Business Process Analytics: Types of functions and their respective features & purposes
When looking at Business Process Analytics in SAP Solution Manager you basically have two ingredients
- Functional scope of the application itself (see previous blogs about Business Process Analytics and new features with support package 5)
- Key figure content with several hundred key figures available for all SAP Business Suite products.
In my last blog I summarized the different key figure types and announced that I will probably write another blog where I summarize the different features and functions of the current Business Process Analytics application itself – that’s what I want to do now.
Business Process Analytics – Overview
The Business Process Analytics currently contains 5 different analysis functions: Benchmarking, Age Analysis, Trend Analysis, Advanced Benchmarking, Detail Analysis. The first 4 functions are really performed withi the SAP Solution Manager and you can find a concise overview in the picture below.
The Detail Analysis describes the integration between the SAP Solution Manager system and the respective connected backend system (SAP ERP, SAP CRM, SAP SRM, SAP SCM). So after slicing and dicing your data in Business Process Analytics you always have the chance to jump into the connected system and check which process instances led to the results in Business Process Analytics and from the Detail list you can then even navigate into the single business document (e.g. sales order, purchase order).
Benchmarking
The basic functionality of Benchmarking was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics . It is important to know that the data is retrieved from an InfoCube within SAP Solution Manager and that only a limited number of characteristics (typically some organizational unit and process variant information like document type) is available for analysis. The graphical analysis should help to understand whether a problem exists globally or just in selected organizational/process areas.
Age Analysis
The basic functionality of Age Analysis was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics as well. Here the data is not retrieved from an InfoCube but the analysis happens as ad-hoc calculation based on the latest available result set that is stored on the connected backend system. A defined data column is taken into consideration (e.g. planned GI date, planned delivery date, net due date) and the Age Analysis visualized a distribution according to months or years. Hence the Age Analysis should help to split the backlog or exception data into two large sets
- Old legacy data that should be removed from the SAP system and which might or might not have an impact on todays performance (see also Protect your SAP ERP investment & improve your core business processes)
- New data where the respective business document is most likely still relevant for daily operations, e.g. a sales order that could still be invoiced.
Trend Analysis
The basic functionality of Trend Analysis was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics as well. Just like the Benchmarking, the Trend Analysis is available for all key figure types and reads its data from an InfoCube within SAP Solution Manager. The Trend Analysis works with the same limited number of characteristics as the Benchmarking. The main purpose is to display data over time (daily, weekly, monthly) in order to figure out if the figures are getting better or worse. So in the ideal case you identified problems, found out about the root cause, defined and implemented action items and would then see a
- decreasing trend for backlog or exceptions key figures
- increasing trend for automation rate key figures
Note: Backlog and exception key figures are stored in the InfoCube under the date of data collection (not the respective document date). Throughput key figures store the data according to the document date in order to avoid multple redundant entries in the InfoCube.
Advanced Benchmarking
The Advanced Benchmarking was only introduced with SAP Solution Manager 7.1 support package 5 as written previously. The principle is the same as for the Benchmarking, but the data is calculated ad-hoc based from the latest available result list and is not calculated on InfoCube data. This allows an analysis on many more characteristics (in comparison to the Benchmarking), so that also material/plant combinations could be analyzed. Additionally the Advanced Benchmarking also allows toggling between count of documents and value benchmarking of the respective documents (if the respective key figure contains some value information, e.g. this is not the case for outbound deliveries). The Advanced Benchmarking often allows much finer slicing and dicing than the Benchmarking and you can often identify the root cause even without jumping into the detail list itself.
Further reading
You can find all necessary information about Business Process Analytics in this document. More information on Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions can be found here.
Frequently Asked Questions about Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics are answered under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring and
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively.
Thefollowing blogs (in chronological order) provide further details about Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring functionalities within the SAP Solution Manager.
- New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – ALE / IDoc Monitoring
- New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – qRFC Monitoring
- New Business Process Monitoring Functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – functionalities For Inconsistencies in SAP Solution Manager
- SAP Business Process Monitoring within SAP Solution Manager
- New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – BPMon Trend Analysis Reporting
- Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Manufacturing
- Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Procure to Pay
- Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Order to Cash
- Business Process Monitoring – Template configuration available for download
- FAQs about Business Process Monitoring
- Typical Use Cases for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager
- New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – Customer Exit
- New key figure catalog for Business Process Monitoring available
- Why SAP offers different tools for Business Process Monitoring & Business Process Optimization
- Create your own auto-reaction messages in Business Process Monitoring via BAdI exit
- Protect your SAP ERP investment & improve your core business processes
- Refresh Solution Landscape cache for Business Process Operation Work Center
- Create your own customer-specific key figure for Business Process Monitoring within 5 minutes
- Best Practice: BW Process Chain monitoring with SAP Solution Manager – Part 1
- Best Practice: BW Process Chain monitoring with SAP Solution Manager – Part 2: Setup Example
- New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially for CRM Marketing
- New functionality “Business Process Analytics” – how to improve your business processes
- New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially Lead Time measurements
- Traditional Business KPI approach vs Business Process Monitoring
- Systematic errors vs real exceptions or improving efficiency vs effectiveness
- Before you get started with SAP HANA…you should also consider cleaning-up your backend system first
- Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for CRM Sales
- SAP Business Process Operations Extensions at SAP TechEd 2011
- Business Process Operations dashboards – ALL AT A GLANCE
- Business Process Operations dashboards – behind the scenes
- Customer testimonials on Business Process Analytics
- Customer Exit: Create your own key figure for BPMon AND Business Process Analytics
- Heads-up: Setup environment of BPMon & Analytics changes with SolMan 7.1 SP5
- New key figures for BPMon & BPAnalytics, especially for working capital improvement
- New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – BPMon Alert Reporting Analysis
- New Business Process Analytics features with SAP SolMan 7.1 SP5
- New Business Process Analytics – The filter sequence makes the difference
- New key figures: Analyzing/Monitoring exceptions during delivery due processing
- New key figure: Analyzing/Monitoring exceptions during billing due processing
- Enhanced key figures: Analyzing/monitoring SD invoices not transferred to FI
- New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions in CRM Sales or Service documents, Business Activities or Tasks
- New keyfigures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions from APO planning runs
- New key figures for BPMon & BP Analytics – new exception and automation rate key figures for ERP plus new content for FSCM, APO and CRM
- New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions during Period End Closing
- New key figures: Analyzing/monitoring exceptions in Controlling (CO-PC)
- Enhanced key figures: Bridging the organizational gap between SD and FI-AR
- Business Process Analytics: Types of key figures and their respective use cases
good info
Hello Volker,
Great information, thanks for sharing. I had an opportunity to set up BPMON solution for one of our clients. There was a query whether it is possible to create 'Live Dashboards'. i.e. as the data collection happens this will be converted and displayed as new data points in a dashboards which are shown on visual displays.
Can you please tell us if such a functionality is available, or will be available ? According to information from my search, such a functtionality is not available for BPMON. Awaiting your expert confirmation.
Thanks and Regards,
Onkar
The links to the earlier blog about Business Process Analytics does not work, it ends with a Page Not Found error.