Four top chefs (a.k.a. vendors) selected by Gartner faced off in an epic BI Bake-Off at the Gartner Data & Analytics Conference in Texas on March 5. The goal: to provide attendees a unique opportunity to see modern BI and analytics tools in action and educate prospective buyers and influencers on key points of differentiation.SAP, Microsoft, Tableau and Qlik were presented with the business question: what is the leading cause of traffic fatalities, and is it different by state, age group, over time, or during the holidays? They were also asked for proactive advice, such as when not to drive or how to reduce teen deaths.
SAP Master Chef Matt Walsh boldly stepped up to the cooking station, armed with all the key ingredients for a show-stopping exploration of data discovery.
LET'S GET COOKIN'
Ingredients (a.k.a. sample data set):
- State Dept. of Transportation, NHTSA, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (available here)
- SAP BusinessObjects Lumira,
- A dash of #saltbae, a must-have ingredient
Key Differentiators:
What makes SAP unique is the ability to meet all analytics needs with integrated analytics in a single platform with an intersection of business intelligence (BI), predictive, and planning capabilities. The SAP BusinessObjects Analytics portfolio provides a comprehensive set of modern analytics capabilities, on premise and in the cloud, that work together to analyze data wherever it is.
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira offers:
- Best in-class security: both at the platform level and by leveraging security profiles directly in the source system
- Smart self-service: by assisting business users during data prep and providing predictive capabilities during data visualization for business users
- Enterprise scalability: part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform, with over 65k+ customers, some of which have deployed to serve over 100,000 users
BAKING INSTRUCTIONS (A.K.A. SAP BAKE-OFF DEMO)
Demo Look and Feel (3 minutes)
- Consumer dashboard: In the dashboard below, the KPI information is displayed on the left and Esri geospatial map analysis is in the middle. Insights include males having significantly more crashes than females, particularly males aged 19 – 29.
- Exporting data: Users can click on the Export Records icon in the top right of the chart to export data to Excel. There are also filters for state and year located at the top. Based on the filter selection, the data on the page is refreshed. Visual discovery and dashboards empower business users to explore their own data and create visualizations and dashboards with limited support.
Self-Service Data Preparation (3 minutes)
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira empowers business users to instantly access, combine, and transform data. Data sources include local files as well as Microsoft Excel, CSV, text files, SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse, SQL query, best-in-class connectivity to universes, and more.
With access to multiple sources of data, business users can mash up trusted corporate data sources with additional data they may have to analyze specific business questions. In this case, we can join the accident data and the distractions tables using state case and year column.
Dashboard Design and Storytelling
Using data visualizations to convey knowledge and information is great, but we want your data to help you to tell stories. No need for coding or scripting – it’s drag and drop. You can even design your own infographic.A key differentiator with SAP BusinessObjects Lumira is the ability to leverage SDKs in order to develop custom product extensions.Business users can get creative and customize features, functions, chart types, data connectivity, and/or general look and feel. Custom extensions take two forms:
- Visualization: custom chart types, visualizations, and business methodologies
- Data Access: new data sources and improved data acquisition methods (on premise, cloud, local, and enterprise)
Check out this demo of a geospatial analytics custom extension called Visual Crossing, by SAP's Iver Van De Zand, and also check out his blog and also the Analytics Extension Directory.
Share the Information (2 minutes)
In this scenario, the governor is asking for a scheduled report on accidents in the states, but they don’t have direct access to the BI tool.
Most customers who have SAP BusinessObjects Lumira have purchased it as a part of a package. With a comprehensive analytics suite, you can leverage a tool like SAP Crystal Reports to send that pixel-perfect PDF report, or use the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform itself to schedule Excel or flat files to be sent to an email address. Many of the largest financial institutions, like JPMorgan, use this to send out hundreds of thousands of statements out a day!
You can also access SAP BusinessObjects Lumira stories on the iPad using SAP BusinessObjects Mobile, which provides data exploration and BI distribution in a single application.
Governance (3 minutes)
A major differentiator SAP brings to the table is governance. With the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform, you provide scale and trust for IT and management. Major cost savings are involved when IT only has one infrastructure to govern, audit, manage and can truly maintain one single version of the truth.
We also embrace the new modern BI approach to leverage security from the source data itself, offering customers the best of both worlds.
Below we showcase the modern BI approach by leveraging the security model in the source system, in this case a live connection to SAP HANA that only displays the data meant for that user.
The source system has a number of different analytic privileges in it that define what information a user can see. This particular privilege says that users can only see information for the state of California. This ensures that the right user receives access to the correct set of information in the most efficient way possible. This is equally as important to the small departmental deployments as it is those that support 170,000 users!
Differentiator or Cool Innovation (3 minutes)
In this scenario, the governor’s office is tired of PDF and Excel reports and wants something more interactive. Maybe NHTSA doesn’t want to open up its on-premise environment to external agencies like this. This is a perfect use case for a hybrid analytics scenario where we leverage the machine learning and dashboard automation functionality available with "Build My Story" in SAP BusinessObjects Cloud.
CHEF HATS OFF TO MATT WALSH FOR THE EPIC TOP-CHEF DEMO
DON'T FORGET DESSERT
Now that we’ve got your appetite going with this BI Bake-Off, don’t think we’re going to let you go hungry!
- Join us for the next #askSAP call on March 16, 2016, 8am PT, featuring Senior Vice President of Analytics, Mike Flannagan and Christian Frank of B.Braun: Journey to the Cloud: SAP Strategy and Roadmap for Cloud and Hybrid Analytics Scenarios. Learn more and register.
- Watch the replay of 2017 with Innovative SAP BusinessObjects Analytics Solutions with the SAP BusinessObjects Lumira 2.0 Roadmap
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