SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics

Transcription

1 Frequently Asked Questions November 2015, Version 1 EXTERNAL SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics The purpose of this document is to provide an external audience with a selection of frequently asked questions and answers about SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics. DISCLAIMER: The contents of this document and SAP s strategy and possible future developments, products, and platforms, directions, and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. This document is provided without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. This document is for informational purposes and may not be incorporated into a contract. SAP assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this document, except if such damages were caused by SAP s intentional or gross negligence. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

2 Table of Contents 1. What is SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 2. Is SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics generally available? 3. What business challenges does SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics address? 4. What are the benefits to business users of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 5. What are the IT benefits of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 6. Where can contextualized analytics be applied to create business value? 7. How can SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics be consumed? 8. How can customers license SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 9. How can customers and partners extend SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 10. What are the deployment options for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 11. Does SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics require a separate implementation? 12. Are there packages that can accelerate the implementation of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 13. What built-in reports are provided in SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 14. Will SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics replace any existing SAP solutions? 15. What will happen to SAP HANA Live and SAP Business Warehouse? 16. What are the differences between SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics and SAP HANA Live? 17. Can SAP HANA Live be adapted to operate in an SAP S/4HANA environment? 18. Can I use SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics for all my reporting needs? 19. What is the road map for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 20. Where can I learn more? 2 / 11

3 1. What is SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 2. Is SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics generally available? 3. What business challenges does SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics address? SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is the collection of all analytics features integrated in the SAP S/4HANA suite that enables business users, business analysts, and IT to perform real-time process analytics and operational reporting on live transactional data. It comes with a set of predefined and prepackaged representations of enterprise business and operational data. These representations, called virtual data models, allow business users to derive real-time, actionable insights from the data, without help from IT to understand the underlying data structures in the SAP HANA database and to build these representations themselves. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics can be built directly into transactional business processes, providing what is known as embedded business intelligence or process analytics, or it can be consumed by stand-alone analytics clients and applications. Yes, SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is generally available as part of SAP S/4HANA releases. The next release will be made available as part of both on-premise and cloud editions of SAP S/4HANA scheduled in November 2015 (1511). With more data entering the enterprise than ever, business users need to make data-driven decisions daily. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics addresses this challenge with: Real-time, relevant data delivered in business dashboards and reports that support ad hoc questions and interactive drilling into data In-context information supported with analytics and insights presented within the context of work and tailored to business needs and roles Forward-looking tools that offer user-friendly access to analytics that can help users predict, simulate, and perform what-if analyses when making business decisions 3 / 11

4 4. What are the benefits to business users of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? A superior, unified experience By bringing transactions and analytics together in a single platform, SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics empowers business users to drive insights, make decisions, and complete processes, using a single source of truth and a single application, without accessing other solutions, jumping between screens, or calling IT for help. Contextualized and personalized insights at the right time By building analytics into business processes, business users can access relevant and personalized insights when they need them the most at the point of decision making without having to toggle between systems or rekey information into a spreadsheet. Employees can move from instant insight to action in real time and make better-informed decisions. Empowered users that can make intelligent, forward-looking decisions SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is planned to take advantage of the underlying advanced analytics and predictive libraries and capabilities in the SAP HANA platform, enabling business users to move beyond looking at historic facts and figures to forecasting the future. 5. What are the IT benefits of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics provides tighter integration between analytics and transactions by implementing the analytic data models using ABAP -managed core data services (CDS) of the ABAP layer of SAP S/4HANA. CDS holds all metadata information and supports new hybrid scenarios for embedded analytics by, for example, using existing authorizations and hierarchies of SAP S/4HANA. In SAP S/4HANA, CDS is created and maintained in the application layer of ABAP and creates structured query language (SQL) statements in SAP HANA. With SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics, SAP supports stand-alone analytics (operational online analytical processing [OLAP], using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence [BI] solutions) and built-in analytics (hybrid-transactional and analytics-processing applications such as embedded BI or SAP Smart Business cockpits) using the same models. This greatly simplifies IT deployment efforts and reduces total cost of ownership (TCO). 4 / 11

5 6. Where can contextualized analytics be applied to create business value? Figure 1 below shows a few exemplary use cases for contextualized analytics across different lines of business. Sales and marketing Supply chain Finance Manufacturing Customer discovery and segmentation Out-of-stock detection and prevention Cash and liquidity management Production schedule optimization Cross-selling and up-selling Sales and operations planning Budgeting, planning, and forecasting Plant performance analytics Real-time customer recommendations Demand modeling and forecasting Cost and profitability analysis Detection and analysis of quality variance Churn analysis and customer retention Supplier management and quality analysis Financial dashboards and reporting Preventive maintenance recommendations Figure 1: When to Use SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics 5 / 11

6 7. How can SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics be consumed? As shown in Figure 2, SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics can be consumed as analytics built into business processes supported by SAP S/4HANA. This can be done with hybrid transactional and analytical applications such as SAP Smart Business cockpits, which support closed-loop decision-making processes, including drill-down, analysis, collaboration, and embedded transactional functions. These applications have direct integration with SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions, which provide additional, enhanced visualization capabilities. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics can be used with the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite to analyze data in SAP S/4HANA on premise. The SAP BusinessObjects BI suite offers multiple solutions for state-of-the-art business intelligence for reporting, as well as data visualization supporting table, graph, dashboard, predictive, planning, and Microsoft Office integration, such as Microsoft Excel Inplace views, in addition to other use cases. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics supports the entire SAP BusinessObjects BI suite. Embedded analytics SAP Smart Business cockpits Query browser Query builder Multidimensional reporting Strategic analytics* SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions SAP Lumira SAP Digital Boardroom SAP Cloud for Analytics *For SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition only Note: Screenshots shown are for demo purposes only and do not represent specific product content. Figure 2: How to Consume SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics 8. How can customers license SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is included at no extra cost with the foundation license for SAP S/4HANA. Front-end solutions for stand-alone analytics, such as SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions or SAP Lumira software, are licensed separately. 6 / 11

7 9. How can customers and partners extend SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 10. What are the deployment options for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 11. Does SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics require a separate implementation? 12. Are there packages that can accelerate the implementation of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? Customers and partners can extend existing CDS-based virtual data models and build new ones in SAP S/4HANA. Using the query builder (planned for the 1511 release of SAP S/4HANA), power users can create analytical queries using the interface layer of the virtual data model. Alternatively, the underlying CDS views can be adapted or built completely new. A new graphical modeler is planned to further simplify this step. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics can be deployed on premise or in the cloud, with the on-premise and cloud editions of SAP S/4HANA, planned for release No, SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics does not require a separate implementation. It is part of the SAP S/4HANA software and the future updates of SAP S/4HANA. Yes, the SAP Activate innovation adoption framework provides support for best practices for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics by offering: Background information and documentation about the technical setup of analytics processes in SAP S/4HANA How-to papers that describe ways to extend the solution and create new virtual data models with CDS, explain the architecture, provide modeling and design principles, and so on Templates for integrated analytics scenarios using BI tools such as SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio; the SAP Crystal Reports family of offerings; SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office; and other tools such as the analysis path framework Content from SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions integrated in the tiles of SAP Smart Business cockpits that can be accessed through the SAP Fiori launchpad The use of content is optional and valid only for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition. 13. What built-in reports are provided in SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? The latest release of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics comes with more than 60 predefined queries from all areas of the SAP S/4HANA scope. 7 / 11

8 14. Will SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics replace any existing SAP solutions? 15. What will happen to SAP HANA Live and SAP Business Warehouse? No, SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics will not replace any existing SAP solutions. SAP s strategy is to offer customers maximum choice and flexibility and more innovations. SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics complements existing SAP solutions. SAP HANA Live offerings will continue to be supported as an important native capability of the SAP HANA platform. New data models of SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite were released in April 2015, and the next release is planned for Q1/2016. For the latest SAP HANA Live release notes, see the SAP Help Portal site at /c7/00cf54f42bb209e a423f68/frameset.htm. Existing content in SAP HANA Live will remain valid with no changes required until a customer decides to move to SAP S/4HANA. At that time, it is possible to either modify existing SAP HANA Live models to the new data structures of SAP S/4HANA or migrate to the new technology using CDS. The SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) application powered by SAP HANA is our strategic solution for enterprise data warehousing. There is significant ongoing investment in and development for SAP BW and SAP BW powered by SAP HANA, and new features are introduced with each new release. Check out the latest road map and release information at /roadmap. 8 / 11

9 16. What are the differences between SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics and SAP HANA Live? The core difference is where and how the data representations the virtual data models (VDMs) are created. With SAP HANA Live offerings, the VDMs are built using calculation views in SAP HANA (see Figure 3). With SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics, these views are built using CDS residing in the application layer of the ABAP programming language (see Figure 4). SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA Analytics-only applications and BI clients Database layer: SAP HANA Calculation views in SAP HANA (virtual data models on physical tables) Figure 3: Architecture of SAP HANA Live Offerings SAP S/4 HANA Analytics-only applications and BI clients Application layer: ABAP Virtual data models based on core data services views Transient queries with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software Database layer: SAP HANA SQL runtime views on physical tables in SAP HANA Atomic Instantaneous Predefined Figure 4: Architecture of SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics 9 / 11

10 One of the key innovations in SAP S/4HANA is the simplified data model. Aggregates, totals, and other types of data redundancies resulting from line item level transactional data have been eliminated, removing an impediment between business users and insights. This makes it possible to reinvent VDMs in SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics. As a result, only one line-item table needs to be read to capture the most granular and complete data set from a single business process. Additionally, by building VDMs using CDS, ABAP-related use cases, such as security with SAP S/4HANA and SAP hierarchies, can now be supported, eliminating the need to build separate security profiles in SAP HANA. This also enables a strong integration with the ABAP-based transactional processes to allow embedded hybrid transactional and analytical applications. 17. Can SAP HANA Live be adapted to operate in an SAP S/4HANA environment? 18. Can I use SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics for all my reporting needs? Yes, the VDMs used in SAP HANA Live can be adapted to the new SAP S/4HANA data structures, but they will still require a separate security profile for SAP HANA. In addition, customers that have created their own custom calculation views for SAP HANA Live have to adapt them to the new data structures for use in SAP S/4HANA environments. The adaptation effort is expected to be significantly lower, compared to the initial investment of designing and implementing their own VDMs. You can carry out all your operational reporting and process analytics covering all typical business scenarios with SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics. This can help you reduce the operational reporting load from your SAP BW application. You might still need SAP BW powered by SAP HANA for strategic enterprise data warehousing (EDW) to help you analyze historical data, consolidate data from different sources, and perform intensive data analysis. As an EDW application that also runs on SAP HANA, SAP BW delivers services such as extraction and load, consolidation, harmonization, and integration of data from various SAP and third-party data sources for reliable reporting and analysis. The application offers integrated tools for monitoring, scheduling, lifecycle management, and security. When it comes to consolidated and integrated reporting or creating reports for regulators, the full service available for EDW comes into play. 10 / 11

11 19. What is the road map for SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics? 20. Where can I learn more? The next release of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics is planned for November It will include additional virtual data models in sales and distribution, finance, and materials management, as well as new key performance indicators for SAP Smart Business cockpits and updates for the query designer. Following the November 2015 update, updates are planned on a quarterly basis. To find more about: SAP S/4HANA, visit and SAP Community Network at SAP BW powered by SAP HANA, visit SAP Community Network at SAP HANA Live, visit SAP Community Network at /community/hana-live-rapid-deployment-solution and SAP Help Portal at 11 / 11 Studio SAP 39994enUS (15/11)

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