Skip to Content
Product Information
Author's profile photo Adem Baykal

What-If-Simulation in a SAC Story based on a SAC Live Model (e.g. SAP BW/4HANA)

Hi SAC Fans,

This time a short SAC Blog but I think it will be useful for some Story Designers. 🙂

I have received the question if it is possible to create a What-If-Simulation in a SAC Story based on a SAC Live Model (in my example SAP BW/4HANA).

I can think of different ways to solve this. Just a few examples:

  • Work with formula variables in the SAP BW Query. They can be used in a SAC story and can be changed via runtime.
  • Create a Analytics Designer application.
  • Stay in SAC Story mode and do not touch the SAP BW query.

Let’s take the easiest way and work with a SAC Story.

Our initial SAC story looks like this:


You can see in the table that the SAP BW Query has the measure “Profit” inside which is fine.
In addition you can see the dimension “Sales Person” in the rows.

What we need to do is to create a new calculation. Let’s start:


In the next step we will define our calculation. Let’s take the “Profit” measure from the SAP BW Query into the formula editor:

Now we need to multiply the Profit with content from an “Input Control” (that’s the trick). We need to add one:


In the next step we will give our Input Control a name. I call it “Bonus Simulation“.
We use a “Static List” and in the next step we select “Select by Range“:

The range should be between “0” and “100“. As increment we enter “1” and then we click on “OK“.


The screen should look like in the following screenshot. Click on “OK” and leave the editor.


In the next step we include the input control into our formula:

Finish the formula and enter a name for the new calculation (e.g. Bonus Calculation). Click on “OK” to leave the editor:


We can see that the new calculation is available in the table. And we can see the input control which we need to resize and move under the table.


The next step is easy for all who are familiar with SAC.

I move the input control under the calculation in the table.
Then I change the size, the background color, the text color, remove the symbol (via “Show/Hide” by using the context menu of the input control) and it should look like this.


If we now move the slider, the values will change according to our selection.
Our “What-If” simulation works already and the bonus will be calculated according to the selected value. Please note that the values 1 to 100 represents percentages (e.g. 10 % bonus).

But as we need to visualize our data as well, let’s add a chart and format it a little bit.
As measure I select our newly created “Bonus Calculation” and as dimension the “Sales Person“.

If we now change the input control, the change will be shown immediately in the table and in the chart.

And that’s it. We have created a Bonus What-If Simulation based on SAP BW Live data in SAP Analytics Cloud. I took this easy example to illustrate how it works. Of course you can realize more complex simulation scenarios.

The following video shows the result:

You can do much more by working with this approach and with less effort your dashboards can be really interactive. Hope you like this approach and will use it in your dashboards.

Best regards,

Adem

Note: Big thanks to my colleague Blaz Zabukovec. We just talked about this request today and I wrote down the steps in a blog.

Assigned Tags

      7 Comments
      You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.
      Author's profile photo Aman Dwivedi
      Aman Dwivedi

      This is an excellent demo Adam.

      Author's profile photo Adem Baykal
      Adem Baykal
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Aman,

      It is just an example and you can create some more complex scenarios without touching the SAP BW Query.

      Best regards,

      Adem

      Author's profile photo Kris Stono
      Kris Stono

      Thanks Adem!

      I did a small test on an Embedded SAC story in S/4HANA Cloud and it works like a charm :-). Will test in Enterprise SAC over a live connection but assuming that it will work just fine.

       

      Cheers

      Kris

      Author's profile photo Adem Baykal
      Adem Baykal
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Kris Stono ,

      Great to see that you like it. I have created a new simulation by changing the profit value as well and it works really nice.

      I think it makes sense to share more best practices like this. Stay tuned. 😊

      Best regards,

      Adem

      Author's profile photo Kris Stono
      Kris Stono

      🙂 I did a revenue change...agree on the sharing...keep them coming!

       

      Author's profile photo k deshmukh
      k deshmukh

      wow, it's nicely written. Easy to understand. Learned something new today.

      Thanks, Adem for your effort.

      Author's profile photo Adem Baykal
      Adem Baykal
      Blog Post Author

      Thank you very much @deshmukh!

      Great that you like it 🙂 I am always getting questions from customers and then I check with colleagues if we can do it live with no-code in SAC by using a live connectivity.

      Just an example from today which is mainly raised in Germany:

      Since begin of July I am collecting a few topics for the new blog. Hope that I will find some time, to write it all down.

      Best,

      Adem