SAP Analytics Cloud

What is SAP Analytics Cloud? With SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud), the Walldorf-based software specialists have introduced a product that significantly simplifies data analysis as well as the planning and creation of dashboards and brings them closer to users. In addition to dashboarding capabilities, Predictive Analytics helps you with simulation scenarios and the Planning module helps you deploy your resources.

SAC can be divided into four main modules: BI (Business Intelligence), Planning, Boardroom and Predictive Analytics.

For creating analyses and dashboards SAP Analytics Cloud provides the Story Tool. This allows business users without programming knowledge to create Self Service Dashboards by using the pre-defined Charts and Filters. Since the Story 2.0 update, SAC Story includes the Advanced Mode, which enables Developers to extend those simple Dashboards with complex scripts and interactions in order to create proper Enterprise-Dashboards.

Self Service Dashboard with Story

Stories also allow SAP users to create dashboards themselves. Scripting skills are not required, but it is recommended that the IT department set up templates and governance once only. Thanks to a large selection of control elements and also diagrams, you as a user receive meaningful analyses . By integrating local Excel files, the SAC Stories allow you a quick and easy analysis.

Stories let you access your dashboard at any time - even on your smartphone. SAP provides special templates so you can optimize your dashboards for different devices and access them from anywhere.

SAC Story Advanced Mode - Dashboards for Your Specific Requirements

The Story 2.0 Advanced Mode extends the self-service functionality of SAP Analytics Cloud with further functional elements. In particular, the ability to create validations and user interactions using simple JavaScripts-like scripts represents an approximation of SAC to the functional scope of established dashboarding solutions such as SAP Lumira or Tableau. The ability to fill individual widgets such as dropdown boxes depending on other data or user interactions makes it even easier to implement specific application scenarios and improve the user experience.

The creation of Stories in Advanced Mode usually goes beyond the IT knowledge of business users. For experienced Lumira developers, therefore, the switch seems obvious at first glance. However, compared to Lumira, SAC has conceptual changes and gaps in the scope of functions that can only be compensated by experience gained in projects.

Boardroom bundles the dashboards you create from SAC so you can use them to gain real-time insight and make critical decisions for top management. Virtual meeting rooms and the integration of SAC dashboards can reduce presentation preparation and improve collaboration. Boardrooms can also be used to organize and schedule meetings. Immediate, data-based insights allow ad hoc questions to be answered in meetings and forecasts to be planned using simulation options from the planning module.

By connecting to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP), patterns and relationships between key figures and dimensions can be identified and if-then scenarios can be mapped. But please note: Forecasting strongly depends on the quality of the data and the knowledge gained by the user himself.

A platform not only for the IT department

SAP Analytics Cloud is designed in such a way that even power users can create their own plans, dashboards and analyses easily and without script knowledge.

Data diversity on a uniform platform

In SAP Analytics Cloud, not only data from SAP Datasphere, SAP HANA or SAP BW can be imported or connected live from the SAP Cloud platform, but also Excel, other file formats and system connections (e.g. OData, SQL Server, or GDrive) can be used. However, SAP Analytics Cloud not only offers a variety of data selection options, but also the uniform platform that many have been longing for and which integrates all tools.

Architecture

This new platform can provide all components for an advanced analytics solution. SAP Analytics Cloud is based on SAP HANA and uses the SAP HANA Cloud Platform with its data storage, cloud connectors and corresponding operational functions. Data can be provided as a live data connection or data import connection (e.g. connection to SAP Datasphere, a SAP BW system or a SQL Server) and imported as local data. With a live data connection, your sensitive data never leaves the corporate network, only metadata is exchanged with the cloud. In the case of a data import connection, the imported data is replicated in the cloud.