There has never been a better time to make decisions that will drive value and help future-proof your business especially during this global pandemic. This is especially true for organizations migrating to SAP S/4HANA and adopting next-generation operational structures to work more efficiently and optimize costs.
To that end, Capgemini VMware & Intel have developed a comprehensive consolidation and group reporting solution to help companies elevate their S/4HANA finance processes.
The platform manages complex global requirements and the rapid pace of change while addressing compliance and lowering total cost of ownership (TCO). The result is a solution that delivers unique advantages and enables the enterprise to get the highest value from the SAP S/4HANA environment.
In this blog post, we are sharing the solution we had built and how we tested the Translytic Workload (Analytics + Transactional) with Optane Persistent Memory
THE ISSUE
Every major enterprise needs a smart approach to financial consolidation and reporting. While larger companies with a greater scope of operations have a higher ceiling for performance and success, they are also more exposed to traditional issues around financial bookkeeping.
Today many customers run legacy solutions in legacy systems or prior versions of SAP HANA. This process is error prone and time consuming — not to mention that the hardware architecture can be consolidated. As a result, you end up with disparate technology that doesn’t work as efficiently as it could.
The Group Reporting solution in SAP S/4HANA addresses many of those problems by minimizing data replication and eliminating the need for periodic data extractions to disconnected tools.
THE TECHNOLOGY
It starts with Intel Optane Persistent Memory.
Intel Optane Persistent Memory is an innovative memory technology that delivers a unique combination of affordable, large capacity and data persistence support. It can lower overall TCO while maximizing VM densities and increase memory security with automatic hardware-level encryption.
At a more granular level, a typical 4 CPU Intel hardware has a total of 48 DIMM slots — 24 are populated with DRAM, while the rest of them are populated with Optane Persistent memory.
SAP HANA & Persistent Memory are both enabled for SAP HANA 2 SP03. We launched the hardware in 2019; Intel IT tested Scale Out and Lenovo tested Scale Up HANA and you can compare Value Prop for PMEM based SAP HANA system & Performance can be monitored via Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions . Of course you can also view a live Demo of PMem(Click Reset Data, Data Load & Query Load buttons to run the demo)
In the case of S/4HANA finance processes, HANA Columnar data can now be stored in Persistent Memory which allows customers to write bigger queries, while larger capacities of Persistent Memory allow customers to consolidate workloads. Several OEM’s are offering 50% more memory for same cost. For example, 6 TB all-DRAM SAP HANA system or 3 TB DRAM + 6 TB Optane PMEM HANA system is the same cost.
Which leads us to SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting — SAP’s new strategic product for financial consolidation and management reporting. Available for both SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, this new strategic consolidation software unifies companies’ entity close and group close processes on a single system, facilitating drill down directly to the document level for fast analysis, better decision-making and accelerated financial close process.
Group Reporting solution runs with the latest version of vSphere: 70U2 which supports Intel Optane Persistent Memory. This means customers can deploy a HANA VM once and use it as a template to deploy on any other system.
The secondary system also has another VM which is a copy of the data used for Production Support. This means any bug fixes the developers make can be easily propagated back to the primary system.
You get all the benefits of vSphere, such as Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), High Availability (HA), and vMotion, which enables customers migrate VM’s from one physical system to the other without any disruption. VMware supports Intel Optane PMem with vSphere 6.7 and 7.0
THE TEST SETUP
We tested SAP S/4HANA 1909 Group Reporting with the add-on from Capgemini, Fiori, running on Intel Optane Persistent Memory hardware.
At a high level, these are the process steps and architecture of our test:
- Data Collection into Group Reporting
- Release data for S/4HANA company codes, from the ACDOCA table into the ACDOCU summary table. We used 4800 entries General Ledger Entries.
- Tag Investment and Equity data with relevant activities in order to enable automated Consolidation of Investments postings.
2. Execute Currency Translation
- Run translation to populate group currency values in USD for non-USD consolidation units.
3. Execute Data Validations
- Run standard validations on the released Standard General Ledger transaction data (ACDOCA) to ensure all master data is correctly set up
- Run customized validations to confirm that data in local and group currencies still balances at the trial balance level
4. Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation
- Execute processes to match and reconcile intercompany transactions across company codes prior to automated elimination processing
5. Enter Manual Journals
- Create topside journals in ACDOCU directly
6. Execute Intercompany Eliminations
- Post automated eliminations for Balance Sheet and Income Statement intercompany transactions as per rules
7. Execute Consolidation of Investments
- Post automated journals to eliminate parent/subsidiary relationships at a Consolidation Group level, including partially owned relationships
8. Execute Consolidated Data Validations
- Run customized validations as a last step to ensure that data still balances at the trial balance level and adheres to US GAAP rules
9. Report Consolidated Results
- Consolidated reporting using Fiori, Analysis for Office, and SAP Analytics Cloud
To go into a bit more detail, first we made sure all of the critical components of consolidation were addressed, starting with data collection. Group Reporting brings master data integration and near real-time integration together with S/4 General Ledger data to allow quick loading into consolidation tables, while still allowing visibility to the actual General Ledger documents.
We ran Consolidations when there were 60 concurrent users running Sales Orders, Purchase Order and General Ledger documents and did not find any response time degradation during this process. Normally, consolidations run in an external Datawarehouse system.
We confirmed the ability to run transactional workloads (like financial journal postings, sales order postings, etc.) and analytical workloads, like Consolidation, on the same S/4HANA system, thereby enabling a simpler system architecture and faster time to value. This helps IT Enterprises reduce HANA landscape, which is easier to build and manage.
Then, we set up and executed processes for currency translation, along with custom and standard validations. We also ran the new functionality for Intercompany Matching and Reconciliation.
We then took advantage of the ability to enter manual journals directly to Group Reporting, and we executed customized intercompany eliminations and consolidation of investments tasks in order to get to the final Consolidated reporting, which users can see via either Fiori apps or customized reports using the Analysis for Office Excel Add-In.
THE RESULTS
Our first priority in crafting this solution was to ensure it could provide accelerated value thanks to a reduced implementation time.
In addition, its automated controls, validation checks, and accounting logic are enhanced by detailed audit logs for data changes, allowing for greater compliance and traceability. This means we can provide a comprehensive solution with integrated governance, giving the enterprise full control and transparency over the entire process of financial consolidation.
At a glance, the Group Reporting solution from Capgemini and Intel allows businesses to:
- Consolidate SAP HANA systems with Multi Tenant Architecture
- Multi-purpose your High Availability systems using HANA Active-Active Read enabled and for Analytics workloads,
- Replication of Financial Consolidations data(BPC) into a Datawarehouse system(like SAP BW) no longer necessary since it can be run on bigger Persistent Memory based systems
- Run up to 50% bigger memory SAP HANA systems based on Persistent Memory for the same cost
CONCLUSION
With SAP S/4HANA as a foundation, Capgemini Path solutions for Group Reporting solution using VMware vSphere ensures your company can consolidate its financial results and gets the most value quickly. Built upon Intel Optane Persistent Memory, this solution delivers a new class of technology to revolutionize finances for your enterprise.
Krishna Yalamanchi is a Technical Solutions Specialist at Intel in the Memory Solutions Product Group. He focuses on enabling Intel Optane persistent memory solutions with Hyperscalers, Global System Integrators (GSIs) and OEMs.