaterial”, “Packaging”, and “DirectCost” has been hard – coded.
In the Row 8 for these columns, the function which has been used is

Fig – f

Drag the above formula to the other columns in the Row 8.

Considering $B$6 contains the Application Name and $B$14 contains the Current View, the above function
will populate the appropriate Category.

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Note: The current view should not be at the YEAR level (2009.TOTAL). It should be at the MONTH level (2009.JUN,
2009.AUG, etc). This is required, since; the planning will be done on a monthly basis. Based on the month, the
Categories should be populated. So, if the CV is 2009.JUN, Category should be ACTUAL for 2009.JAN to
2009.MAY and the Category should be FCST_JUN for rest of the months. Similarly, if the CV is 2009.JUL,
Category should be ACTUAL for 2009.JAN to 2009.JUN and the Category should be FCST_JUL for rest of the
months.

Next step is to form the COLUMN Descriptions using the Rows 6, 7, and 8. The descriptions will be
displayed in the Rows 17, 18, and 19, using the function EVDES(), as shown below

Fig – g

The same function can be used to populate the description in the other cell too. This step is not mandatory;
however, it gives better view to the Users by displaying the Descriptions instead of IDs.
Let’s define the different parameters in the RANGE section of the EVDRE report.

Fig - h

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 Rolling Forecast in SAP BPC

The “PageKeyRange” points to B7 to B14, where all the dimension members are available. These members
are getting populated directly from the Current View. However, these can also be hard – coded to suit the
requirements.
The “ColKeyRange” points to L6 to AU8, where we have defined the Time, Account and the Category
dimension members (refer to fig c, d, and e).
The “RowKeyRange” points to I20 to I37, where the Row should be expanded.

Next step is to fetch the records from the database based on the appropriate Dimension Members.

Fig - i

To fetch the appropriate records, use EVGTS function in the cell L20 as follows
=EVGTS($B$6,1,$I20,L$6,L$7,L$8)
Where,
B6 – Application Name
I20 – Product Member
L6 – Time Member
L7 – Account Member
L8 – Category Member

Once all these designing activities are done, the Input Schedule can be expanded to populate data in all the
cells.

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The next activity, which can be done, is to give a better view to the Schedule by coloring the different cells.
For this, the “FormatRange” can be used and should be designed as follows

Fig - j

The coloring can be used according to individual’s taste. The formatting has been used for 3 regions
 Default – this formatting will be used for all the cells by default

 Product.CALC = “Y” – this formatting has been used for the parent or calculated members in the
Product dimension

 SalesAccount.CALC = “Y” – this formatting has been used for the parent or calculated members in
the SalesAccount dimension.

The cells corresponding to the Actual Category can be grayed out using Conditional Formatting.

Fig - k

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The same Conditional Formatting can be used for all the data cells. It will Gray out the cell if the Category is
Actual.

The Input Schedule, designed so far, will give you the ability to do Planning / Forecasting of the future
months based on the Actuals of the previous periods. This can be improved further by having Variances in
the Columns, which will display the difference between the Forecast of the current month of current year and
the Actual of the current month of previous year.

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Disclaimer and Liability Notice

This document may discuss sample coding or other information that does not include SAP official interfaces and therefore is not
supported by SAP. Changes made based on this information are not supported and can be overwritten during an upgrade.
SAP will not be held liable for any damages caused by using or misusing the information, code or methods suggested in this document,
and anyone using these methods does so at his/her own risk.
SAP offers no guarantees and assumes no responsibility or liability of any type with respect to the content of this technical article or
code sample, including any liability resulting from incompatibility between the content within this document and the materials and
services offered by SAP. You agree that you will not hold, or seek to hold, SAP responsible or liable with respect to the content of this
document.

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