BW Integrated Planning

As an integrated part of the SAP NetWeaver BW system, BW Integrated Planning enables you to make decisions that will increase the efficiency of your company. In addition to analyses of actual data, you can also use analyses of plan data. These can be analyses of manually entered data or analyses based on historical data in BW Integrated Planning. BW Integrated Planning includes processes that collect data from InfoProviders, queries or other BW objects, to convert them and write back new information to BW objects (such as InfoObjects).

Using SAP Business Explorers (SAP BEx) for BW Integrated Planning, you can build integrated analytical applications that encompass planning and analysis functions.

Planning Model

The integration of planning functions is based on the planning model. The planning model defines the structure (such as granularity or work packages) of the planning. This contains the following elements:

• Data store. All data that has been changed or will be changed is stored in real-time enabled InfoProviders. You can edit the data using real-time enabled InfoCubes, MultiProviders or virtual InfoProviders. The latter also have to real-time enabled however. You can define logical characteristic relationships between the data (such as hierarchical structure, relationships by attributes) on the level of the InfoCube.  Using data slices, you can also protect data areas either temporarily or permanently against changes. At the InfoCube level, version concepts are prepared and hierarchical relationships are defined within characteristics.
• Data selection (characteristics and key figures) for individual planning steps. Aggregation levels that are used to structure or define views on data are defined here. (The aggregation level is the InfoProvider on which the input-ready queries are created.) This allows you to define the processing granularity for the data.
• Methods for manual or automatic data modification. Planning functions here allow you to can copy, revaluate, broadcast and delete data. You can also define complex planning formulas and use comprehensive forecasting functions. You can group planning functions together into planning sequences. This allows administrative steps to be automated and tasks to be performed between various planning process steps, making processing easier to use for everyone involved. Examples include automatic currency conversion between various group units or inserted broadcasting steps for top-down planning.
• Tools, such as filters, that can be used in queries and planning functions. You can use these tools to personalize planning more flexibly. The variables for setting object parameters can also be used. These can normally be wherever selections are relevant, in data slices for example.
• Central locking concept. This concept prevents the same data from being changed by different users at the same time.

Modeling Planning Scenarios

To support you in modeling, managing and testing your planning scenarios, BW Integrated Planning offers Planning Modeler and the Planning Wizard.

The Planning Wizard provides an easy introduction to planning modeling by offering guided navigation.

Planning Applications

In BEx Query Designer, you can define a query based on an input-ready InfoProvider of type Aggregation Level. These queries can be used for manual planning in a planning application.

You can also use planning functions in planning applications, thus automating your planning. To do this, you can integrate the planning functions in SAP BEx applications as pushbuttons. You can also include them in process chains and execute them at predefined times.