Discovering SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)

Clément, SAP BI VISEO Consultant, talks about the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) solution

For more than 2 years, SAP has completed its Analytics On Premise offer with a new cloud solution. SAP has a SaaS solution that combines 3 main functionalities: Business Intelligence, Predictive Planning and Analysis.

SAC requires no client installation and can connect to all types of data sources: cloud applications (SAP, Salesforce, ...), on-premise systems (SAP, Microsoft, ...) or flat files.

SAC is based on the SAP Cloud Platform, which is both in-memory cloud storage but also the platform for all SAP and non-SAP application developments, with the database functionalities, but above all the application services ( UX Design, ALM, ...), integration services (ETL, DataQuality, Hadoop connection, ...) or even process services (geospatial, predictive, streaming ...).

The customer context

In parallel with a project to redesign its information system with SAP S / 4HANA for one of our clients, VISEO is participating in the study to help choose the new budgeting tool. The two editors retained by the client were Anaplan and SAP. I was in charge of the realization of PoC on SAP Analytics Cloud.

Budgeting tools (or EPMs) can be used to model financial reporting, strategic planning, consolidation or management of cost models and margins.

For this client, the budget process is handled by the management controllers via Excel. The change of solutions was motivated by the problems reported below:

- A multiplication of budget excels, more and more difficult to consolidate with the number of subsidiaries within the group

- Difficulty to manage budget iterations;

- No centralized management of standards (products, accounts, etc ...);

- No native currency management, which is particularly problematic for cash management.

The desired solution by the customer has for main objectives: 

- to establish a reliable and comprehensive common basis for budgeting and forecasting;

- to cover sales forecasts, planning operations, financial planning (balance sheet, income statement);

- to enable the development of several planning and forecasting scenarii

The solution

In order to realize this PoC we chose to build an application for each business need (each based on a cube). This strategy was put in place thanks to the possibility of associating several cubes between them by linking them via their common dimensions.

This strategy proved to be optimal for security management, a need that had not been expressed at first sight. Indeed, a management controller must be able, for example, to have access to the data generated by the marketing department, without however being able to modify them.

At the end of this PoC we have made available to our client 5 applications:

-A marketing model dedicated to market assumptions and sales forecasts;

-A model dedicated to the calculation of production costs;

-A model dedicated to the calculation of the turnover;

-A model dedicated to the calculation of structural costs;

-And a model dedicated to cash management.

Each application is dedicated to a particular business profile to ensure the segregation and security of information. They are all interconnected because they share the same standards and are interdependent, for example the entry made in the application "calculation of production costs" has an impact on the application "calculation of the turnover" in order to guarantee the traceability of the data.

SAC, the BI solution, EPM, Predictive, indispensable in the market

SAC is the only solution on the market that combines business intelligence, planning and predictive functionality into one solution. It is user oriented and is therefore very simple and easy to handle for a business user. It does not require business intelligence skills. It simply requires some modeling concepts (cubes, dimensions, etc ...) rather easy to grasp.

If we regret the lack of a programming / scripting interface for modeling complex budget processes, the tool has comprehensive and interesting features in terms of data visualization, budget and predictive analysis.

One of SAC's great strengths is its cloud-based format that combines all the analytics features, exciting licensing costs, fast, user-driven implementation, maintenance, and SAP platform updates. patch installation and no migration to consider.

SAP delivers a SAC release every 2 weeks with new features, new connectors, new content preconfigured trades.

SAC is the BI, EPM, predictive, essential solution of the market.