The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the fast pace of market changes are forcing businesses to adapt quicker than ever before. Agility and adaptability are crucial. These days, companies work in very complex IT environments, using a wide variety of cloud and on-premise applications to meet their operational needs. In such diverse IT environments, business data gets spread across several data sources and types, which makes integrating and creating value from data difficult and expensive. As a result, today’s businesses are facing numerous digital transformation challenges – for instance:
- Extracting intelligent insights from large data volumes available in any complex landscape
- Making intelligent insights available to business leaders in an easy-to-understand format
- Responding to dynamic markets based on real-time business data
- Making faster/necessary decisions on innovation, transformation, and operational efficiency
- Providing intelligent systemic insights to drive business value.
Today’s organisations understand the power of Data and Analytics. They have started acknowledging the significance of their contributions to continuous innovations and improvements. In the 1900s, Analytics tools and Data were primarily used to understand what happened, why it happened, and its impact on an organisation – analytics being limited mainly to retrospective analysis. Today, organisations expect analytics to help them answer more significant questions, such as why it happened, when it will happen again, and what can be done to avoid or replicate it.
With digitisation being the new mantra, organisations’ competitive differentiation is more than ever dependent on Business Transformation Platforms – not just Technology Transformation Platforms.
A robust Analytic and Reporting platform can no longer be limited to collecting data in a single place – it must have the ability to perform intelligent analytics on real-time data. Furthermore, the information needs to be real-time, available in a format its target user can easily understand and implement – with actions to be completed by the users (CEO, Finance Head, operational manager, salesperson, etc.).
For example, companies need a 360-degree overview of their employees to run an effective Human Resource Department. Most organisations distribute data across HR, payroll, workforce, and finance solutions. Dashboards/reports provided to the HR department do not have all the data in a single place; the data is from a data warehouse solution that’s not real-time – it is likely to be inaccurate (outdated). Moreover, businesses often struggle to understand the details behind their data.
To make effective deals, salespeople too require real-time information which often needs to be accessible on mobile devices. At the same time, the backend team requires real-time insights about products’ performance to update deals for salespeople. Finally, sales heads need real-time insights into how their sales teams perform to make strategic calls for their organisations. The use cases, business requirements, and expectations for robust analytics and reporting platforms are limitless.
As part of its product offerings, SAP has always specialised in providing toolsets for Data Management as well as Reporting and Analytics. These used to be primarily individual products that fulfilled the industry’s demands at any given time.
The below diagram depicts SAP’s journey in Reporting and Analytics and their maturity over time (left to right).
However, in the current dynamic environment, there is a much greater need to bring internal and external data together – in real-time and on a single platform. As a result, current solutions must be capable of extracting intelligent insights – enabling business leaders to make both strategic and operational decisions.
SAP’s offering, SAP BTP, is a platform developed to overcome the above-mentioned challenges. Companies can run SAP BTP on any cloud platform. It allows shorter release cycles, extending and contracting systems as required while using the built-in capability of the platform. In addition, SAP BTP covers complex IT landscape processes and data integration in real-time.
SAP BTP provides a Single Unified Platform for Application Development, enabling Business Processes and Integration, Data and Database Management, Analytics and Extended Planning and Analysis, plus Artificial Intelligence capabilities and the tools corresponding to these capabilities. Complete details of capabilities and solutions that enable them are mentioned below.
Reporting & Analytics
SAP BTP provides a unified platform for creating an Analytics Estate – from simple (Operational Reports) to complex (Predictive Analytics) to very complex (Forecasting and Planning). Users can choose different products in the platform to develop what’s required to drive value for their business.
Below is a straightforward scenario and tools used to create the Analytics Estate. Organisations can keep this estate as simple or as complex as needed – based on their business needs. The best part is that they don’t have to wait months to understand the sizing and purchase hardware – dependent on an infrastructure company – and then implement. As they say, it’s a click of a button away. Of course, it comes at a cost (flexible and pay as you use), but the returns are well justified. Storyboards, dashboards, reports, and most developments in the platform can be easily extended to mobile solutions by configuration rather than custom-built screens.
Why should a company move to SAP BTP when they have some or most of the tools in their SAP estate?
Today’s hyper-competitive market is forcing organisations to continue creating differentiators. SAP’s new offering provides companies with a platform enabling the build of the following differentiators:
- Integration – SAP BTP Platform’s Integration suite and Data Intelligence suite do the mammoth job of connecting data from the company’s hybrid IT landscapes in a single platform to extract intelligent insights.
- Faster innovation – By bringing Application, Data, and Business Processes together, BTP allows companies to break data silos and make data-driven decisions. Its capabilities, such as the availability of standard packages, allow faster innovation.
- Developer Efficiency – The platform provides Low code/No code tools and pre-built content. It reduces the need to write custom code. It also lifts the code and application from the core system allowing easier maintenance of the core system.
- Extensibility – Gone are the days when new applications took months to implement. With the new SAP BTP solution, most of the applications in this space are just a click away – a great addition of services to your environment.
The Big Q is that companies have some or most of the tools available in the SAP BTP estate. However, apart from the platform providing the above-mentioned and many more advantages, the biggest reason to move to SAP BTP might be the following commitment from SAP.
“Going forward, from SAP’s perspective, we are committed to SAP BTP. All SAP lines of business and industry solution offerings will be built on SAP BTP. And we are committed to supporting our partners’ success with services touching each aspect of the journey, from technical advisory guidance, co-innovation, and certification offerings to social and joint sales support.” Source: https://news.sap.com/2022/06/what-makes-sap-btp-unique/)
At On Device Solutions, you will find expert SAP architects and solution consultants with years of consulting and implementation experience in the SAP cloud and BTP space. Please get in touch today to discover how we can help you accomplish your data, reporting, analytics and enterprise mobility goals.
