Webinar recap: key takeaways for SAP BPC users and the BPC roadmap in 2025

We invited Simon Bell, founder of OpalWave Solutions and managing director of SiBCS to join us in our recent webinar where we addressed a question pressing on the minds of finance and technology leaders across the UK and Europe: what does the SAP BPC roadmap actually mean for your organisation?

Simon delivered a frank and structured appraisal of where SAP BPC stands today, what options are available, and how organisations should be thinking about their next move.

The core reality: SAP has stopped investing in BPC

The most important message to emphasis is that SAP's failure to deliver any enhancements into any version of BPC has left those solutions really trapped in time. It has been over 10 years since there has been any genuine enhancement in any version of BPC (other than SAC which involves purchasing an additional piece of software).

The pending BPC 2025 release will not introduce new capabilities and will only deprecate further functionality, reverting elements to core BW/4 capabilities. The BPC 2023 release was purely a technical update.

The EPM Add-in for Excel, which is widely valued by BPC users, is similarly frozen. It will not receive enhancements and will retire alongside BPC itself.

Meanwhile, SAP has quietly tightened the commercial screws. Edge pricing for mid-market customers has been discontinued. Partner Managed Cloud (PMC) subscriptions are no longer available. Adding users to BPC is increasingly complex, and for some versions the product no longer appears on SAP's price list at all.

End-of-maintenance: the cliff edge

The maintenance timeline varies by BPC version, but the direction of travel is consistent. BPC Microsoft users are already facing or approaching end of maintenance. BPC 10.1 NetWeaver users have a somewhat longer runway with extended maintenance potentially running to 2030, but beyond 2030, they are in the same boat as BPC Microsoft users today.

Click here to read our blog with the latest end of maintenance deadlines for BPC.

Options on the table

There is no one-size-fits-all recommendation. The right path depends entirely on your organisation's individual circumstances.

Option 1: Stay on BPC (‘Sweat the Asset’)

Staying on BPC is only viable if BPC is genuinely meeting current business needs, performance is acceptable, governance obligations are met, and internal support capability remains intact. However, this option is merely a deferral of decision-making, and not a permanent strategy.

Option 2: Migrate Within SAP (SAC or Group Reporting)

The option to migrate to another SAP product largely depends how heavily invested your organisation is in the SAP landscape. A useful rule of thumb from Simon: "If you are more than 70% within a single instance of S/4 HANA, you will strongly consider Group Reporting. If you have less than that, you will probably trend towards a non-SAP alternative." 

Option 3: Move to a Non-SAP EPM Platform

This is the most common direction, particularly for organisations in heterogeneous ERP environments. Options vary by scale, complexity, and requirement, from unified platforms such as OneStream (which facilitates and end-to-end CPM cycle in a single solution) to modular approaches, mid-market specialists, and Oracle EPM for Oracle-centric organisations.

A word of caution: if you are moving purely to get off a piece of technology because it's out of support, you're not necessarily stepping back and considering how you can benefit the organisation. Often, it becomes less about the technology itself and more about the process benefit you want to introduce by moving to a more modern platform.

A useful resource: strategic decision framework 

Rather than advocating a single path, the session presented a structured framework for organisations to evaluate their own circumstances — spanning four key dimensions:

Strategic

AI and machine learning capabilities are becoming standard in modern EPM platforms, with evidence of forecast accuracy improvements of up to 25% through AI-assisted planning. Organisations on BPC risk falling further behind as these capabilities accelerate. Cyber security is also now a board-level imperative — running EPM on an ageing, unmaintained platform creates genuine exposure.

Operational

The pool of skilled BPC consultants and internal resource is actively shrinking, as practitioners move to modern technologies. As Simon observed: "Consultancies can't attract people to work on BPC — all of the people in the SAP world are moving to SAC and Group Reporting. And consultants don't want to be pigeonholed as the resource simply maintaining old technology."

Financial

The cost of doing nothing is real and often underestimated. Maintenance fees continue to rise without delivering product improvements. The key question Simon posed: "Is it worth spending money fixing BPC, or better to save that and invest in something new that will last us further into the future?"

Management & IT

IT teams are increasingly having to maintain dedicated resource simply to keep BPC operational — on infrastructure falling behind the broader technology estate. Staff retention is also affected when skilled people are anchored to legacy technology that diminishes their market value.

Download our BPC Decision Framework.

What Should You Do Next?

Every organisation running SAP BPC has a decision to make. A do-nothing strategy doesn't come for free. Whether you stay, move within SAP, or explore alternatives, the decision should be driven by a structured business case — one that weighs strategic, operational, financial, and management factors in your specific context.

Through our subsidiary Insight Cubes Europe, we can support organisations across the full SAP EPM landscape including SAC and Group Reporting. We can help you frame the right questions and find the right path.

If you missed the webinar and want to catch up, you can watch the session on-demand below:

To continue the conversation, contact us: