Empowered Self-Service BI with SAP HANA and Lumira with Honeywell – ASUG Webcast

We had a great ASUG webcast today with Dennis Scoville of Honeywell Aerospace.  My notes are below.  Thank you to Dennis for sharing his story with ASUG and agreeing to this to go on SCN.  Also meet Dennis here Meet the ASUG TechEd Speaker Dennis Scoville – Empowered Self-Service BI with SAP HANA and SAP Lumira

Figure 1: Source: Honeywell

Figure 1 shows what Honeywell did in the past for self-service BI.

Their environment was vanilla-based columnar based SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence reports

They gave their users personalized reports and allowed them to publish to a group folder or favorites.

They were not allowed to report to enterprise report folders.

The data was an Oracle database without real-time

They extracted data from SAP using Data Services and other sources.

The process took 13 hours from 6:00 pm to 7:00 am following morning.

Figure 2: Source: Honeywell

Figure 2 shows the “before system” look.  SAP source systems include ECC, GTS and non-SAP

They had transformations that were put into staging tables that went into Rapid Marts.

That data went into a data mart to SQL Server Analysis Services.

Then they used Web Intelligence against the Rapid Marts.

What was wrong in Figure 2? They had several sources of failure, job-wise, several transformations.

It took a host of skill sets to maintain this, he said.

The end user had to go to different places and there was no drill-down from SQL Server to the Web Intelligence.

Figure 3: Source: Honeywell

Figure 3 shows what Honeywell has done since Figures 1 & 2

They acquired HANA and the BI4 tools and are now on BI4.1

They started using the other tools

They are determining use cases for newer solutions to them

Lumira Server is not out yet.

They are also looking at Predictive Analysis.

Figure 4: Source: Honeywell

Figure 4 shows what their architecture looks like today.

They no longer use flat file interfaces into their data warehouse

All SAP applications use SLT to replicate tables “as-is” – such as MARA tables – MARA tables in ECC look the same in HANA.  There is no ETL process.

They use Data Services to pull in non-SAP data to harmonize data.

SAP and non-SAP data is used to create analytic views.  Some reports go against HANA views and the others go against the UNX universe.

It is a better architecture as they have fewer ETL tools and fewer transformations and a common skill set.

Figure 5: Source: Honeywell

Figure 5 shows what Self-Service BI

They want to provide enterprise wise governed data.  He emphasized governed so they get the same answers.

They want no IT involvement after the initial data delivery.

The business then handles it themselves and they don’t have to create a request for a report.

A governed data set provides a single set of truth and allows decisions being made on information.

Figure 6: Source: Honeywell

Figure 6 shows IT responsibilities – they will do ETL, any data modeling in HANA, information spaces for Explorer, and universes.

Figure 6 shows Honeywell’s tool decision construct.  Key performance indicators are included in Dashboards and Design Studio

The middle layer of the pyramid is the “pealing back” including Analysis, Lumira and Explorer.

The details are for the individual contributor includes focused details of where there might be issues.

Figure 7: Source: Honeywell

Figure 7 shows Business Users tasks at Honeywell, which are lower in complexity.

Business users create Explorer View sets to create dashboards

They use Analysis OLAP and Lumira.

Web Intelligence is used against universes.

Figure 8: Source: Honeywell

Figure 8 shows their first business case, working with Finance on a predictability model.

Some of this is custom.

All this data was acquired and created in 30 minutes!

Figure 9: Source: Honeywell

Figure 9 shows their anticipated revenue in a few years and by quarter.

It says what could but not by business segments or classifications

Figure 10: Source: SAP

They dropped in business segment and now they have a stacked bar.

Segment 1 in blue has the most revenue.

Segments 2 and 3 are more linear, while segment 1 is cyclical.

Figure 11: Source: Honeywell

Figure 11 shows dropping in region

Figure 12: Source: Honeywell

Figure 12 shows contributions by business segment in a pie chart

Figure 13: Source: Honeywell

One region, the Americas has the greatest cost every year

APAC has the best margins

Americas is next with the best margin

Figure 14: Source: Honeywell

Each business segment shows the “heat”

He said you can’t format legend on bubble chart

Figure 15: Source: Honeywell

Figure 15 shows the keys to success.  You need to define roles and responsibilities.  You create models with business in mind; they decide on the key metrics.

They found JAD to be an iterative process and the end user has “skin in the game”.

Figure 16: Source: SAP

He said there was very little training for “data junkies” with a 30 minute session with Lumira – the data junkies “ran with it”.

Custom hierarchies cannot be used in Lumira

Universes should have pre-defined prompts.  You cannot filter in Lumira until after you acquire it.

You can use built in hierarchies such as time and region

With BusinessObjects Explorer, he said 12-15 facets are recommended

They have used up to 25 facets in Lumira

Figure 17: Source: Honeywell

He has 16 GB memory without too many problems

Freehand SQL has some difficulties – you have to login for each query and serial refresh fashion

Our thanks again to Dennis for his time and sharing his company’s story.