We are in the Big Data age, we want to process a large amount of data and provide with enough predictive information to take an executive decision, if possible in a tablet format.
SAP Solution Manager is for sure one of the key data collectors that contain critical information about your IT landscape, system health, KPI’s, SLA’s, etc.
So, here we have the challenge: We need to provide executive dashboards for decision takers, in a tablet format (role based) and take the information from different sources, including the SAP Solution Manager
How to do this? Simple, with SAP Smart Business executive edition
Note: This is valid for on premise SolMan or for hosted editions (VAR’s, SMaMS) in this case, you need to ask your provider to provide you with the information required
Let’s plan it in just four steps:
1st Step:
First at all you need a SAP HANA System, some of you will stop reading now, but is not than complex, you don’t need a big system, on premise, nowadays with the SAP Cloud Appliance Library you can get a SAP HANA System in less than an hour, just go to http://cal.sap.com and select the cloud provider most suitable and that is all.
2nd Step:
Define a SAP HANA datamart (in this case your SAP Solution Manager) and connect it to your SAP HANA standalone system, data is transferred into SAP HANA with data services from several sources
3rd Step:
Install the SAP Smart Business executive edition, it needs no extra license beside the SAP HANA license itself, and you can download it from the SAP Service Marketplace:
Installations and Upgrades >> Browse our Download Catalog >> SAP In-Memory (SAP HANA ) >> SAP HANA Add-ons >> SAP SMART BUS EXEC.ED >> SAP SMART BUS EXEC.ED 1.0
4th Step:
Start building your Dashboards:
4.1 Select Data Source in SAP HANA
From your datamart you populated some SAP HANA view or table, it become available as the basis for the dashboard. By selecting the view and giving it a talking name, a catalogue of usable views is built up.
4.2 Define KPIs
In this step the measures, dimensions, hierarchies in the view are identified. “Speaking names” can be assigned. Technical dimensions and hierarchies in the SAP HANA view can be assigned to a logical dimension in the KPI repository to allow global filters. Benchmarks, trends and the information design are defined. Number formatting is specified. Calculated KPIs may be defined. This can be done by business experts in a very simple and straightforward way.
4.3 Define Visualization
The visualization of KPI's through tiles and charts are defined in this step. However, the information design, semantic coloring and number formatting is inherited from the KPI definition. The same holds for filtering dimensions. So per definition the information design is kept consistent throughout the dashboard and global filters are possible. This again can be done by business experts in a simple and straightforward way.
4.4 Compose Stories and Dashboards
Stories are collections of semantically related tiles, e.g. tiles about a certain topic like “Profitability”. Stories also define the multilevel Navigation between the different tiles. Dashboard can be composed by selecting on or several stories and either using all or a subset of tiles contained in that story. This is easy to do for end users.
Then you can consume the dashboard with your laptop, tablet or smartphone and take informed decisions without delay or need to be "at office"
