If you’re an SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) customer, you’ve probably already heard the news. SAP is ending maintenance on the platform.
Yet, according to research by SAPInsider, only 11% of customers were completely prepared to transition away from SAP BPC as of May 2025.
That’s despite the fact that the SAP BPC end of maintenance is fast approaching for some customers. “They may be facing an end of maintenance as early as June 2026,” says Steve Sussman, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing for Column5 Consulting, a Vena partner.
If you’re customer currently using SAP BPC for your planning, budgeting, forecasting and/or financial consolidation needs, then, there’s no time to waste. You’ll want to make some decisions soon—which could mean migrating to an alternative platform before the planned end of maintenance puts your organization at risk.
Not sure how to proceed? We’ve got you covered. This article will take you through the decision-making process—and explore your choices going forward.
The SAP BPC End-of-Maintenance Timeline
As SAP plans to end maintenance for its BPC platform, these are the dates to keep in mind:
Why Is SAP Ending Support for BPC?
The first thing you need to know is that this is not an SAP BPC end of life. Rather than discontinuing the solution altogether, SAP is merely ending maintenance for the platform.
And it’s doing that because the software is becoming outdated.
After all, SAP BPC is an on-premise solution built on OutlookSoft technology acquired by SAP back in 2008. Not only is it not cloud-based, but the user experience can be clunky and the functionality sometimes lacks the scalability of many more modern solutions. All of that means it doesn’t always keep up with the demands of today’s users.
What’s more, a reliance on internal IT resources and outside consultants to make it fit the demands of today’s workplace only adds to the operational costs of maintaining legacy software.
SAP BPC End of Maintenance: A Path Forward
Being faced with “end of maintenance” rather than “end of life” with SAP BPC may seem like it gives you some breathing room when it comes to building a migration plan. But there are still serious considerations businesses need to make.
And since migration can take time, it’s best to start making those decisions early. “Particularly in large multinational complex organizations that have as many as thousands of BPC users, I don’t think it’s realistic to rip and replace BPC in less than a year,” Steve says.
With that in mind, Column5 suggests following these steps as you make choices regarding your future SAP BPC use and what to do next:
Step 1: Decide Whether To Keep or Replace BPC
Because this isn’t an end of life scenario, you can still choose to stay with SAP BPC past the deadline.
This means the first question you need to ask is whether you want to stay with BPC at all—or if you want to migrate to another solution completely. Alternatively, you could opt for a hybrid route—replacing some components and keeping others.
The caveat is that if you keep using BPC, you’ll be continuing without the benefit of ongoing maintenance from SAP. And not migrating does come with potential risks. Depending on the version of BPC and underlying technology components you are using, this could open up data security vulnerabilities and prevent BPC from scaling with your needs as your business grows.
Step 2: Assess the Options on the Market
If you choose to replace all or some of your BPC platform, the next step is to research alternative solutions.
Consider how SAP BPC has been keeping up with your needs. Where has it excelled and where has it been falling short? Those are questions that can help guide your evaluation.
It’s also a perfect time to look at the performance of your EPM processes. How do they align with your business goals and assist your finance team? Look at what you’re doing right and want to continue as is, but also identify any gaps in your processes. Then consider how well your current system has met your needs and what you could be doing better. Are you setting yourself up to leverage the benefits of process automation via AI?
This work will help you build a roadmap for your upcoming migration, understand your SAP BPC replacement needs, and shortlist the solutions that will best meet those needs.
Step 3: Decide Your Strategic Priorities
A large software migration project like replacing SAP BPC isn’t just a technology investment. It’s an opportunity to realign your processes and build efficiencies into your business so that you’re stronger going forward.
Taking the time to identify both your strengths and weaknesses, and the processes you want to change will help you determine what’s most important to your team and organization as you choose your SAP BPC replacement.
For instance, some of the key priorities you may want to consider include:
Understanding what’s important to you will help you narrow your search for SAP BPC alternatives.
Step 4: Align Your People, Processes and Technology
Once you’ve chosen your SAP BPC replacement path, how seamless of a journey it is will depend on how well you align your people, processes and technology.
It’s also important to consider the people who will be using your new platform, and prepare them for the change early on, with the proper training they need. This way they’ll be ready to make the transition when it’s time.
Fortunately, there are consultants (like Column5), that provide tailored programs aimed at guiding you through the entire process of transitioning from SAP BPC to your new system.
Now let’s look at some of the top platforms you can choose as a potential replacement for SAP BPC.
SAP BPC Alternatives
There are several solutions finance teams can choose from when replacing BPC. Your business needs and migration plan will dictate the route that you decide on. Here are some of the more popular options.
Vena
Featuring cloud-based solutions for financial planning, forecasting, budgeting, reporting and financial consolidation, Vena is a complete planning platform that improves collaboration and automates workflows. Vena’s agentic AI solution, Vena Copilot, was also purpose-built for FP&A, to empower faster decision-making with real-time insights.
For SAP BPC users, Vena provides a strong alternative that aligns in many ways with the SAP BPC experience that attracted users from its inception. “[OutlookSoft] was designed to be agnostic in terms of different data sources, so it was not dependent on SAP technology,” explains Steve from Column5.
He continues: “It had an Excel-centric front end (the EPM add-in), so 90% of the activity that customers are doing in BPC is through an Excel interface. And it is intentionally designed to not just manage planning, but a combination of planning, as well as consolidations and reporting in one platform.”
Vena combines data from across multiple sources, with standardized pre-built connectors that make it easy to integrate with external sources like SAP. It empowers both FP&A and extended planning processes such as workforce planning and financial consolidation and close. And finally, it works in a native-Excel interface, making for a low learning curve for SAP BPC users.
In fact, Vena is the only vendor on this list with native-Excel integration, which makes it the best path forward for BPC users who view the Excel experience as non-negotiable.
SAP Analytics Cloud
Of course, another option that accommodates the SAP BPC end of maintenance is to move to another SAP solution altogether: SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), SAP’s advanced analytics and planning solution. This may seem particularly appealing for finance teams that want to continue to work within an SAP environment, but as with any solution there are pros and cons.
First, the pros. SAC is a newer cloud-based alternative to the older, legacy BPC. It has a more user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality for planning, data visualization and predictive analytics. Plus, it integrates data from across both SAP and non-SAP sources. SAP is also in the midst of rolling out Joule, a generative AI assistant, for natural language queries, automated reports and data analysis.
But for finance teams looking to continue working in an Excel environment, SAC has limitations. “It was only in the last year or two that SAP finally started focusing on enhancing the Excel interface … but it’s still no comparison to what customers are used to in BPC,” says Steve.
Anaplan
A cloud-based business planning solution, Anaplan is another option for organizations looking to replace SAP BPC. It integrates data sources and offers streamlined workflows and customization options that support budgeting and forecasting, as well as financial consolidation, demand planning, capacity planning and more.
Anaplan also offers AI and machine learning capabilities for predictive insights and forecasting, as well as agentic AI for real-time insights.
Unlike BPC, however, Anaplan’s interface is not Excel native. While the solution does offer an Excel add-in that provides some Excel integration, it has limits in terms of the support, languages and capabilities available. This means users will face a higher learning curve.
OneStream
OneStream is a cloud-based enterprise planning platform that unifies data and offers functionality for reporting, financial consolidation and analysis. It also offers embedded AI for forecasting, risk planning and decision making.
OneStream does not have an Excel-centric interface like BPC, however. While its Excel add-in lets users use Excel for limited tasks like data entry and reporting, it has limitations—again, creating a steeper learning curve for potential users migrating from BPC.
Planning for Your Migration from SAP BPC
While SAP is ending maintenance for BPC rather than discontinuing the platform outright, the risks of continuing to work with BPC after support ends are real—meaning the time to decide your course of action is still now.
But the good news is that migrating away from BPC can be an opportunity to revisit your financial processes and the way you approach them, and to add new efficiencies that streamline the way you do business.
The key to getting there is to find the right alternative. And with a clear migration path and Excel continuity, Vena offers just that.
Preparing for SAP BPC end of life? Find out how Vena can fill the gap. Request a demo today.
.png)
.jpg)
