Planning in Microsoft Excel or ALV Grid 

Use

●     Planning in Microsoft Excel

The integration of Microsoft Excel into the SAP system means that the Microsoft Excel interface is linked to the planning functions of Business Planning and Simulation (BPS). You can carry out your initial planning on this interface because it provides you with an overview of all marketing projects that need to be planned.

Planning in Microsoft Excel is the only planning format you can use for hierarchical planning, that is, for planning of a marketing project together with all its subordinate marketing projects, for example a marketing plan together with all its assigned campaigns.

●     Planning in ALV Grid

On the Key Figure Planning tab page, you can process the key figures for each marketing project in an ALV Grid. The data is exchanged with BPS in the same way as when you process using the Microsoft Excel interface. The display in the Marketing Planner is ideal for controlling and adapting your planning data day by day because it provides you with fast access to selected planning data. The functionality, however, is restricted in comparison to that of planning with Microsoft Excel.

 

We recommend that you use Planning in HTML instead of planning in Microsoft Excel or ALV grid.

Specifics of the People-Centric UI

These planning formats are not available in the People-Centric UI.

Prerequisites

You are using a planning profile group where the indicator New KPI flag is not set in Customizing and where the category assigned to the group (marketing plan, campaign, deal, trade promotion) matches that of your marketing project in the Marketing Planner.

 

In the Marketing Planner, you can also manually assign up to ten planning profiles to your marketing project without using a planning profile group. To do so, choose Extras ® Settings ® Key Figure Planning. With the indicator With Subordinate Projects, you can define that you plan for not just the selected project but for all subordinate projects, including those that are not yet opened in the Marketing Planner.

You can call the planning profiles from the Marketing Planner context menu. This assignment is user-specific and is not saved with the marketing project.

 

We strongly recommend that you use planning profile groups instead of manually assigning planning profiles.

Constraints

●     If you require a report for a summarized time level – for example, you have chosen calendar month as the planning timeframe and would like to see a report for the quarter – you must install the function module UPX_DATES_COMPLETE in the SEMBPS02 user exit in the BI system.

●     For a series of key figures, a summarized display over a period of time is not possible, for example, for the processing rate, the success rate, or the response rate.

●     The system does not check whether your total planned values (for example, per period) are equal to or more than the overall planned value.

Activities

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       1.      In the Marketing Planner, assign the planning profile group to your marketing project. This makes the new tab pages appear immediately; you do not have to save your data first.

This assignment is specific to the marketing project and is saved together with the marketing project.

 

If you want to delete one of the planned marketing projects, first delete the planned values in BI and then delete the marketing project in SAP CRM.

We recommend this procedure because a marketing project that has already been planned in BI cannot be physically deleted. By following the recommended procedure, you ensure that when you create a marketing project with the same name as the deleted project, this new marketing project does not also adopt the data of the predecessor.

This procedure is only required for planning profile groups with no New KPI flagselected. If you have set this indicator, planning data is automatically deleted when a marketing project is deleted or when the planning profile group is changed.

       2.      To access the planning profiles of the planning profile group, select the marketing element in the structure tree.

       3.      To do the planning in an Excel sheet, choose Goto ® Key Figure Planning from the menu and select the required planning profile.

You are redirected to BPS where you can enter your plan values in a Microsoft Excel sheet displaying your key figures.

 

If you receive a runtime error message, refer to SAP Note 429183.

To plan directly in the Marketing Planner in an ALV grid, choose the Key Figure Planningtab page and enter the plan values there.

       4.      Save your entries.