Embedded analytics can provide key insights for your organization's success, but how can you start and optimize embedded analytics in your SAP projects?
Join us as SAP Expert Dmitry Kuznetsov answers your questions, including:
- What is embedded analytics and why is it important to SAP customers?
- What are the benefits of using embedded analytics?
- What do you need to do to take advantage of embedded analytics?
- What resources can be helpful for embedded analytics?
Introduction
I'm Dmitry. I am an SAP analytics consultant, an independent one. I basically work the majority of the time with either SAP analytics cloud, which has become quite popular these days, or S/4HANA embedded analytics. In other words, the analytics that are available inside S/4 without additional software.
Prior to that, I've been working with BW and HANA modeling, so quite a lot of backend development I’ve done before. Again, for the sake of analytics, but recently more and more, it seems like embedded is picking up and SAC has already picked up.
What Is Embedded Analytics And Why Is It Important To SAP Customers?
Embedded analytics is basically what whatever analytics are available inside S/4HANA itself. So that comes in in a couple of senses. One is in terms of user interface. For many of us, S/4HANA is more or less equivalent to using SAP systems through Fiori user interface.
Fiori is a generic word, a generic term. It means that this role-based web interface that we're dealing with to use SAP. And inside Fiori there are a number of different apps, including some of the analytical apps. In that sense, embedded analytics for me is actually a collection of those applications that are inside Fiori and that can access S/4HANA data directly for the sake of analytics. In other words, any on the analytical apps in S/4 for me is embedded. That's from one point of view.
From another point of view, all the underlying analytical models that are running directly on S/4 without the need of BW or HANA-sidecar or so that’s also, let's say, for the other part of the audience, that's also considered embedded analytics or whatever the models are there, irrespective of how they are being accessed from Fiori or from business objects or from SAP analytics cloud.
What Are The Benefits of Using Embedded Analytics?
From my point of view, the major advantage of using the embedded analytics is in the amount or the quantity of the models that is being delivered by SAP. So if we take it an example of 1909, which is the most recent version we know of inside S/4HANA, there are around 40,000 predelivered analytical models, be they very small ones or quite complex. So in using that content that is delivered by SAP for us out of the box is already a huge advantage. So in other words, we don't have to redefine for ourselves quite a number of of entities, like a sales order, sales document or transactional data objects.
So that's a huge advantage. I think that the predelivered content is pretty big. And that is in terms of the backend. In terms of the frontend, again, there are a number of tools that we can use for the sake of analytics, and these analytics are running directly on S/4. Which means that whenever a document gets altered it is immediately visible inside an analytical app as well.
So in other words, the two greatest advantages, I'd say, are that it's real-time and there is a lot out of the box.
What Do You Need To Do To Take Advantage of Embedded Analytics?
Firstly, you need to be willing to take advantage of it. And unfortunately I tend to notice that, quite frequently, analytics tend to be left behind a little bit. So, at the end of the implementation project, people tend to realize that “oh, and by the way, I needed my reports, but I did not really think about it when planning for the project.” So I'd start with this. Step zero is: you need to be willing to do this and to plan accordingly.
When that has happened, then certainly there's some setting up to do in the system. For this, I think it's a combination of BI people and ABAP people that works the best. So while presenting at SAPinsider and other conferences and teaching at SAP, which I sometimes do, I get asked a lot what is the right mix of competencies to work with embedded analytics. I'd say that, if you take very open minded BW people in the house and open-minded ABAP people in the house, and put them together into a separate team, there's probably no better choice than this - because, like with anything in terms of analytics, you need quite some conceptual thinking to cover not just the requirement at hand, but to think a bit wider what could be other possible scenarios for similar or the same data to be consumed?
That's one thing. And then in this BW people become pretty handy because they are doing this day to day for a number of years. And in terms of actual implementation, in ABAP there are core data services, that is the way that embedded analytics are implemented on the backend, and the core data services is something pretty new to many of us. I tend to notice that ABAP people are very eager to jump on it and learn it and to use it.
So to summarize, I think the best mix is both BI and BW people and ABAP in the same team, talking to each other, thinking a bit wider than the current requirement at hand, and then implementing it using the newest tools available.
A quick word on the core data services, since it's a relatively new technology. It's in the ABAP stack but not known to everybody, if you ask. So that takes a little bit of upscaling and there are a couple of good courses that SAP has come up with. So just check the schedule if there's any of the core data services related course there, it will help greatly to do modeling in using that technology.
What Resources Can Be Helpful For Embedded Analytics?
Firstly, in official SAP education, there are a number of courses. One track is on the front end, so S4H400 is an introduction to embedded analytics. It's a two-day course, which is quite useful. And then for core data services, there is S4D430, that's a three-day course. I think if you take both of them, that makes a week, a work week, and you're pretty much up to speed with both the front and back end of it.
Now, if there's no course or or no possibility to attend it, there is a great YouTube channel that explains those things pretty well as well with exercises and so on. That's how I started in 2016. And if you'd like to approach it from books, then I have a book published recently, a month ago, a book called “First Steps in SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics”. That's published by Espresso Tutorials, and it's really an introduction type of a book.
And there is another one written by SAP product managers in this area. It's released by SAP Press. Okay. And I think it's also called S/4 HANA Embedded Analytics, but it's quite a deeper one. It's maybe not for the beginners, but certainly contains a lot of good information.
Related Resources
Courses
Introductory book
Deeper book
YouTube playlist
Premium
