New KPI Catalog available in the cloud - Part 1

volker_vongloeden · ‎06-11-2015

Since June 1, 2015 a new general KPI Catalog is available at (SAP Service Marketplace login required)

https://go.support.sap.com/kpicatalog

to browse through key figure content that SAP ships out-of-the-box. The catalog uses SAPUI5 front end technology and hence can be accessed by any device with any kind of screen resolution from anywhere in the world with internet connection.

In its first version the current content of the catalog consists of key figures that were developed for Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, but key figures from other applications shall follow. Today the catalog "only" contains 562 different key figures as several hundred key figures (especially related to SAP APO and industry specific ones) are not yet included.

UPDATE: Since July 7 also the industry specific and SAP APO content is part of the catalog and the available key figures displayed in the catalog hence increased to 696.

Compared to the MS PowerPoint presentation (SMP login required) that was used so far to list all our key figures, the content in the KPI Catalog is not yet complete...but this will happen over time. Also compared to the MS PowerPoint, the new cloud catalog has many advantages that shall be described in this blog...actually there are so many things to cover that the blog is split into 2 parts to not overload this one single blog. This first blog will describe the different available filter criteria. The second blog will focus on the full text search capabilities and the available detail information.

One big advantage of the KPI Catalog is that you can filter for key figures according to different dimensions/attributes.

Filter according to Application Area

The application areas "roughly correlate" to the traditional SAP modules, e.g. 'Manufacturing' relates to PP or PP-PI. But an application area can also comprise different modules across different products, e.g. 'Sales' relates to SD in ERP as well as CRM Sales or 'Sourcing & Procurement' covers MM in ERP as well as SRM self-service procurement.

Filter according to Business Goal Area

As most of the Business Process Analytics key figure content was designed to support Business Process Improvement for SAP solutions activities, we took the most typical business goals that customers want to improve and used those goals as additional attribute for the key figure content. So if you are trying to reduce the costs in your Financial Shared Service Center and set the filter accordingly you should see key figures that can support such activities based on project experience from previous years.

Filter according to Category

In my blog about the 5 main key figure types, I described in 2013 how we categorize our content. Meanwhile we got a new category about Master Data related checks. All those categories are now available for selection so that you can wuickly find those key figures of a certain type of interest to you.

Filter according to End to End (E2E) business process

Especially if you left behind the thinking in traditioanl SAP modules (application areas) and rather think of a business process from end to end, then this filter possibilty should be to your liking. If you filter for a process like Procure to Pay, then you should see SRM content related to shopping carts, purchase orders, confirmations, invoices as well as ERP content related to planned orders (type NB), purchase requisitions, purchase orders, MM invoices and even FI-AP related open items or payments.

Filter according to Industry Solution

Most of our standard out-of-the-box content is good enough to be used no matter what industry you are working in. But here and there, there are industry specifics that can only be covered in industry specific content. This content is currently not yet in the catalog, but shall be available soon, e.g. for Automotive, AFS, Banking, Retail or Utilities.

Filter according to Product

You can also filter the key figure content specific to the respective SAP BusinessSuite component, i.e. ERP, CRM, SRM or SCM. The later content for Supply Chain Management (SCM) is not yet in the catalog, but should follow soon.

Filter according to Usage

Perhaps the least interesting filter is about Usage. This filter should only indicate the following. In general all key figures work for Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring (--> usage 'Business Process Analytics'), except a few (often rather technical key figures), which are only available for Business Process Monitoring but not for Business Process Analytics (--> usage 'Business Process Monitoring').

Filter according to New / Updated

Like any nice catalog, we wanted to share insghts what is (relatively) new or which content was significantly enhanced lately (updated). In this first version of the catalog these attributes are related to the latest key figure shipment with ST-A/PI 01R support package 1. The status attributes will then change once the next ST-A/PI 01S will be shipped.

If you have further questions, remarks or suggestions then please post them as remarks in this blog or send an email to bpimp@sap.com.

The second blog about full text search capabilities and the available detail information can be found here in part 2.