The Benefits of Sap Hana in Business Intelligence and Analytics

The rapid advancement of digital technology has made the present world more creative and competitive. The development of upcoming technologies and systems results in the digital world’s invention and improvement of its database. One such life-changing tool for Business Intelligence and Analytics is SAP. Let us further dig deep in the techno magical world of SAP!

Introduction

How do you help your workforce make faster, better decisions, and increase productivity in a world developing at a lightning-fast speed? By providing them with self-service access to the data and insight they need, no matter where the information resides. SAP HANA Business and Analytics solutions help your employees to be more effective in everything they do 

SAP HANA Business Objects and Analytics solutions empower your teams to achieve remarkable results by allowing your workforce self-sufficient access to relevant information and helping businesses transform their decision-making by providing fact-based, quality information regardless of where the data resides. SAP Business and Analytics solutions provide comprehensive functionality for reporting and analysis, dashboards, data exploration, etc.

What is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA (High-performance Analytic Appliance) is a multi-model database. It stores data in its memory instead of keeping it on a disk. The column-oriented in-memory database design allows you to run advanced analytics alongside high-speed transactions – in a single system. Why is this so important? Because it lets companies process massive amounts of data with near-zero latency, query data instantly, and become truly data-driven. 

By storing data in column-based tables in main memory and bringing online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transactional processing (OLTP) together, SAP HANA is unique and significantly faster than other database management systems (DBMS) available in the market today. SAP HANA can accelerate the calculation speed of applications by removing or reducing the undesirable processing layer identified from real-world analytics. It is a solution that can grow with a company and eliminate the need to employ additional tools as necessary and eliminate the need to stitch together various disparate solutions that can result in a bulky, user-unfriendly system.

For candidates who wants to advance their Skills in SAP HANA SAP HANA Training Course  is the best option.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence or BI is the procedural and technical infrastructure that collects, stores, and analyzes the data produced by a company’s activities. It is a broad term encompassing data mining, process analysis, performance benchmarking, and descriptive analytics. BI parses all the data a business generates and presents easy-to-digest reports, performance measures, and trends that inform management decisions.

What is Business Analytics?

Business Analytics is the process of analysing using a set of software applications to build statistical models. This helps with data on past business performance, understand the current situation, and predict future scenarios. The focus on future outcomes separates business analytics from business intelligence. 

Difference between Business Intelligence and Business Analytics

Business Intelligence	Business Analytics
Business Intelligence emphasizes on what and how so that organizations can continue what is working and change what is not.	Business Analytics focuses on why things happen to enable informed and data-driven prediction
Business intelligence might help a company decide to manufacture more of a particular product to keep up with increased sales	Business analytics would explore the factors that led to increased sales to drive additional sales of that product or generate ideas for boosting sales of other products.

What is SAP Analytics Cloud?

SAP Analytics Cloud or SAC had various names like SAP Cloud for Planning, SAP Cloud for Analytics, and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud in the initial years of release. SAC was built on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform back in early 2015 with the name SAP Cloud for Planning. Today, it is a flagship product of SAP’s EPM suite.

SAC remains a preferred option for business worldwide. It saves time and effort and enables businesses to make informed decisions. As a top-notch SaaS (System as a Service) solution, SAC combines all the functionalities related to data analytics, including planning, business intelligence, and predictive analysis. Corporate users can get all the features in an intuitive interface.

How does SAP Analytics Cloud Work?

The SAC platform has structures known as models. These models have different dimensions in which companies can manage their accounts, organizational structure, or any other necessary aspects for planning or evaluating the outcome. The SAC has two types of models- The first one is a planning model. It enables the management to execute planning activities. The second one is an analytics model. It analyses the data collected during various activities.

One of the significant advantages of the SAP Analytics Cloud for Business Intelligence is that users can create models by importing a file from their computers and getting the necessary data from any cloud-based app like Google Drive. It is also possible to connect with a data source like SAP BW, SAP HANA, or SAP Universe for fetching the necessary data from different processes.

It analyzes the data and recommends the best way to visualize it for users. It is also possible for users to modify the chart type or the format before sharing it. On the other side, SAC allows users to configure formulas for different accounts while managing various currency conversion tables to ensure accurate planning. 

SAP Analytics Cloud for Business Intelligence

SAP Analytics Cloud for Business Intelligence is transformational. It allows real-time updates to our plans, collaboration across the organization, advanced analytics, and one-click visualization. Some key features include management of multiple data scenarios at once, creation of tasks and setting up reminders for timely process completion, collaboration across the application is based on any element, conversation-based task creation

The SAP Analytics Cloud platform is designed to provide advanced analytics and business intelligence functionality. It has intuitive self-service analytics for exploring data across different departments of your organization. The platform delivers insights based on the collected data to improve decision-making. Here are the four top ways SAC helps with business intelligence.

• Exploration and Visualization of Data – Users can discover insights and share data stories with interactive visualizations to inspire customers. SAC can enable users to explore and visualize collected data irrespective of data volume.

• Self-service Data Modelling – Setting key performance metrics and dimensions in SAC to automate data wrangling is possible. It assists companies in gaining deeper insights for making critical decisions in real time.

• Simulated Environment – SAP Analytics cloud implementation facilitates the management to simulate any scenario and visualize the impact of decisions. It further results in improved outcomes for your business.

• Augmented Analytics – Machine-generated analytics and insights help make data-driven decisions. It is more accurate and based on real-time data.

SAP Analytics Cloud is Compatible with the following

SAP Analytics Cloud has many advanced features and is compatible with different data sources and types. Let us dig deep into the compatibility of the platform.

• Data Sources – You can connect your existing infrastructure to hundreds of data sources through SAC. Whether data sources are on-premise or cloud-based, connecting using the SAC platform is possible. Enterprises can leverage the benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud by connecting to sources like CRM systems, email-based databases, and even Magento-like eCommerce platforms. SAC can fetch the data from all these sources and analyze it to provide users with actionable insights.

• Data Types – Companies generate zillions of data every day in multiple ways. SAC can capture corporate data in all major formats, including text, images, video, and audio. It is possible to analyze unstructured data sets like social media streams with the help of the SAP Analytics Cloud platform. The platform can be seamlessly integrated with Tableau Server (version 8.2 or later) and Tableau Online (Version 10 or later) to visualize cloud data without using additional software or app.

• Data Integrations – You can easily integrate the SAC with the leading consolidation tools. These tools can give a single source of information for all the business data. SAP and third-party providers like Informatica and Trifacta offer solutions to ensure seamless data integration. It is, however, advisable to consult a reliable and experienced SAP Partner to integrate SAC with consolidation tools.

Benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud for Business Intelligence

Here is a glimpse of a few key benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud for businesses worldwide.

• Real-time Insights – SAC is based on the cloud, enabling companies to use analytical tools as and when necessary. Also, SAC has a native language functionality that makes it easy for corporate users to generate immediate and real-time insights. In any organization, users of every level can get insights easily using the SAC platform and improve their decision-making process.

• Data Access on the go – SAC is an advanced component of SAP’s intelligent toolkit. It can be deployed to both Android and iOS devices. As the platform is based on the cloud, users can access corporate data anywhere and anytime. This real-time data access can assist businesses in increasing productivity and efficiency with improved services.

• Collaborative Planning – The main objective is to bind different business aspects to one platform. Companies can make better plans for the near future because of this objective. SAC combines all significant departments, including sales, supply chain, HR, and finance, to ensure seamless planning and execution. It improves collaboration, and companies can easily integrate various aspects, like budgets, forecasts, etc.

• Live Data Connection – It can be easily integrated with SAP S/4 HANA. As a result, it can save enterprise users from making similar changes across multiple files in cloud-based SAP environments. Businesses can make all the necessary changes in any one location in the cloud that reflects everywhere without manual intervention. The live data connection can save time and effort while enabling companies to maintain data accuracy.

SAP HANA Advanced Analytics features

• Search – Use SQL to locate text quickly across multiple columns and textual content. Run both full-text and advanced fuzzy searches for numerous languages.
• Spatial processing – SAP HANA provides native support for spatial data types and functions. SQL supports spatial processing through open standards to store, query, and access location-enabled content. Learn more about SAP HANA spatial processing.
• Graph -These store and processes highly connected data using a property graph. Combine graph data processing with additional advanced analytical processing functionality in SAP HANA, such as text, predictive, spatial, document (JSON) and standard relational data structures.
• Streaming analytics – This stores, queries, and applies machine learning (ML) to streaming data to discover trends over time. These data sources include sensors, plant equipment, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices that arrive in a time-series format.

SAP HANA Business Intelligence features

SAP Business Intelligence tools have a cohesive and consolidated approach. It gives organizations complete tools to manage and optimize Business Intelligence. Some more features include – 

• Complete solution – Explore, report, and share all in a single, integrated offering
• Powerful search and browse functionality – Supercharge searching and browsing to find the information you need
• Combined data – Bring together data from several sources to create a single report for a complete view
• Preconfigured, customizable templates – Create interactive visualizations, data sets, charts, and graphs
• Ad hoc reporting – Perform what-if analysis
• On-time reporting – Schedule and share data, reports, or dashboards online securely, inside or outside the organization
• Intuitive interface – Accelerate learning and ramp up quickly
• Free trial – Try it for free, then get the scalable, subscription-based solution
• Security – Use folder-level security to limit access and help ensure data security
• SaaS offering – Be up and running quickly without software or hardware installation
• Streamline operations – Leverage a hosted data warehouse and development environment.
• Industry and business-specific offerings – Get solutions for industry and specific line-of-business uses through partners.

Challenges addressed by SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics

A few of the challenges addressed by SAP HANA in context to Business Intelligence and Analytics are – 

• Lack of accessible or easy-to-use BI tools for business users
• Limited availability of reports that provide a complete view of the business
• Outdated or limited information available, hampering informed decision making
• Time-intensive, manual processes to consolidate data and create reports, charts, graphs, and dashboards
• Awkward processes for sharing information inside or outside the organization
• Limited resources and budget for supporting BI

Benefits of SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics

SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics is designed with the business user in mind. The software is free to try, and its scalable pricing model fits your needs and budget. Since it is a SaaS solution, you can treat the software as an operational expense instead of a capital expenditure and be up and running without a lengthy technology project. 

SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics help you provide immediate, anytime access to employees, customers, and partners. With access to the most current data, you can support users across all lines of business to make timely, data-driven decisions. And the solution’s folder-level security features help you share information safely. Some more benefits include 

• It supports informed decision-making with intuitive exploration, reporting, and sharing.
• It provides affordable subscription-based SaaS solution supporting quick time to value.
• It supports short ramp-up through an intuitive interface to help users learn and leverage the solution.
• It provides a complete view of the business through the integration of information from multiple sources.
• It saves time with self-service BI and streamlined exploring, reporting, and sharing.
• It has an extraordinary ability to access and analyze data without IT involvement
• It enables faster and more collaborative decision making.
• It improves performance metric tracking.
• It is more accountable with visibility into key performance indicators by the line of business
• It has faster response times in case of complex challenges.

Conclusion

With rapid technological advancement, you need solutions that can deliver the insight you need to understand your data and use it to make better decisions. At the same time, you need functionality that can streamline your business processes and help you manage your enterprise – so you can focus on sustainable growth. SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics provides solutions for large enterprises and can be configured for several industries, including government entities, manufacturing and distribution, financial services, non-profits, and a lot more. 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the full form of SAP HANA?

The full form of HANA is High-Performance Analytic Appliance. SAP is the name of the company.

2. What is SAP Hana?

SAP HANA (High-performance Analytic Appliance) is a multi-model database. It stores data in its memory instead of keeping it on a disk.

3. Why is SAP HANA best for your career?

SAP HANA equips you with features like data replication, warehousing concepts, provisioning, data connectivity, real-time data analysis, and business intelligence techniques. Aspiring professionals can utilize a database management tool to get a good salary package and reach new heights in their careers.

4. What is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is the technology that enables businesses to organize, analyse and contextualize business data from around the company.

5. What is Business Analytics?

Business Analytics is the process of analysing using a set of software applications to build statistical models.

6. Is SAP HANA SaaS?

Yes, SAP HANA is a Software as a service solution.

7. What is the need of SAP HANA?

It gets challenging and expensive to handle, store, and maintain large volumes of data. SAP HANA helps in managing data efficiently. 

8. Does SAP HANA have a promising future scope?

Yes, SAP HANA has a promising future scope due to its increasing demand and expanding abilities.

9. How does SAP HANA benefits in Business Intelligence and Analytics?

SAP HANA for Business Intelligence and Analytics help you provide immediate, anytime access to employees, customers, and partners. With access to the most current data, you can support users across all lines of business to make timely, data-driven decisions.

10. Does SAP HANA provide real-time analytics?

Yes, SAP HANA provides advanced real-time analytics. 

Author Bio

Bala SubbaRao Kunta is a technical content creator who works for Mindmajix. He is passionate about technology and possesses an interest in writing content that relates to the latest technologies like IOT, AI, Devops, Machine Learning, and Data Science.  In his free time, he likes playing cricket.