#SAP Book Club: Mastering SAP Analytics Cloud Recap

Source: Genesis10

This book club meeting covered SAP’s Ingo Hilgefort  new book, Mastering SAP Analytics Cloud, Empower your Business Users

Thanks to Genesis 10 and Kendall Tyler for hosting.

Kendall said they created SAP book club so SAP authors could have a book tour

This is Ingo Hilgefort’s 14th published book

Lots of Q&A:

Q: How long did it take to write the book?

A: 3-4 months; decided to use Kindle option to update the book

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Q:: What predict for the future

A: Embedded is a huge topic; S/4HANA

Cloud based data warehouse solution; easier to adopt changes

SAP Analytics used in NHL

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Q: Where is SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) in the market?

A: See Gartner magic quadrant

PowerBI is leader

SAC is the complete solution for analytics with strong integration into SAP products

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Q: How do you see the position of SAC in relation with Power BI, especially when several (not SAP ) sources systems are in the landscape. Power BI is also brought  the market with e free version. How do you think of that in relation of the “marketing” of SAC?

A: PowerBI is seen as “free”; see it as part of Office365

If you want to use PowerBI on corporate level need to purchase server components; not really free

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Q: Can we integrate WEBI Document /AO Documents in SAC? if you from which version of WEBI we can integrate..

A: Yes you can; explained in the book, an option for the hybrid deployment

SAC in cloud, use BusinessObjects on premise

Use the Universe as a data source or an existing WebI document – part of release 4.3

Analysis Office – cannot use the documents; SAC integrates with AO or SAC add in to MS Office

Leverage data sources and data models inside Office environment

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Q: Is SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) the next iteration of BW? Will there be content to take advantage of for quick enablement?

A: Yes, business content is a very critical part

Success criteria of BW was out of the box

DWC comes with Sample Data

DWC complements BW; not there to replace BW

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Q: Can you talk about how sac fits in landscape of data intelligence ,datahub ,Sac..

A: Data Hub and Data Intelligence same thing

Data Hub is now Data Intelligence – products came together

Data Intelligence – orchestrate pipelines

An option for ETL (over simplifies) – data ingestions

Go to DWC – Data Intelligence integrates to DWC – Data Flow is an embedded version of Data Intelligence

SAC for stories

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Q: What do you think about the digital boardroom? What do you see as the added value of this solution?

A: Digital Boardroom is an interesting experience; smart TV experience; Customers are using it, data driven

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Q: IS SAP delivered Standard Business content stories which can be readily used or enhance?

A: Yes DWC, SAC -item called Content Network – comes with samples to use the product

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Q: in terms of performance we hear and seen some slowness when using SAC with BW or Non-SAP sources, but other competitors like PowerBI are known to have better performance. Any views on it OR does SAP knows this and working on it?

A: Performance, competition; Compare apples with apples and oranges

PowerBI extracts data out of BW vs SAC connecting live to your SAP landscapes – data doesn’t leave network

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Q: With SAC capabilities, are we able to create a Lumira Dashboards / WeBi Std. Report?

A: Lumira has 2 products – Desktop and Designer – in the cloud, SAP Analytics Application Design

Web Intelligence – adding capability this year, see road map – enterprise reporting – ability to design report with repeated headers, more driven layout

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Q: For someone new to SAP thinking to get into SAC. What is the pre-requisite to learn before SAC

A: See book

Analytics – way perceive numbers

If start from scratch, start looking technology independent materials such as Stephen Few, Andy Kirk

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Q: BO is now extended more in terms of support to 2027, with SAC and BO as options this creates confusion with clients and also shows SAP is not putting the BI direction strongly for clients and changes frequently. Any views?

A: Analytics is strategic importance to SAP

Statement of Direction

BusinessObjects still supported

Moving enterprise reporting to the cloud

DWC – business layer; is counterpart to the universe

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Q: Digital Boardroom requires a separate license, right? Do you think it should be part of SAC Analytics license? SAP should give Digital Boardroom free. That can make a difference to compete with other players.

A: Yes, requires separate license

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Q: Embedded SAC editions have the same features as baseline SAC?

A: depends on version

Embedded SAC – don’t have to set up users

Limited to application for datasources

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Q: Does SAC work with all S4/HANA and BW on HANA versions ?

A: depends what “well” means

Can’t support all versions equally

See Platform Matrix

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Q: What about SAC’s scheduling feature?  Comparing SAC’s scheduling and BO’s scheduling  what missing in SAC and needs to be added?

A: Scheduling is not a year old

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Q:  What are some SAC add-ons that customers should consider? (do they exist)?

A: Visualization – target analytics designer

Connectivity – APOS

SnapLogic delivers data sources for Data Warehouse Cloud

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Q: is SAC supports dynamic Currency /Quantity Conversion function ?

A: Yes

2 options – do conversion in SAC

Define currency, conversion rates

If you have BW – use BW currency conversion

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Q: Is it true that if we need a reporting tool on premise we need to look for Web Intelligence but if we are into Cloud then SAC is the choice? Can a customer could have both WEBI and SAC?

A: Yes

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Q: How effectual is SAC as a self-service tool…ease for users?

A: for some self-service, some just slice and dice

Some it means build a brand new dashboard

Can give people the complete freedom

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Q: Will SAC have Crystal Reports features? We are big users of Crystal Reports, especially inside SAP ERP (and it works on S/4HANA)

A: Not planned

Q: Can we use S4/HANA – Embedded Analytics Query directly in SAC

A: depends on what doing

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Q: Can you please throw some light on integrating /accessing  FIORI

A: writing code vs. self-service scenario

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Q: So voice to search would be considered AI/ML?

A: more NLP – natural language processing

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Q: Does your book covers any of the Advanced Analytics features/capabilities using AI&ML?

A: SAC, talking AI/ML – augmented BI, in SAC have features

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Q: While importing data from S4/HANA  what is better CDS Views or Calculation

A: CDS is preferred

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