Do you, and your business users get frustrated with the immense time and effort it takes to add a new functionality to your on-premise SAP ERP system? If so, then this quick overview video will enlighten you on how you can quickly make your business end-users ecstatic while simultaneously putting your SAP Security administrators at ease, by using the SAP HANA Cloud Platform to decouple new application development from your on-premise SAP ERP system.
In the video linked above, the joe.king
1) Describes what business users want
2) Details how the SAP HANA Academy created a solution that addresses those business users' wants
3) Shows a live demo of the solution
4) Informs how you can get this powerful demo
5) Announces an upcoming SAP HANA Academy course that enables our customers and Partners to modify the demoed ERP Agile Solution with HCP to elate their end users
(0:45 – 1:55) 1) What Business Users Want
We are aware that many savvy business users are telling their SAP IT administrators that they could make a much better business decision if they could only combine some of their own SAP ERP business data with an external source of big data. For example they could track a new product's release by combining social media data with their own ERP product data.
However, today what happens when they have this discussion with their SAP IT administrator? Their SAP IT administrator empathically say NO! Or at the very least says it will take a long time. And up until now that was the correct answer because SAP ERP software is mission critical for every company running it. So elaborate firewalls and change management procedure have been built to protect that infrastructure. Therefore any new development, application, or user interface takes a long, long time to implement.
(1:55 – 6:20) 2) How to Build an ERP Agile Solution
Recently the SAP HANA Academy solved this impasse by proving how quickly ERP data can be securely combined with external data to deliver valuable business insights. All of the new functions in a SAP HANA Academy ERP Agile Solution are built in the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. Your SAP IT administrator will be very happy due to the fact that the solution boils down to one SAP system in the cloud taking to another on-premise SAP system using SAP security.
SAP HANA Cloud Integrations for Data Services securely integrates HCP to your on-premise system. Initially setting up this connection between HCP and the SAP ERP system takes less than half a day and once that’s completed, additional connections to HCP can quickly be established in as little time as only 30 minutes. With your selected ERP data in HCP you now have at your disposal the complete power of the single best platform in the world to preform both analysis and predictive analytics, SAP HANA. Next you can use Smart Data integration and replication to read information from a Hadoop database or any non-SAP data source.
Built in just a few days, an ERP Agile Solutions with HCP provides SAP business users with the valuable insights they desire. The SAP HANA Academy’s has created a step-by-step course showing how to build a sample ERP Agile Solution called ERP Agile Inventory with HCP. Utilizing both the simplicity of the cloud and the native powers of SAP HANA, this and every ERP Agile Solution enables you to marry data from any source with information locked in your SAP ERP system.
The business case for the ERP Agile Inventory course shows how a retail manager’s inventory of over-the-counter medicine throughout their chain’s various locations is affected by local environmental factors such as air quality, temperature and humidity.
HCI-DS connects an on-premise SAP ERP system to a HCP instance. Information is then read from a trio of ERP tables - MAKT for the product, TW001W for store location, and vBAP for a year’s worth of sales data. Then Smart Data replications from the HCP instance reads a Hadoop data lake to get air quality index and heat information from various US weather stations. Next SAP HANA’s geospatial function is used to map each store with the closest weather station.
Once this information is in SAP HANA we use the Predictive Analytics Library’s exponential regression algorithm to find, and therefore predict the sales for each product at every store based on AQI, temperature and humidity. From the ERP system we get inventory for every product from each store and compute if a store's current stock is adequate, in excess, or scarce. When the weather conditions change predictive analytics is rerun to identify the nearest stores with an excess supply of a scarce product. Then we embed a SAP Fiori application which transfers the inventory between locations via a single query.
(6:20 – 11:30) 3) ERP Agile Inventory with HCP Demo
The first thing you will most likely notice when you open the ERP Agile Inventory with HCP demo is that it is secured via SAP Identity Management. If you would like to use the ERP Agile Inventory demo please send a request with your SAP I, C, or D SAP number to hanaacademy@sap.com.
The first tile of the demo's SAP Fiori Launchpad, called ERP Agility, displays the heart of the ERP Agile Inventory application on the left hand side. We have combined store inventory and store location data from the ERP system with data from an external data source to readily display how the local environmental factors are affecting each store via marrying the store locations with the nearest weather stations using SAP HANA geospatial.
By running a location’s historical sales data and the local AQI and temperature through predictive analytics we derive a predicted sales figure for the current environmental condition. With current inventory data at our finger tips we can thus simply assess the product’s current glut or dearth.
Another tile in the ERP Agile Inventory’s SAP Fiori Launchpad is a simulator. This enables you to manually input the environmental conditions for a specific location.
After ramping up the AQI for the Bishop location in the simulator, Joe shows back in the ERP Agile tile how an absurdly high AQI of 490 has resulted in a huge predicted demand for various products and thus cased a massive shortage. Now we know in real-time which items we will need to quickly ship to the Drugs R Us location in Bishop.
Joe continues the demo by showcasing the immense power SAP HANA wields in the ERP Agile Inventory demo by clicking on the blue check inventory icon. For each product currently lacking stock, a single query of SAP HANA’s geospatial functionality is run to find the closest store with an excess supply of that product. Now that we know where the excess stock is located when we can call a SAP Fiori application that executes on the SAP ERP system the transfer of stock between locations to sate the predicted demand.
Store inventory levels and current stock transfers are best shown on a map accessed via another SAP Fiori tile. Built with the SAP HANA platform, a XSJS app transfers the ERP inventory information to a third-party HERE map API to visually display Drugs R Us' fluid inventory.
(11:30 - 12:40) 4) How to Get the Demo & 5) How to Have the SAP HANA Academy Build You an Ad Hoc ERP Agile Solution
Once again if you would like to use the ERP Agile Inventory demo please email an access request with your I, C, or D SAP number to hanaacademy@sap.com. Please visit the SAP HANA Academy to see how you can technically build this demo.
Attention SAP Partners: If would like the SAP HANA Academy to teach you how to build this ERP Agile Inventory demo or even build an ad hoc ERP Agile Solution please drop us a line. We would love to show you how the SAP HANA Cloud Platform can quickly enhance the business value of your SAP ERP system or Business Suite.
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