The Financial Forecast folder in the Global Sales Business Warehouse (BW) provides self-service functionality to users for loading financial forecast data into the BW cube, for reporting purposes. It represents a functionality in itself, rather than a report. The financial forecast includes data determining how much we aim to sell for each product to which customer, specifying quantity, value, and contribution margin. The primary objective of the financial forecast data is to compare the budgeted figures with the achieved results, identifying gaps in terms of products and customers.
Describe the key User profiles that exist for the application.
General role/Viewer role:
Approver role:
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2.0 Business Process
GBUs define the annual budget at the end of the year, and this budget is considered fixed and not open to alterations. Nevertheless, every quarter, modifications and changes to the budget are made through a separate process and maintained in distinct files. (Note: it's worth mentioning that currently, majority of GBUs rely on Dynasys as their source for budgeting, while in the past, this was a manual process.
GBUs are expected to load their budgets into the BW reporting system, making it visible to reports and dashboards. Access to this process is limited to specific users. Forecast part of the Global sales folder in BW has been developed to support these processes. This application allows to load FINANCIAL FORECAST in BW : BUDGET and BFR (Business Forecast Review).
The loading is done using an Excel file.
The BW transaction to be used is ZBW_SD_PC
Using this transaction, you can enter new forecasts or update existing one and you can load data for both system : WP1 (Rhodia legacy) and PF1 (Solvay legacy).
Forecasts are used after and combined with sales in GLOBAL SALES reporting solution.
Two type of forecast → budget and BFR different frequency upload
Recording
SLIDE 13 is about transformation from files to the reports
Orderbook and forecast ( slide 20
3.0 Application Feature Overview
Loading Forecast Data to BW
This application allows to load financial forecast in BW:
- BUDGET,
- BFR (Business Forecast Review) & MTP
The loading is done using an Excel file.
The BW transaction to be used is ZBW_SD_PC
Combine forecast data with global sales reporting solutions
Forecasts are used after and combined with sales in global sales reporting solutions including orderbook.
4.0 Functional Specification
4.1 General Data/Calculations
This section will approach the concepts/definitions that will be used in all the reports and required to understand the data from the reports.
Could be specific fields, closing activities, additional information to work and understand the reports.
4.2 Process Detail
4.2.1. Report/Process Definition
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This section represents the process with detail information for the application. Can include specific or special cases, complex logics , calculations, flows, among others.
5.0 Non-functional Descriptions
Please populate the relevant section and delete those that are not applicable.
5.1 Usability
Usability is about the ease with which a User can learn to start using the solution and the ease with which they can use the system. In addition to ease of learning and ease of use, usability also includes areas such as ease of recall, error avoidance and handling, accessibility among others e.g., 99% of metadata entry Users who have use the Maintenance Dashboard should be able to change filters, extract etc., when required. Maintenance data will be centrally stored in the Google Cloud platform, which will be available to other applications e.g., and Dashboards if needed.
5.2 Regulatory Compliance
Software systems must comply with legal and regulatory e.g., GDPR requirements, this can change depending on country, organisation industry and / or region. The software systems must be secure from unauthorized access. The Maintenance Dashboard will comply with Solvay’s regulations and compliance e.g., access only granted to authorized Users.
5.3 Security
Security refers to essential aspects that assure a solution and its components will be protected against unauthorized access or malware attacks. Important considerations related to security aspects of a system are User authentication, User authorization or User access privileges, data theft, malware attacks, data encryption, and maintaining audit trails, e.g., only Users with administrator access shall be able to create new accounts and assign data access privileges to the new accounts e.g.,
- All data will be encrypted in the dashboard
- Only authorised Users / Administrative Users will be able to access data.
- Maintenance data will be split between either SCO or ECO, and Users will only have authority to one Entity data.
5.4 Performance
Performance defines how fast a software system or a particular section of it responds to certain User actions under a certain workload. In most cases, this metric explains how long a User must wait before the target operation happens e.g., the page renders, a transaction is processed, etc., given the overall number of Users now. Performance requirements may describe background processes invisible to Users, e.g., backup and speed of data transfers.
5.5 Reliability
Reliability is the ability of a solution or its component to perform its required functions without failure under predefined conditions for a specified time / period. Reliability can possibly be specified in terms of average time system runs before failure occurs, percentage of operations completed successfully within a time / period, maximum acceptable failure probability, or number of failures within a period. Reliability aspects are in reference to (but not limited to) evaluation of the system to be considered as reliable, classification of reliability defining failures vs. regular failures, and the impact of failure on business operations. The Maintenance Dashboard will display data from the previous refresh of data.
5.6 Scalability
Scalability refers to the degree to which a solution can evolve to handle increased amounts of work. The increased amount of work could be in terms of the user base, transactions, data, network traffic, or other factors e.g., the system should be able to handle an additional load of a maximum of 5,000 Users every month for the next 6 months without any noticeable performance impacts.
5.7 Compatibility
Interoperability is the degree to which the solution is compatible with other components. It is a measure of how effectively the system interoperates with other software systems and how easily it integrates with external hardware devices.
Interoperability aspects to be discussed during elicitation are in reference to (but not limited to) software systems to be interfaced with along with data / messages to be exchanged and any standard data formats, hardware components to be integrated with, and any standard communication protocols to be followed e.g., Order Management system will push the order file into a secured file transfer protocol server from where it will be loaded into the system through a daily job. To guarantee between Google Cloud platform and SAP BW Queries e.g., BW_QRY_MVPMOR01_0002, Solvay has introduced a new tool called Xtract (Xtract).
5.8 Availability
Availability is the degree to which the solution is operable and accessible when required. It is a measure of time during which the system is fully operational e.g., available for use and sometimes included as a Service Level Agreement (SLA) considering its criticality to the business, e.g., the system shall be at least 99% available on weekdays between 09:00 to 18:30 Central European Time (CET).
5.9 Refresh of the Data
Frequency, data, and time of the data refresh in the data product.