Getting data into BOARD with different granularity

Markus Seuffert

Hey there

 

We are currently setting up BOARD as a reporting tool in our company. We use v10.6.

We are trying to get our sales budget data into board to compare them with our actual data.
Thus, there is no data entry or anything at that point.
Unfortunately, we have encountered a problem:

 

Our sales budget data comprises sales in units and € and is structured by country, month and product class.
However, the product class used for budgeting purposes is not the most granular product class that we have employed in BOARD.

 

E.g.: We have a product class "A" that is used for the budgeting process.
But product class A is comprised of several product groups A1, A2, A3 etc. on a lower level.

Product class      Product group
A                            A1
A                            A2
A                            A3

Now the data reader seems to assign the budgeted values for product class A to every group A1, A2, A3, etc. because he finds these groups in the hierarchy below its respective product class. In this example this would result in 3 rows instead of one expected row.

We are aware of the mechanics behind that and understand that now and would like to find a solution without artificially splitting our budget data. Is there any quick fix that we missed or a setting in the cube / data reader that we forgot to set?

Thanks already in advance!

 

Kind regards

Markus

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Markus Seuffert
Controller
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Etienne CAUSSE

Hi Markus,
Is your budget cube dimensioned by product class, or by product group ?
If you are trying to display a cube dimensioned by product class at the product group level, it will have this effect (higher level value is repeated). But this is not due to the data reader, it's more due to the layout.

A solution that I use to keep comparability and still display different granularity, is to create a "generic" product class in the Product Group level, and then load both Budget & Actual at Product Group level.

Etienne

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Etienne CAUSSE
Finance Project Manager
France
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Markus Seuffert

Hi Etienne,

thanks for your reply.
Yes, the budget cube is dimensioned on the product class, month and country.
All Sales cubes are dimensioned on the more granular level. But these are also dimensioned on days instead of months and there is no issue there.

Adding generic product groups could be a solution, although I'm not a huge fan of that, as our product classification is already pretty complex without such additional classes. Maybe we have to waive that more granular level, but nonetheless thanks for your help!

Kind regards

Markus




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Markus Seuffert
Controller
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Etienne CAUSSE

Hi,
to be honest I'm not a huge fan either, as we also have pretty complex hierarchies (40+ entities, 300K+ products).
But it can help when you need to design layouts where you need both the actual granularity and the budget data comparison.

Another alternative is to present the budget as a block, then the Actuel as another block with the "detail by" option on Product Group & a total. There you can present both, including the actual granularity, without any data model trick.

But the ergonomics of such a report is not always adequate depending on the context.

Good luck
Etienne

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Etienne CAUSSE
Finance Project Manager
France
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