Augmented analytics refers to the use of machine learning and natural language processing technology to help you quickly go from insight to action. With augmented analytics, your organization can avoid agenda-driven and biased decision making by extracting the truth behind what’s driving your business.
SAP Analytics Cloud includes a variety of augmented analytics features that will better help you explore your data and quickly find the answers that you’re searching for. Let’s take a look at how you can get started with augmented analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Search to insight makes content creation easier with the power of its natural language query. To use Search to Insight, select the lightbulb icon from the main toolbar.
This will bring up the Search to Insight dialog, where you can start asking questions about your data and in turn, SAP Analytics Cloud will create relevant visualizations that you can add to your story. You can ask questions such as:
As you type your question, you will notice auto-complete suggestions that will help you find the exact answers you need. Several possible matches for your search are identified and ranked and one or more proposals will be displayed. Once you select one of the proposed questions, a chart is generated in which you can add to your story.
To learn more about Search to Insight, click here.
Gain instant answers to the questions you have about your data with Smart Insights. Smart Insights analyzes your underlying datasets and runs various statistical algorithms to uncover the top contributors influencing certain areas of business. Knowing your top contributors upfront can help you easily take action in a fraction of the time!
There are three ways you can access Smart Insights:
After following one of these three methods, you will see Smart Insights displayed in the Smart Insights panel within your story. Each type of insight quickly offers you varying information about your selected data point or variance. Depending on the data point you’ve selected, the Smart Insights panel will give answers on one or more of the following questions:
To learn more about Smart Insights, check out this resource.
Think of Smart Discovery as your personal business analyst. Smart Discovery automates the data exploration process to help you discover new or unknown relationships in your data.
In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can choose to run a discovery against a measure or dimension within a model to determine your key business influencers, how they relate to one another, and key members or value ranges.
To run a Smart Discovery, you’ll need to start a new story or open a story containing the dataset you want to explore:
Once the process is complete, depending on the selected dimensions or measures, Smart Discovery will automatically generate a story with up to 4 pages: Overview, Key Influencers, Unexpected Values, and Simulation. For a detailed walk-through of setting up Smart Discovery, click here.
Smart Predict augments your existing business intelligence capabilities by learning from your historical data to create recommendations on the next best action to take for your organization. In this section, we will focus on the Smart Predict functionalities in SAP Analytics Cloud for BI. However, SAP Analytics Cloud for planning includes a variety of predictive features that will help you quickly and accurately generate planning forecasts by analyzing underlying trends. To learn more about the advance predictive capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, click here.
To create a Predictive Scenario in SAP Analytics Cloud, head on over to the Main Menu and then select Create > Predictive Scenario. This will open the Predictive Scenario dialog where you can choose from three types of predictive scenarios:
You can create several predictive models within each of these predictive scenarios. Each predictive model will produce intuitive visualizations of the results, overall making it easier to interpret the findings. To further explore the many capabilities of Smart Predict, refer to this guide.
SAP Analytics Cloud includes a variety of augmented analytics features that will better help you explore your data and quickly find the answers that you’re searching for. Let’s take a look at how you can get started with augmented analytics in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Search to Insight
Search to insight makes content creation easier with the power of its natural language query. To use Search to Insight, select the lightbulb icon from the main toolbar.
This will bring up the Search to Insight dialog, where you can start asking questions about your data and in turn, SAP Analytics Cloud will create relevant visualizations that you can add to your story. You can ask questions such as:
- Show Sales for a specified year or quarter
- Sales for a region by priority
- Show me the top customer name by segment
- Show top five sales by sales region
- Compare Actuals versus Forecasted values for a specified measure in a specific time period
As you type your question, you will notice auto-complete suggestions that will help you find the exact answers you need. Several possible matches for your search are identified and ranked and one or more proposals will be displayed. Once you select one of the proposed questions, a chart is generated in which you can add to your story.
To learn more about Search to Insight, click here.
Smart Insights
Gain instant answers to the questions you have about your data with Smart Insights. Smart Insights analyzes your underlying datasets and runs various statistical algorithms to uncover the top contributors influencing certain areas of business. Knowing your top contributors upfront can help you easily take action in a fraction of the time!
There are three ways you can access Smart Insights:
- Simply select a data point or a variance in your visualization and use the context menu to choose the lightbulb icon.
- Right click on the data point to access the context menu. Then select the lightbulb icon to access smart insights for that specific data point.
- Select the Lightbulb icon or View more... from the Smart Insights dynamic text in a chart footer
After following one of these three methods, you will see Smart Insights displayed in the Smart Insights panel within your story. Each type of insight quickly offers you varying information about your selected data point or variance. Depending on the data point you’ve selected, the Smart Insights panel will give answers on one or more of the following questions:
- How has this changed?
- What are the top contributors?
- How is this calculated?
To learn more about Smart Insights, check out this resource.
Smart Discovery
Think of Smart Discovery as your personal business analyst. Smart Discovery automates the data exploration process to help you discover new or unknown relationships in your data.
In SAP Analytics Cloud, you can choose to run a discovery against a measure or dimension within a model to determine your key business influencers, how they relate to one another, and key members or value ranges.
To run a Smart Discovery, you’ll need to start a new story or open a story containing the dataset you want to explore:
- If you are creating a new story: Go to the Main Menu and then select Create > Story > Run a Smart Discovery.
- If you want to run a Smart Discovery on a data set in an existing story: Go to the Main Menu and select Browse > Files and select your story. Once the story is loaded, change the mode to Edit. From the Tools menu, select Smart Discovery.
- Next, configure your settings in the Smart Discovery side panel.
- Select the target dimension or measure on which to run the discovery from the Select Measure/Dimension list under Discovery Settings.
- When you are ready to run the analysis, select RUN.
Once the process is complete, depending on the selected dimensions or measures, Smart Discovery will automatically generate a story with up to 4 pages: Overview, Key Influencers, Unexpected Values, and Simulation. For a detailed walk-through of setting up Smart Discovery, click here.
Smart Predict
Smart Predict augments your existing business intelligence capabilities by learning from your historical data to create recommendations on the next best action to take for your organization. In this section, we will focus on the Smart Predict functionalities in SAP Analytics Cloud for BI. However, SAP Analytics Cloud for planning includes a variety of predictive features that will help you quickly and accurately generate planning forecasts by analyzing underlying trends. To learn more about the advance predictive capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, click here.
To create a Predictive Scenario in SAP Analytics Cloud, head on over to the Main Menu and then select Create > Predictive Scenario. This will open the Predictive Scenario dialog where you can choose from three types of predictive scenarios:
- Classification: Generates predictions on the likelihood of a future event happening. For example: Who is most likely to buy or not buy your new product?
- Regression: Generates predictions on business value, taking into account the context of its occurrence. For example: What will be the revenue generated by a product line, based on planned transport charges and tax duties?
- Times Series: Generates predictions on the values of a business’ value over time at a certain granularity. For example: How many smoothies will I sell daily over the next 12 months?
You can create several predictive models within each of these predictive scenarios. Each predictive model will produce intuitive visualizations of the results, overall making it easier to interpret the findings. To further explore the many capabilities of Smart Predict, refer to this guide.
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