5 Things to Know about SAP BPC as It Enters End of Life and Maintenance Mode

As the former head of Product Marketing at SAP until leaving in 2024, I was there for the birth of SAP BPC 7.0 all the way to the current SAP BPC 2021. SAP Business Planning and Consolidations as a tool and all its great customers thus hold a special place for me, especially as I consider their future and their dependence on this solution.

Recently, many wild rumors about SAP have been circulating and creating a lack of clarity regarding the solution’s current standing. This ambiguity has mostly affected existing customers, leaving them unsure about their next steps. For that reason, I decided to consolidate my thoughts and provide guidance on the top 5 things SAP BPC customers should know.

SAP BPC Maintenance Timeline

Coming from SAP, I know “end of life” is a bit of a misnomer. SAP rarely ever “ends” products. However, it does put them into maintenance mode or extended maintenance where users pay a lot more just for stability and extreme bug fixes. Those fixes often take a lot of time and trouble to resolve, especially as the skills needed to maintain the solution disappear — both internally at SAP and externally from the market.

Here are the current maintenance timelines that customers on the various versions of SAP must consider:

1. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver. This solution will enter extended maintenance after 2027
2. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for the Microsoft platform. This solution looks to lose all support as of mid 2026.

Here are the versions that will be supported until 2040:

1. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP S/4HANA
2. SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP BW/4HANA

What exactly is “extended maintenance”? It’s a paid option that extends the support period for SAP software beyond the end of mainstream maintenance. Despite offering a support level like that of mainstream maintenance, extended maintenance comes at a higher cost.

No New Features or Development

As the solutions transition to end of maintenance or end of life, one thing has been clear for SAP BPC customers (just look at the roadmap). No new features, functions, or innovations are planned to assist and take finance to that next step and evolve via finance transformation.

I always loved SAP BPC because, for core SAP customers, it offered cutting-edge integration at the time and a single solution for planning and consolidations. As a result, the solution gave SAP customers the unique ability to maximize their SAP ECC and early SAP S/4HANA investments. Customers could also, most importantly, maximize their shareholder value with the analysis SAP provided. Sadly, the EPM market has raced past this solution.

Solutions now come with embedded analytics, and even real-time capabilities with S/4HANA with BPC Optimized can be closely replicated with open APIs from S/4HANA. For finance departments looking to deliver value to business constituents and shareholders with forward-looking analysis, the SAP BPC path may not be the right option.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Gap

One of the critical gaps in SAP BPC, regardless of the version, is the lack of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or even predictive capabilities. As the finance function increasingly demands advanced tools for deeper insights, automation, and more accurate forecasts, this deficiency becomes a significant limitation for users.

In contrast, modern platforms like OneStream have built-in AI and ML capabilities, such as Sensible Machine Learning. These capabilities enhance both planning and consolidations by offering predictive insights, anomaly detection, and process automation. Leveraging AI within the finance department and the Office of the CFO is not just a trend but a strategic advantage. As a result, organizations can elevate their data-driven decision-making and stay ahead in a competitive landscape.

The ability to seamlessly integrate AI into planning processes drives greater adoption across the enterprise, making AI an essential component of any modern finance transformation.

Migration Costs and Increased IT Complexity

Migration from SAP BPC is not a straightforward lift-and-shift, but rather a complete reimplementation that introduces significant complexity and costs. SAP has provided multiple options to replace the unified capabilities once available in SAP BPC:

1. Financial Planning and Analysis customers must move to SAP Analytics Cloud.
2. Supply Chain Planning customers need SAP Integrated Business Planning.
3. Profitability Analysis now requires SAP Profitability and Performance Management.
4. Consolidations rely on SAP Group Reporting for SAP S/4HANA.

This fragmentation spreads functionalities across several tools, adding to technical debt and necessitating greater IT involvement. To manage data and master data movement across these disparate solutions, SAP Datasphere is often required.

In contrast, OneStream offers a unified, AI-powered platform that consolidates all these capabilities in one solution. It not only handles planning, reporting, and consolidation in one place but also integrates seamlessly with SAP systems such as SAP S/4HANA. The result is a single source of truth for finance, which reduces IT complexity, streamlines data management, and eliminates the need for multiple, disconnected tools. In other words, OneStream delivers a more trusted, efficient solution for finance teams.

The Risk of Delayed Decision-Making

Delaying the move from SAP BPC poses a significant risk of being stuck with a non-strategic, outdated solution no longer aligned with the demands of modern finance. As SAP BPC nears the end of life, support will inevitably dwindle, both from SAP and within organizations as skilled resources become harder to find.

While some customers are hesitant to migrate due to confusion around SAP’s roadmap, others are deliberately waiting for their S/4HANA migration from SAP ECC. The latter are often waiting after being advised to prioritize that transformation before addressing enterprise performance management (EPM) processes like planning and consolidation. However, this wait-and-see approach can be costly.

Planning is a mission-critical process that provides the Office of the CFO (oCFO) with real-time visibility into the business and enables finance to drive strategic decision-making. In today’s rapidly changing environment, delaying such improvements leaves organizations vulnerable to poor forecasting, missed opportunities, and no agility to steer the business forward.

Next Steps for SAP BPC Users

While the transition away from SAP BPC may seem daunting, leading some organizations to paralysis, staying complacent is not an option. Viable market alternatives are available. If your organization is ready to make the next best decision for your internal and external stakeholders, OneStream Software is the clear choice. OneStream is an AI-powered finance platform that unifies planning, consolidations, financial close, and all key EPM functions into a single solution.

Unlike other tools, OneStream allows you to deploy before or in parallel with an S/4HANA migration, providing critical validations and real-time insights during ERP deployment. OneStream, just like SAP BPC, uniquely integrates both planning and consolidations in the same platform.

Additionally, OneStream is an extensible investment with a growing Solution Exchange that offers many free solutions from OneStream, partners, and even customers. Those solutions will help you continuously expand your capabilities without added cost.

For further proof just look at the results. Many SAP customers have successfully replaced SAP BPC with OneStream while continuing to use OneStream seamlessly alongside SAP ERPs. You can explore those success stories through this link.