Financial Reporting using BPC 5.1: A few questions

Question

Hello,
A client of mine is doing an assessment of using BPC 5.1 as a financial report writing tool versus BI/BEx. They are not currently using BPC for either planning or consolidations but that might happen in the future. The financial data is being extracted from the SAP BI system and being reported on in this pilot implementation. There are a few questions I have:
1) How common is it for organizations to be using BPC as just a financial report writing tool but not for planning & consolidations?
2) We have come across some constraints in using hierarchies in BPC which was not the case in BEx. We are having issues picking and choosing hierarchies. We have not been able to select a particular dependent node of a hierarchy. Let's say that A is the parent node and B and C are child nodes in a hierarchy. We've tried every trick but are not able to select either B or C individually. Moreover if we want both B and C, we are forced to create a hierarchy for B and C. This is not correct. This is a pretty basic requirement. Has anyone come across this restriction? If this is how BPC 5.1 works, is SAP planning on fixing this in BPC 7.0 do that it works like BEx works today?
I look forward to your help, advice and inputs. We are in a bind and relevant responses will be awarded full points.
Thanks,
Jon

Answer 1

I think it is very common for customer to utilize the tool JUST for reporting.  The idea is to utilize the tool for as many purposes as possible.  Customers use it purly for Operational reporting, planning specific, functional specific, or just plain simplified way to get needed data into the users hands via excel and the ability to build reports on the fly or using predefined templates which are highly flexible.
As for your second question, There is no direct method for selecting or "checking" a bundle of members to use in a report from the current view.  However, there is an indirect method that may be built using EVDRE.  It involves building an opening Tab in an BPC for Excel report, selecting the members viia the copy function in the current view, pasteing them to a section in the tab, running basic excel tests that aggregarte the members into a useable list for an EVDRE function, used in the MEMBBERSET section of a given dimension, that will then expand and retrieve the data for those members  in the that will be run in a second Excel tab.  Once you see it in action, it does the same thing  or almost the same function you are requesting.
I am not certain if the process will be fixed in future releases, but if you like the feature, please contact product support and log an enhancement request, so as to formalize the request.  There are other who hold the same sentiment.
Hope this helps.