Welcome to this blog post! In today's edition, I want to outline how companies can rethink product life cycle profitability using SAP PLM solutions like Cloud ERP or SAP Integrated Product Development (SAP IPD) integrated with Vianta PLP, a new cloud-native solution purpose-built to move beyond spreadsheets and fragmented cost data. 

No time to read? Register to access the recording of our latest Meet the Expert webinar via the SAP Supply Chain Management Enablement Hub here.

Also, don't miss your Co-Innovation Opportunity to shape the future of PLP (details at the end of this blog)!

Product life cycle profitability is not a finance exercise that happens after the design is done. It is a strategic lever that must be active from the earliest stage of product ideation, before a single part is ordered and while the cost curve can still be shaped. Yet most companies today are running this process on outdated tools: spreadsheets, poorly organized data, and disconnected systems that cannot keep pace with shorter definition cycle times, shifting geopolitical demands, and the explosion of product complexity.

In this blog, you will find out how product & process-centric industries can:

• Calculate highly complex product cost structures in real time, across bills of material with tens of thousands of items
• Upload specifications and formulations as a basis for complex cost calculations
• Manage structured, cross-functional collaboration within a single solution aligned to SAP workflows
• Build and compare business cases across multiple scenarios with transparent KPIs
• Adopt a 100% clean-core, BTP-native SaaS solution that fits seamlessly into existing SAP landscapes
• Leverage AI assistance for predictive costing, cost optimization proposals, and natural language interaction (roadmap feature)

The Challenge: Profitability Needs to be Designed In, Not Discovered Later

Most product teams know their margins are under pressure. The challenge is acting on that knowledge early enough to matter. Companies face a dual mandate: compress product definition cycle times while maintaining profitability and compliance across increasingly complex, cross-functional processes. The fastest path forward is to bring cost structures, collaboration, and product data into one place and layer AI on top to remove friction.

The symptoms of the current state are familiar: cost engineers working in Excel files that cannot handle the computational complexity of real products, product controllers receiving cost data too late to influence design decisions, and procurement and supply chain teams operating in silos with no structured way to feed market pricing into early-stage calculations.

The consequences are measurable: missed business case targets, delayed RFQ responses, products that reach production without a clear profitability picture, and reactive cost-cutting after the design window has already closed. What is needed is a connected product costing layer that makes every cost assumption visible, traceable, and calculable in real time, from the first ideation sketch to the final business case decision.

The Solution: Capabilities That Make the Difference

High-Performance Calculation Engine Built for Real Complexity

The foundation of Vianta PLP is a calculation engine designed for the scale that real industrial products demand. Products with tens of thousands of items in their bill of material, where the cost calculation for a single leaf node may require 100 steps or more, return results in under one second. A full product portfolio can be calculated within minutes.

This is the gap that spreadsheets cannot close. The engine supports comprehensive costing sheets with percentage-based and quantity-based overhead definitions, time-specific parameters for different validity periods, and a built-in formula editor that allows teams to define highly tailored calculation logic, including conditional rules based on material groups, cost components, and custom fields.

[An image showing the costing sheet UI with a formula.]

Cost structures can be imported directly from SAP S/4HANA or SAP IPD, giving teams a realistic starting point based on similar products already in the system rather than building from scratch. Every change to the cost structure triggers an immediate recalculation, so the impact of design decisions, e.g., swapping a carbon frame for an aluminum one, upgrading a battery specification) is visible in real time, not days later.

[An image showing the data import from SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud.]

Calculation versions allow teams to iterate systematically: compare a baseline import against an optimized variant, apply updated costing sheets, and track the delta between target cost and actual cost at every stage. A cost component split view organizes the full product cost into semantic groupings like material, production, freight, and overhead, giving decision-makers a clear picture of where cost is concentrated and where optimization potential exists.

[An image showing a cost structure after import.]

Structured Collaboration Across Functions and Company Boundaries

Cost design is a cross-functional process. Engineers, controllers, procurement specialists, supply chain experts, and customer-facing teams all carry information that affects product profitability. This information needs to flow in a structured, traceable way, not through email threads and shared drives.

Vianta PLP provides a collaboration layer built directly on SAP workflows. Teams can be defined per project, work items routed to the right stakeholders, and approval steps configured to match the company's governance requirements. RFQ documents, cost structures, and calculation versions are attached to the project and visible to all relevant parties from a single interface.

[An image showing a collaboration UI.]

The collaboration model extends beyond internal teams. Supplier collaboration, customer-facing pricing workflows, and intercompany cost reviews can all be structured within the same framework, with configurable workflow steps and stakeholder definitions. Because the solution runs on BTP and integrates natively with Cloud  ERP and SAP IPD, teams already working in these SAP solutions experience this as an extension of their existing environment. 

Business Case Decisions Grounded in Real Data

The output of the costing process is a business case decision: is this product worth building, at what price, for what volume, and with what expected return? Vianta PLP closes the loop between cost calculation and business case by providing a structured comparison of scenarios (e.g., base case, worst case, optimistic case) with year-by-year cost and revenue projections, net return, payback period, overhead ratio, and expected sales.

[An image showing the worst case/best case comparison.]

This moves the business case from a one-time presentation exercise built in a spreadsheet to a living model that can be updated as assumptions change, compared against actuals once production begins, and reused as the starting point for the next product generation. Because the business case is grounded in the same cost structure as the engineering calculation, there is no reconciliation gap between what the product manager modeled and what the cost engineer calculated.

After the business case decision, the model continues to deliver value: actual cost data from production can be compared against the designed cost structure, changes can be captured and versioned, and the next iteration of the product starts from a richer, more accurate baseline.

The Architectural Basis: 100% Clean Core, Built for Seamless Adoption

Vianta PLP is a cloud SaaS solution built entirely on SAP BTP, using SAP technologies and frameworks for data storage, integration, and UI. It is designed in full alignment with SAP's clean core architecture principles, without unnecessary technical debt or proprietary extensions that complicate upgrades.

[An image showing the system architecture for a joint use of Vianta PLP and SAP IPD.]

For existing SAP customers, the solution is designed to feel like switching on an additional capability within their current environment. For customers running SAP S/4HANA without SAP IPD, out-of-the-box connectors provide direct integration with SAP S/4HANA public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise deployments. Open APIs are provided for integration with non-SAP systems.

The user experience is built on SAP Fiori with additional third-party components for a modern, data-dense interface tailored to the specific needs of each persona with the AI assistant accessible throughout.

The planned timeline for early access is Q3 2026, with productive use targeted for Q1 2027.

And it Won’t end There – Here's a Glimpse of the Future

AI Assistance for Faster, Better Product Decisions

In the future, AI will be embedded throughout Vianta PLP not as a feature layer but as a core part of the solution. The planned PLP Assistant will be able to read an incoming RFQ document, extract the relevant data (e.g., customer, target price, volume assumptions, product specifications) and automatically create a corresponding project, including an initial cost structure populated by similarity search against prior calculations. (The images below are part of a visionary demo of the agent. The final product will be shaped based on customer feedback.)

[An image showing the PLP AI Assistant accessed directly from the UI.]

When a specification requirement cannot be met by existing price data, the assistant identifies the gap and sources pricing from external market data, bringing it into the calculation without manual intervention. Teams can ask the assistant to explain the current calculation in plain language: what are the total costs, how is the cost split between material and labor, what are the key cost drivers, and how does this compare to reference products?

[An image showing a dialog with the PLP AI Assistant checking cost structures against RIQ.]

When the calculation is above target, the assistant proposes concrete optimization options (e.g., alternative materials, component substitutions, design trade-offs), ranks them by impact and filters them by the constraints defined in the RFQ. Teams accept or reject proposals and see the updated cost reflected immediately.

[An image showing a dialog with the PLP AI Assistant giving recommendations.]

This is the difference between a system that stores data and a system that accelerates decisions. The goal is not to replace the cost engineer or the product manager but to compress the time between a new requirement arriving and a credible, optimized cost response going back.

In sum, what can you expect from this product in the future?

Cost Optimization Agent

• An AI agent that proactively identifies cost reduction opportunities across the product portfolio and proposes specific actions with projected impact 

Quotation Calculation for Engineer-to-Order

• Structured costing workflows for ETO and make-to-order scenarios, supporting the full quotation process

 FX and Tariff Simulation

• Model the impact of currency fluctuations, additional tariffs, or supply chain disruptions on existing product cost structures

Product Variant Comparison

• Calculate and compare multiple design alternatives side by side before a full BOM exists, providing cost feedback at the earliest point in the design process

Portfolio-Level Business Cases

• Extend the business case model to cover entire product portfolios, with advanced KPIs and scenario comparison across product families

Conversational UX and Agentic AI

• Full natural language interaction for process navigation, cost queries, and optimization, moving from AI assistance to AI-driven costing workflows

Conclusion

 Product life cycle profitability requires the right foundation: a calculation engine that handles real complexity, AI that accelerates decisions rather than adding noise, collaboration that keeps cross-functional teams aligned, and business cases grounded in actual cost data rather than spreadsheet assumptions. Vianta PLP, integrated with SAP Cloud ERP or SAP IPD and built on SAP BTP, brings these capabilities together in a clean-core SaaS solution designed for the pace and complexity that modern product organizations require.

Get Involved: Co-Innovation Opportunity

Vianta and SAP are actively looking for co-innovation customers to shape the product roadmap. This is an opportunity to influence scope, define AI use cases, validate the collaboration and business case capabilities against your real requirements, and gain early access ahead of general availability.

Your opportunity to shape the solution according to your needs

• Influence the scope
• Together with our experts, identify additional AI cases
• Early access to the solution
• Register for exchange & further updates via info@vianta.io

More Information

– SAP Supply Chain Management Enablement Hub

– SAP Integrated Product Development on SAP Community

– SAP IPD Roadmap Explorer

– Download the Vianta PLP info package and demos at www.vianta.io.

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