Revolutionize your reporting with SAP Business Analytics:

A one-stop-shop for all your business processes, ORBIS doesn’t just offer support in classic operational business processes (SAP S/4HANA, SAP CX, SAP SuccessFactors), instead it adds to the portfolio with consultancy and implementation services in the fields of data management, planning and analytics. The primary objective of our SAP Data and Analytics Team is to advise and facilitate our clients in their efforts to structure and develop their data and analytics landscape and assist them in configuring this area of the company optimally for the future.

What is SAP Business Analytics?

Due to the digital transformation, the data volumes (Big Data) in companies are rapidly growing and becoming increasingly confusing. Based on Business Intelligence (BI), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning, the SAP Business Analytics Ecosystem allows for the data analysis of past and current events as well as the simulation of future scenarios. This means that both management and your employees always have the most up-to-date information at their fingertips and are therefore able to make solid decisions in real time.

SAP-Analytics is part of the SAP Business Technology Platform and essentially consists of four areas: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Company Planning, and Augmented Analytics.

Data forms the backbone of any successful business strategy—now more than ever. Often referred to as “digital gold”, it’s not hard to see why. Companies that fail to unearth this treasure and put it to effective use risk struggling to compete as well as losses in efficiency and profitability. Data should no longer be regarded as a by-product of business applications given its strategic importance in fueling innovation.

This is exactly where SAP's state-of-the-art data management, planning and analytics tools come in. These go beyond the descriptive character of classic business intelligence (BI) landscapes which concentrate primarily on the retrospective analysis data using reports and dashboards. Our tools are about using business analytics (BA) to broaden users’ horizons in the truest sense of the word and using predictive and prescriptive techniques like statistical methods, forecasting, machine learning and AI to predict what will happen ahead of time and what decision-makers should be doing.

In a highly dynamic market environment with its daily changing parameters, the SAP Data, Planning and Analytics Ecosystem offers the necessary flexibility, top-notch functionality and agility to prevail. So, what are the core components of a landscape like this?

Component 1: Business Data Warehouse and Business Data Fabric

Data forms the basis of every business decision. The digital transformation the majority of businesses are currently in the midst of is seeing the data quantities potentially usable in companies grow at a rapid pace and become more and more complex. Think “Big Data”. The idea is to intelligently link SAP data with non-SAP data and structured data with unstructured data so we can derive sound and solid decisions on this basis.

Traditionally, this issue falls within the scope of the Business Data Warehouse (BDW). A Business Data Warehouse serves as a central platform for extracting, transforming and harmonizing historic data from a variety of source systems with a view to providing these to users in consistent and usable form. With established on-premise solution SAP BW/4HANA and the innovative Cloud-based SAP Datasphere, SAP offers two Data Warehouse solutions that use different approaches to help you implement and embrace the “one version of the truth” concept for all your business data.

Business Data Cloud, BDC for short, sees SAP move another step closer to a Business Data Fabric. A Business Data Fabric is a state-of-the-art distributed data management framework that integrates, manages and provides users with data via hybrid and multi cloud environments and beyond. The BDC is the centerpiece of SAP's future data and analytics strategy and essential to ensuring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) - technologies which are fast gaining importance in the everyday running of a company - can be implemented on as broad and contextualized a data basis as possible.

SAP is already integrating tried and tested state-of-the-art software solutions into the BDC, such as SAP Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud and data from existing customer BW systems with groundbreaking innovative new concepts under a uniform governance approach:

Machine Learning in SAP Databricks

Machine learning is largely covered by SAP Databricks. SAP Databricks operates as what is referred to as a Data Lakehouse, combining the advantages of a Data Lake, i.e. the flexible storage and use of large volumes of unstructured data, with that of a Data Warehouse, where well-structured data with a business context can be filed. SAP Databricks’ powerful features for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), data science and data engineering build on this data lakehouse. Data experts can use SAP Databricks to apply AI models and generative AI applications to business-relevant data faster. Straightforward integration within SAP Databricks makes it possible to combine and use both SAP with third party provider data and structured with non-structured data. For instance, client master data from SAP can be combined with social media information for sentiment analyses, production data can be linked with unstructured maintenance reports for quality optimization or financial data from SAP can be merged with external market data for accurate forecasts.

Data Products and Intelligent Apps

Another pioneering BDC feature is Intelligent Apps. Fully automated processes cluster data from cloud-based SAP source systems such as S/4 or SuccessFactors thematically in the form of Data Products and, equipped with semantic context, this is supplied to users in the form of Intelligent Apps. Intelligent Apps visualize data in appealing dashboards and use built-in AI features like Joule.

What’s special about this concept is that the complete data provision process, from the extraction of the data from the source system and the automatic provision of the data in the form of Data Products in the Object Store, the creation of analytical data models building on this right through to the visualization of the data, is managed by SAP in an attractive analysis application, rendering time- and resource-consuming modeling and management of data flows and building analytical applications, as was done in the past, largely unnecessary.

But of course, there’s still the option of implementing customer-specific add-ons to BDC artifacts when it comes to both data provision—curated by SAP as standard—and building analytical applications.

In short, the BDC creates the opportunity to combine data, context and AI, thereby providing the basis for intelligent, business-relevant decisions. The BDC is part of the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), the technological cloud platform all SaaS applications of the SAP Business Suite run on.

Find out more about BDC and all its components SAP Databricks, Intelligent Apps, Data Products and Joule here:

The second component combines powerful classic data analysis and visualization tools.

The SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is the strategic platform on which both list-based reports and interactive dashboards are built and stored. The SAC covers all possible functional and design requirements of different user and report types for modern reporting. The spectrum spans from simple self-service reports, which can be set up independently and intuitively by the end user, to complex, partly scripted reporting applications, which are supported by knowledgeable IT experts or ORBIS consultants. In addition to the classic web-based reports, “stories”, there is also the option - especially interesting for controllers - of visualizing the data “Excel-style” with SAP Analytics Cloud, add-in for Microsoft Excel. Depending on the customer’s IT landscape and the respective use case, it can be flexibly decided whether the data is imported into the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and persistently stored there or whether the data in the source system is accessed live so that it does not have to leave the system. Due to its source system openness, the SAC can be understood as a data integration and visualization platform that enables data access to operational source systems (like SAP S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, SAP CX, etc.), any non-SAP databases or to the consolidated data stocks of a business data warehouse (such as the SAP Datasphere) or a data fabric (such as the SAP Business Data Cloud).

Embedded analytics refers to the possibility of working directly in the SAP S/4HANA system with the data available there - at an analysis level once reserved for specialized BI frontends. With this approach, reporting is no longer exclusively dependent on the custom FIORI apps predefined by SAP. Instead, reports can be flexibly created on the basis of Core Data Services Views (CDS views) - virtual, hierarchical data models that can be provided by SAP and expanded easily as needed. These CDS views provide real-time access to the source system data in the corresponding base tables. End users can access the characteristics and key figures defined in the CDS views and visualize them, for example, with the generic Multidimensional Reporting App or the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). They benefit from modern analysis functions such as filtering, slice-and-dice, drag-and-drop and much more—familiar to them from classic BI tools or Excel pivot tables.

Find out more about reporting and dashboarding with the SAP Analytics Cloud and embedded analytics toolkit here:

The SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) takes on the role of a central platform for planning and analysis, while solutions such as SAP IBP complement operational planning processes. Together, they form a powerful ecosystem for holistic corporate management in the sense of xP&A. SAC impresses with a variety of intuitive functions specifically tailored to the requirements of planning managers. Whether versioning planning data, forecasting key figures or automatic top-down distributions - SAC offers powerful tools to make planning processes efficient and transparent. One particularly practical aspect is that an integrated “calculator function” in the planning grid enables fast calculations directly in the work context. In addition, modern workflows and integrated collaboration functions ensure smooth coordination between departments and promote cross-team collaboration, making planning not only easier, but smarter too.

Even when it comes to the typically more complex planning applications, the business content supplied by SAP offers a valuable starting point for project work. This sector-specific and department-related content isn’t simply comprised of the right planning interfaces and features, it also includes the underlying data models with all the relevant attributes and key figures. The breadth of the planning areas covered is immense: from workforce planning (WFP) and integrated financial planning (IFP) with areas like OpEx, CapEx, production cost, margin, income statement and balance sheet planning right through to cashflow planning. Business content can be understood as a kind of proposal, a blueprint, for concrete implementation by the customer. Depending on the customer’s requirements, possible implementation scenarios range from a direct 1:1 use of a complete content area, to the design of only individual planning areas, to customer-specific from-scratch solutions where the content only serves as a source of technical inspiration.

Alternatively, we can assist in the planning implementation process with SAP Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC) - especially if the client already has a significant footprint in the BPC Toolset and planning is set to be native in BW/4HANA or hybrid with the in the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). The combination of BPC as a powerful backend and SAC as a modern frontend creates a flexible, user-friendly solution that combines classic planning with innovative cloud functionalities. This facilitates the optimum use of BW structures and, at the same time, the agile implementation of new requirements. We use our extensive expertise to develop scalable planning architectures that reliably cover both central company requirements and individual departmental requirements.

SAP IBP is a cloud-based solution for integrated planning along the entire supply chain. It assists companies in sales and production planning, stock optimization and company-wide sales & operations planning (S&OP). With modules like Demand Planning, Response & Supply, Inventory and the Control Tower, SAP IBP enables end-to-end, simulation-ready and forward-looking planning. The solution is based on SAP HANA and offers modern forecasting processes like Demand Sensing and dynamic buffer strategies. Combined with SAP Analytics Cloud Planning, this forms a holistic planning ecosystem that integrates operation and financial planning—in an xP&A sense.

AI is multifaceted in the SAP Analytics context. A key role is assumed by the data basis built in the SAP Business Data Fabric - e.g. in SAP BW/4HANA, the SAP Datasphere or else SAP Databricks. This data forms the essential basis for being able to exploit the full potential of AI in the company.

At the same time, the SAP Data & Analytics solution space offers a variety of useful, partly preconfigured AI and machine learning functionalities that can be used immediately with minimal effort.

In the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), these functions are summarized under the term augmented analytics. In contrast to the specialized AI functions, such as those provided in SAP Databricks or in the form of dedicated tools within the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), the augmented analytics functions follow the self-service principle. This means that even business users without in-depth data science knowledge can create data-driven forecasts with the help of machine learning algorithms using Smart Predict functions such as forecast, classification or regression. In the SAC, users can get help from the chatbots Joule and Just Ask if desired, which allows them to interact with the system using Natural Language Quering (NLQ) in natural language and to make data queries based on data that can be made available in the SAC or the SAP Datasphere dedicated to such a query.

In addition, other embedded AI functionalities are also being introduced, especially in the SAP Datasphere. The multitude of AI “helpers” deeply integrated into the system ranges from the AI-supported artifact search to automatically created descriptions and tags for data objects in the object catalog. In addition, users within the Datasphere can ask Joule how to use a certain functionality and then receive the answer with references to the product documentation. In addition, Joule is able to perform tasks directly from the conversation on behalf of the user, without the need for interaction with the actual SAP Datasphere user interface.

ORBIS supports you holistically in the modernization of your reporting. From classic On-Premise Data Warehouse projects to current cloud solutions, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, ORBIS is the right partner for your company.

With our many years of expertise and know-how in the SAP BW environment and the resulting project experience, we adapt your IT infrastructure according to your individual requirements: From smaller business warehouse installations to data stores with several terabytes and many source connections.