Planning & reporting
For a Model Finance Has Started Working Around.
You have SAP Analytics Cloud. It runs. But the models are slow, the allocations are fragile, adoption stalled, and a surprising amount of the forecast still happens in Excel. This is a time-boxed review that says what is actually wrong and what to do first.
Sound familiar?
The symptoms are usually easier to list than the cause.
- A forecast copy or data action takes long enough that people plan their day around it
- Finance has quietly rebuilt part of the submission in Excel
- Only one person can safely change an allocation, and they did not write it
- Adoption outside the core finance team never happened
- Reporting is slow, or the same figure differs between two stories
- Every cycle needs manual intervention that was supposed to be temporary
- The model works, but nobody can explain how a number was arrived at
Each of these is a symptom rather than a diagnosis, and they rarely have the cause people assume. Slow models are more often a grain problem than a volume problem. Fragile allocations are usually logic in the wrong layer. Poor adoption is more often a process mismatch than a training gap.
Packaged engagements
Three sizes, all fixed-scope.
| Package | Typical duration | What is reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Focused Review | 5 working days | One model, one process, one performance problem or one reporting area |
| Standard SAC Health Check | 2 weeks | Planning process, models, data, performance, reporting, security, governance and user experience |
| Deep-Dive SAC Health Check | 3 weeks | Multiple planning models and processes, architecture, integration, performance testing and remediation design |
We ask for access to the tenant, or a representative copy, plus a walkthrough of one full planning cycle with the people who run it. Most of what matters is visible in how the process is operated rather than in the model definition alone.
What you get
A backlog, in priority order.
- Executive assessment with priority issues
- Model and architecture findings
- Performance bottlenecks and their likely causes
- Planning-process friction and workaround analysis
- Data action, calculation and allocation review
- Reporting and user-experience findings
- Governance and maintainability assessment
- A quick-win list — things worth doing this month
- Prioritised remediation backlog
- Optional target-state design where the issues are structural rather than local
The distinction that usually matters most is the last one: whether your problems are a list of fixable defects or a model that has outgrown its own design. Those need very different responses, and conflating them is how remediation projects run twice as long as they should.
What we will not do
Recommend a rebuild by default.
A rebuild is the most profitable recommendation available to whoever writes the report, which is precisely why it deserves scrutiny. In many cases the honest answer is that the architecture is sound and four specific things are wrong with it. Where a rebuild genuinely is the answer, we will say so and show the reasoning.
Related
Where this sits.
- SAP Analytics Cloud — design and delivery, including remediation beyond a fix list
- SAC Planning Assessment — if the question is what the target should be rather than what is broken
- Training — where the finding is that the team was never enabled on the configuration they inherited
Next step
Tell us which symptom is costing you most.
Slow models, fragile logic, low adoption, or a forecast that still lives in Excel. That, plus roughly how many models and contributors are involved, is enough to scope the right package.