We see this consistently across all industries. People can now enjoy a seamless, unified analytics experience that enables collaboration across SAP and non-SAP environments. They don’t have to worry about the underlying infrastructure and can focus on driving better, faster decisions.
The Future of Analytics on SAP
A Guidebook to Business Intelligence for SAP Users
Addressing the “SAP + Opportunity”
SAP BW and SAP HANA represent essential investments in storing ERP data. Now cloud object stores like Amazon Redshift, data clouds like Snowflake, and data lakes offer the opportunity to extend the value of SAP data. But traditional BI solutions cannot effectively bring SAP and non-SAP data together in a single platform for analysis, while also preserving the critical hierarchies, content, and logic in SAP. Pyramid's business intelligence platform for SAP helps companies leverage their investment in SAP in a modern analytics stack.
Organizations bring in an average of 9 unique data sources per pipeline per month.
Data Integration and Integrity End User Survey, IDC, 2019
These opportunities include:
Directly querying your SAP BW and HANA data in-place, so you never have to move your data.
Enriching ERP data with other internal and third-party data for richer models and more accurate predictions.
Leveraging modern architecture, including elastically scalable public clouds, cloud-native technology, and decision intelligence.
We’re making it “spreadsheet-simple.”
In fact, the ability to capitalize on data both in and outside of SAP is what we refer to as the “SAP + Opportunity.” It’s where you can work across your entire data estate, in the cloud, on-prem, or both, leveraging the Pyramid Decision Intelligence platform for data prep, business analytics, and data science, all in one.
This is where business intelligence comes in.
This page provides a glimpse into the exciting future of analytics on SAP. A future that is available today with the right decision and business intelligence platform.
The challenges of common analytics tools for SAP, according to your peers
Consider these sentiments among SAP users from a recent SAPinsider benchmark survey report:
68%
say the most significant challenge around BI tools is that traditional tools don’t support all types of analytics.
73%
say that ensuring seamless connectivity between analytics tools and business applications are top requirements.
The Future of Business Intelligence SAP Benchmark Survey Report, SAPinsider, November 2021
We believe a mountain of value is being left on the table because of two core issues:
1. Data demands are too great for many BI and analytics tools.
Traditional tools cannot handle the volumes and complexities inherent in today’s data-rich and diverse business landscape. Most force you to move data out of SAP—delaying insights and sacrificing the inherent business logic, governance, and security.
2. Siloed, single-use tools are no longer viable.
It’s common for organizations to take a siloed, department-by-department approach to analytics. Why? Some think they can save money; some don’t know there’s a better way; and, some are simply unwilling to address a failing status quo. We also see a siloed approach form when people in different departments decide to go it alone because they can’t wait around for a centralized implementation of a BI tool that meets their specialized needs.
To take full advantage of the investments in SAP and the growing volume of new data sources, you should be able to access the data directly and deliver insights for everyone.
12 surprising truths about business intelligence and analytics.
Like many other analytics tools, the analytics in SAP has delivered value to organizations for years. But as data sources, volume, and variety explode, and decision-making becomes more complex, the opportunity to blend SAP and other data for deep insights becomes increasingly necessary, especially for predictive and prescriptive use cases.
You may be surprised to learn that the beliefs you and your organization have around business intelligence and analytics—and specifically about analytics for SAP—may be holding you back. Here are 12 truths about analytics to help you capture the SAP + opportunity.
1
All of your data does not need to be in one place to analyze it and get the answers you need.
2
You can do analytics on large-scale data sets with the right analytics engine.
3
You can integrate disparate data into a single analytics dashboard.
4
There’s no need to replicate data for decision intelligence.
5
You don’t need your IT team to build reports on request.
6
Data scientists aren’t the only ones who can use data in their daily roles.
7
The right platform will scale to anyone, regardless of their technical skills.
8
AI is more than a dream; the right AI-driven capabilities will support everyday decisions.
9
All of your analytical needs can be met in a single platform.
10
There are clear differences between analytical tools and platforms.
11
When you separate data from your analytics with a semantic layer that’s easy to build and maintain, you can reduce the impact of IT and data changes on your business.
12
A platform can serve all needs, from the simple to the sophisticated.
The future of analytics for SAP points to decision intelligence.
Consolidated, enterprise-wide analytics is not just the way forward … it’s already the gold standard.
94%
consider analytics important across a range of roles and responsibilities.
90%
say analytics technology has improved their activities and processes.
84%
believe data management and integration are critical to building the best possible BI.
The Evolving World of Analytics and Data: Market Insights from Benchmark Research, Ventana Research, January 2022 The Future of Business Intelligence SAP Benchmark Survey Report, SAPinsider, November 2021
What is decision intelligence?
Gartner defines decision intelligence as “a practical approach to improve organizational decision making,” which
“models each decision as a set of processes, using intelligence and analytics to inform, learn from, and refine decisions.”
3 Key Benefits of Decision Intelligence for SAP
A capable decision intelligence platform is not just about business intelligence. It’s about maximizing value from your SAP investments in three key ways.
1. Speeding Up Insights
A decision intelligence platform can deliver direct access to any data without the need to move any data out of SAP BW or SAP HANA for analysis and insights. This allows you to present deeper insights and blend SAP data with different sources no matter where they reside to create a single view. And you have the added benefit of reducing cloud operational costs by performing all querying and complex calculations of SAP data directly at the source.
2. Scaling Adoption
The right decision intelligence platform will reduce the backlog of one-off requests by enabling anyone to self-serve securely with governed access to SAP data and AI guidance to dig deeper. What’s more, it can enable governed self-service by leveraging the original business logic, data governance, and security capabilities of SAP BW or HANA. The ability to scale adoption means you can lower your total cost of ownership as you preserve the full analytic power of SAP’s multidimensional data without incurring the cost of adding more tools, training, infrastructure, and maintenance.
3. Simplifying Analysis
A decision intelligence platform will empower you to create and share reusable metrics, visualizations, KPIs, and ML models directly on top of SAP, which means you can develop analytics assets faster. The right platform will support simple to sophisticated AI-driven experiences with no coding required for all your SAP use cases. Notably, decision intelligence can allow you to future-proof your assets by extending the business logic already built into SAP BW (BEx) or HANA (Analytic and Calculation Views) and used directly.
