Why migrate from SAP to Oracle? (2024)

If you’re an SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) and SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation (BFC) customer, you’re probably aware that these products won’t be supported within the next few years. The end-of-support date for SAP BPC 10.1 for Microsoft is 12/31/2026, and the date for SAP BPC 10.1 version for NetWeaver is 2027¹ and SAP BFC 10.1² is 12/31/2030. If you haven’t considered what you’ll do after SAP BPC and SAP BFC are no longer supported, now is the time to explore your options.

Oracle’s approach to cloud migration allows us to partner with any SAP BPC and BFC customer, regardless of their starting point, and move them to Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). Migrating to Oracle Cloud EPM will bring a number of benefits to your organization, including improved financial and operational planning, reduced business risk, greater agility, and a faster financial close, resulting in a lower TCO.

Why SAP BPC and BFC customers should consider migrating to Oracle Cloud EPM

Today’s EPM requirements go far beyond traditional FP&A processes to include enterprise-wide connected planning, end-to-end financial close, reporting, tax provisioning, integrated analytics, and AI/ML-driven automation, to name just a few. As a BPC or BFC customer, you could migrate to multiple SAP and partner tools, which can lead to higher implementation and administration costs. Or you could lower your costs, minimize multiplatform complexities, and realize faster business value with Oracle’s complete Cloud EPM suite.

Oracle Cloud EPM can deliver value to SAP BPC and BFC customers

Oracle Cloud EPM is helping organizations increase their focus on important projects such as environmental, social, governance (ESG) initiatives and connected planning.

View the Value of EPM survey findings (PDF)

End of support	SAP BPC and BFC maintenance is ending between 2024 and 2030. You’ll need to consider alternatives and develop a strategy to move forward with a modern EPM platform.
Beyond FP&A	Today’s business use cases require more than just FP&A and consolidations. To grow and thrive in the future, companies are looking to xP&A, AI/ML-driven processes, and other EPM business processes that may not be supported by SAP’s legacy BPC and BFC versions.
Configuration	A modern EPM platform enables business agility. The old “build” implementation model doesn’t deliver a fast time to value and adds implementation and administration costs. Migrating custom BPC and BFC applications to Oracle Cloud EPM maximizes your agility with an innovative, modular framework of purpose-built applications that minimize or eliminate the need for traditional, custom application coding.
Integration issues	With Oracle Cloud EPM, all EPM processes are integrated into one, complete platform. You don’t need to put up with the complexities and costs of integrating multiple SAP and third-party tools. You get comprehensive EPM functionality in a single Cloud EPM suite.
Incomplete EPM platform	SAP does not have one complete and unified EPM platform for all your EPM processes. Customers migrating from BPC and BFC to other SAP offerings may still be dependent on third-party tools, which can create additional costs and complexities. With Oracle Cloud EPM, you have one complete solution for all your EPM processes, resulting in significantly less TCO, less complexity, and faster time to value.
Future-proofing	As a recognized industry leader, Oracle Cloud EPM is consistently a leader in analyst rankings. Our next-generation Cloud EPM suite incorporates innovative technologies such as AI, ML, and predictive analytics. You can trust Oracle to help modernize your mission-critical functions and to continue to support your changing needs in the future.

Is migrating from SAP BPC and BFC to SAP Analytics Cloud and S/4HANA easy?

Is migrating from SAP BPC and BFC to Oracle Cloud EPM easier or harder compared to moving to SAP Analytics Cloud and S/4HANA? With SAP’s disparate EPM products approach, migrating older versions of SAP to S/4HANA can be complex and costly. Here’s why:

Reimplementation	Regardless of which direction you take, migrating from BPC or BFC will require a reimplementation that could be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Oracle Cloud EPM is designed for a faster, more flexible deployment. Instead of settling for a long deployment and thin functionality, you can quickly configure and deploy modern, best-in-class EPM business processes.
Multiplatform	Migrating BPC or BFC requires SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Group Reporting, and possibly additional third-party partner tools for various reporting use cases. Other SAP tools may also be required beyond your original planning applications. This can introduce multi-tool complexities, such as licensing, integration, support, learning curve, and administration challenges leading to significantly more technical support requirements—and a higher overall TCO.
Hybrid planning	SAP’s incomplete EPM offerings require more integrations with SAP Analytics Cloud to combine traditional BPC and FP&A processes with other planning capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud. Oracle’s complete cloud EPM platform offers fully integrated enterprise planning across finance, operations, and lines of business to help you move from siloed to connected planning.
Complex implementation	To move your BPC and BFC applications to the cloud, SAP outlines at least seven scenarios and multiple³ integration, hybrid, and other technical implementation steps, which can add unnecessary complexity and support costs. Or you could avoid all that with Oracle’s unified Cloud EPM suite.
Increased costs	With costly custom deployments, extensive integrations, and multiple third-party applications, migrating to various SAP hybrid and multi-tool scenarios can become a costly endeavor. Why try to duct tape different EPM tools, models, and data together when you can implement all you need in one modern, innovative, and cost-effective Cloud EPM suite?
Reliance on S/4HANA	BPC or BFC consolidation customers will need to adopt SAP S4/HANA Group Reporting—yet another platform—across all business entities. Adding S/4HANA can result in significantly longer implementations, costly learning curves, and additional reliance on technical integration and administration resources.
Hybrid cloud	If you choose one of SAP’s hybrid BPC, BFC and SAP Analytics Cloud, or S/4HANA approaches, you’ll still have to juggle a mix of on-premises and possibly private or public SAP cloud platforms. On the other hand, Oracle Cloud EPM is a complete, true cloud application suite. There’s no need for a hybrid legacy and cloud to implement and support.
Integration complexity	With SAP, you could be dealing with a mixture of SAP legacy, on-premises, cloud, and third-party partner tools with all the added integration complexity and version control issues. Unlike SAP, Oracle Cloud EPM seamlessly connects your planning and finance processes for fully integrated enterprise planning.

Moving from older SAP BPC releases to SAP Analytics Cloud planning is, in most cases, a reimplementation; so is moving from older SAP BPC versions to Oracle Cloud EPM. There’s no denying that a move to Oracle Cloud EPM will involve the retraining of staff, and user acceptance of a reimplementation. We are ready to help you with that challenge.

EPM center of excellence

An EPM center of excellence (CoE) team oversees your Cloud EPM adoption, promoting best practices and helping you deliver better business results. Oracle can help you develop your own center of excellence to help mitigate risk in cloud adoption and process transformation efforts. Leveraging an EPM CoE enables you to increase efficiency by driving reviews and identifying automation opportunities while creating awareness of process improvements and communicating success to internal stakeholders.

Learn how to create and run an EPM center of excellence

In addition, Oracle Consulting and Oracle Partners, such as AMOSCA, Brovanture, Constellation Consulting Group, IBM, and Qubix (now Version1) have trained, experienced consultants and proven implementation methodologies that use industry-specific EPM best practices to address your unique use case requirements.

Most important—the migration from SAP BPC or BFC to Oracle Cloud EPM could be your final migration. Experience the power of a complete, purpose-built, and finance-driven Cloud EPM suite.

Learn how Oracle Cloud EPM delivers value to your business (PDF)

See how Oracle's Cloud EPM provides the agility and insights you need to outperform.

Request a demo

More reasons to migrate from SAP BPC and BFC to Oracle Cloud EPM

1. Purpose built

Oracle Cloud’s EPM platform is integrated, yet modular to enable you to deploy what you need when you need it. You control the pace and define which parts of your legacy BPC or BFC applications get migrated first. You can implement planning, consolidations, and any other EPM processes independently, and on your unique timeline, to address your immediate and emerging digital transformation business needs. Do you need to handle workforce planning calculations? Or is your business project-based? Keep in mind that EPM also has out-of-the-box modules for workforce and strategic workforce planning, capital asset planning, long-range planning, project planning and sales planning, which can all speed up your implementation process.

See the benefits of a completely agile EPM (PDF)

Explore the value of Cloud EPM suite (PDF)

2. One platform for all EPM business processes

Unlike SAP’s incomplete EPM offerings, which are comprised of multiple products and partner tools, Oracle Cloud EPM delivers complete, purpose-built capabilities for connected enterprise planning across finance, operations, and lines of business, including HR, supply chain, IT, and sales. With Oracle, you can leverage built-in functionality that covers the full spectrum of end-to-end close tasks while automating account reconciliations and transaction matching. Migrate your BPC and BFC processes using one Cloud EPM platform and start using additional purpose-built EPM capabilities, all provided in a single Cloud EPM platform.

Read how Kraft Heinz uses Oracle Cloud EPM to guide faster decision-making to stay on top of a changing market

3. Complete replace with an industry-leading EPM

Rather than just “lifting and shifting” your legacy applications, Oracle can help you start with a clean sheet and replace your SAP BPC and BFC applications by incorporating modern, built-in best practices that can significantly enhance and optimize your legacy planning and consolidation processes.

Read the report: Measuring the Value of Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (PDF)

4. Oracle Partners

Oracle’s partner ecosystem is critical to our customers’ success. Their differentiated services, combined with extensive Oracle Cloud EPM expertise and experience in migrating SAP BPC and BFC to Oracle Cloud EPM can help you realize greater business benefits and value in the shortest time possible.

Review the Oracle Partner catalog for a full list of partner resources available to you

Find out more

Ready for the future? Oracle Cloud EPM is the smart alternative to SAP BPC
Exploring the benefits of replacing SAP BFC with Oracle Cloud EPM Financial Consolidation and Close

Ready to learn how you can replace SAP BPC or BFC with Oracle Cloud EPM?

Compare Oracle vs. SAP

See the side-by-side comparison

Sources:

¹ https://blogs.sap.com/2023/01/23/maintenance-timelines-for-sap-business-planning-and-consolidation-sap-bpc/

² https://blogs.sap.com/2023/07/07/sap-financial-consolidation-providing-continued-maintenance-to-protect-customers-during-a-rocky-economic-recovery/

³ https://blogs.sap.com/2023/02/17/sap-bpc-move-to-sac-benefits-scenarios-of-moving-sap-bpc-planning-scenarios-to-sap-analytics-cloud/

FAQs

Why is Oracle better than SAP? ›

Choosing between Oracle and SAP ultimately depends on your organization's specific needs, industry, and budget. Both companies offer robust and comprehensive solutions for managing your business operations effectively. For those seeking seamless integration and user-friendliness, Oracle may be the better choice.

Read On ›

Why is Oracle replacing SAP? ›

With Oracle, financial management and reporting are made more reliable and governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) requirements are incorporated. Oracle is proud of its risk management solutions, which help to enforce enterprise-wide compliance and automate some industry-specific compliance requirements.

Discover More Details ›

Why do we prefer Oracle? ›

Ease of Administration. Oracle Database's administration interface is intuitive, easy to use, and highly customizable. It offers a range of tools and features that make it easy for DBAs to manage and monitor their databases, including performance diagnostics, automatic tuning, and workload management.

What are the advantages of Oracle? ›

A major advantage of Oracle Database is the optional Database-as-a-Service model. This enables relational databases to be stored and managed in the Oracle Cloud. This ensures optimal use of CPU, hardware and storage capacities, as well as the outsourcing of administrative database management tasks.

See Details ›

What are the 3 main benefits of SAP implementation through Activate? ›

SAP Activate uses SAP Best Practices as a baseline in combination with Guided configurations and the SAP Activate methodology. Utilizing SAP Best Practices allows project managers to bypass complex system configurations. This speeds up the implementation process, reduces risk, and is cost-effective.

Find Out More ›

Why are customers leaving Oracle? ›

First, Oracle customers are looking to get out of those expensive Oracle contracts and spend less money. Second, Oracle will never make it easy for their customers to spend less money on Oracle.

Tell Me More ›

Does Amazon use SAP or Oracle? ›

1. Amazon using SAP. Amazon uses an ERP software called SAP (Systems Analysis and Program Development).

Show Me More ›

Is SAP going to be obsolete? ›

AI and SAP are not the end of the road, but rather the beginning of a new journey. There are many emerging technologies that are challenging the status quo and offering new possibilities for solving problems and creating value.

Explore More ›

What are the advantages of SAP over Oracle? ›

SAP ERP, specifically SAP Business ByDesign, is better than Oracle because of its all-in-one platform with powerful functionalities, scalable customizability, top-notch level of security, and cost-effective pricing.

What is the top reason customers move to the Oracle Cloud? ›

Oracle has a strong security culture and is trusted by organizations worldwide with strict security requirements. Stored in state-of-the-art data centers, Oracle Cloud HCM and our infrastructure have advanced multilayered security measures that can help customers meet both local and international regulations.

Show Me More ›

Why is Oracle Cloud the best? ›

Oracle offers secure by design protection such as customer isolation, data security, internal-threat detection, and highly automated threat remediation. Oracle's infrastructure isolates compute and network resources to ensure that your personal data and traffic are shielded from other users.

Read The Full Story ›

Why is Oracle company the best? ›

Oracle excelled in areas like working environment, health benefits, talent development, and workplace diversity among multinational companies. It takes passion and vision to write a success story like this across Oracle's global reach. The pillars of our exceptional workplace culture make this possible.

See Details ›

Why is Oracle Database preferred? ›

Why choose Oracle Database for all your data needs? Oracle database products offer customers cost-optimized and high-performance versions of Oracle Database, the world's leading converged, multi-model database management system, as well as in-memory, NoSQL and MySQL databases.

Get More Info Here ›

What makes Oracle better than competitors? ›

Machine learning, field mapping, and automation accelerate business processes so you can make better, faster decisions. With Oracle's native suite of cloud applications, you get the broadest, deepest functionality on the market. With no need for integrations, you can significantly lower your total cost of ownership.

Why is Oracle cloud the best? ›