SAP Analytics Cloud in SuccessFactors The Future of People Reporting
Updated: Oct 12
It was announced that SAP Analytics Cloud will replace the major reporting tools in SAP SuccessFactors, including Online Report Designer, Ad-Hoc Reporting, YouCalc, Dashboards and BIRT Templates. Since that announcement, it has been a bit quiet. A lot of existing customers I work with are thinking about waiting for the new tool while others are still investing in current tools and reports. The answer really depends on the purpose of the report. In this article, I want to introduce all SuccessFactors customers to what has arrived, and I have the best news. You will not be disappointed! SAP Analytics Cloud is easy to use, fast and brings a lot of new functionalities and options.
Reporting in SAP SuccessFactors has a long history. " Start Small. Think Big. Act Now."
Don’t forget the past
Reporting in SAP SuccessFactors has a long history and like SuccessFactors itself, was originally an assortment/collection of different tools or systems. So, we do find several different reporting tools with different modules in the SAP SuccessFactors suite. Do not hesitate to familiarize yourself with the tools because they will still be valid.
HOWEVER, it was announced that all of these tools except Workforce Analytics will be retired. To be up to date check the road map and watch out for coming announcement at www.sapday.com. It does make sense to check if SAP Analytics Cloud will be worth your early investment because you will not be able to move any kind of report from any of the tools mentioned above into SAP Analytics Cloud.
What is SAP Analytics Cloud
The “first version” of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) was presented at TechEd. It was introduced as a software as a service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) platform designed by SAP. SAP Cloud Analytics was built for the cloud with the intention to provide all analytics capabilities to all users in one product.
Built natively on SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) (formerly known as SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP)), SAC allows data analysts and operational decision makers to visualize, plan and make predictions from one secure, cloud based environment. With all of the data sources and analytics functions in one product, SAP Analytics Cloud users are able to work more efficiently. The key functions are accessed from the same user interface that is designed for ease of use for organizational users.
SAP Analytics Cloud has a lot of history and different people have used different names for projects in the past. So here is a list of the most common ones:
SAP Cloud for Analytics (C4A)
Formerly known as Project Orca
Formerly known as SAP BusinessObjects Cloud
Evolution of SAP Cloud for Planning
BI component, Replaces SAP Lumira Cloud
SAP Cloud Analytics (because it just sounds better)
In Short: SAP Analytics Cloud includes four major areas within the tool: BI, Planning and Predictive. GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) was originally included but it is now a separate product. I will go into details for some of them later in this article.
What is the SAP Digital Boardroom?
If you hear SAP Analytics Cloud, you will likely hear about SAP Digital Boardroom as well. SAP Digital Boardroom was launched as the Next Generation Solution for use in enterprise boardrooms during TechEd. It is an addition on top of SAP Analytics Cloud and is focused on providing live insight to the executive board on other important organizational drivers with the ability drill down to analyze the most granular detail as well. The key features of SAP Digital Boardroom include:
Executive meeting support – Simplify boardroom processes and reduce preparation time
Touchscreen support – Present in a single or multi screen environment, leveraging touch technology
Value driver tree simulation – Visualize important value drivers and simulate scenarios
Note: In this article I will focus on SAP Analytics Cloud, but I also want to set up the basics with a very brief introduction.
Concept and Benefits of SAP Analytics Cloud
I think one of the most important benefits is the ease of use for different data sources. Data connectors provide hybrid data access to most critical data sources, including SAP Business Warehouse (BW), SAP Analytics solutions (e.g. SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics), SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and non SAP applications. It can access on premise and cloud sources with either Live or Import Data connections.
Cloud based authoring lets you gain organizational insight directly from a Web browser, eliminating the need to install new software on your desktop, which gives you instant access to new insights. Regardless of the size of your data volumes, SAP Cloud Platform provides true high performance because of the in memory computing power of SAP HANA. If you have ever worked with Online Report Designer in SuccessFactors I feel your pain for the lack of performance and usability. You will not experience that with SAP Analytics Cloud.
SAP Analytics Cloud can really be called smart because it contains numerous intelligent actions, options and functionalities. The Smart Discovery option quickly discovers the main organizational drivers behind a core KPI and gives you valuable insights. There are Smart Transformations (intuitive suggestions during data preparation and automation or repetitive workflows) and Smart Groupings (automatically segments your data based on parameters that you specify) which saves you time.
Getting back to the three capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud (business intelligence, predictive and planning) the tool really understands how to analyze patterns and offers various options for predictive analytics (e.g. three possible outcomes for best, normal and worst case scenarios) and simplifies planning by enabling you to explore possible outcomes for each scenario. All data is available to change and amend in real time to allow you to observe changes and possibilities.
Functionality of SAP Analytics Cloud
There is so much to talk about! I simply can’t provide a full list of functionalities, but I can help you to get a rough understanding of what the tool can do and also point you to some more sources where you can read more about SAP Analytics Cloud.
Here are some of the most important highlights:
Creating a New Story (similar to dashboards with different tiles)
Explore Your Data (Model your data, amend data or simply run smart discovery)
Canvas or Grid Tables
Over 20 Different kinds of Charts (Grouped by types of analysis)
Analyzing Geographical Data and creating Geo Maps
Drilldown and Filter (Story tab wide or per tile)
Various Aggregations, Custom Formulas, calculations and IF-ELSE conditions
Tons of functions
Version Management
Predictive time series forecasting
Possibilities for linking Dimensions, Tiles, Stories, Pages and so on
Export (CSV) and save story as PDF
Endless styling and formatting options for each object, tile and story
Collaboration options with commenting, sharing, discussions, events, workflows and calendar
Pre Defined Content for different industries and Divisions (e.g. HR with SuccessFactors Employee Central Data)
SAP Analytics Cloud Integration of 3rd Party Data Sources
I focus on SAP SuccessFactors in this article. So, if you want to try out SAP Analytics Cloud, SAPDAY has a number of easy How To Do Guides for Creating an Import Data Connection to SAP SuccessFactors.
For importing data from SAP SuccessFactors, you must have SuccessFactors set up and you must register your OAuth Client Application and API Endpoint URLs to enable the connection for HCM Suite OData API. SAPDAY can assist you with this.
If you want to create more data connections or engage with live data connections, you still have some more options:
Import Data Connections
SAP BPC MS
SAP BPC NW
SAP SuccessFactors
Google Drive
Google BigQuery
Salesforce
Fieldglass
Concur
File Server
OData
SQL
SAP ERP
SAP Universe
SAP BW
Live Data Connections
SAP Universe
SAP BW
SAP HANA
S/4HANA
SAP Analytics Cloud Embedded in SAP SuccessFactors
This may be one of the most exciting sections – How SAP Analytics Cloud will look when embedded in SAP SuccessFactors. Starting from the access, how will users access reports and will it cost something extra?
My guess is that there will be a UI link like Reporting or Analytics (similar to ORD integration) for users who are allowed to build reports or dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud. Some users may be just allowed to consume reports via the Report Center. That is the only usage of Report Center I can imagine in the future. Why? Well, SAP Analytics Cloud will replace Ad Hoc Reporting, ORD, BIRT and YouCalc Dashboards. That is everything you consume in the Report Center, right? So, what happened with the recent innovation, when these tools don’t exist anymore?
Reply by SAP: The intention is that this will be available via the Report Center, providing option to create/edit report using new capabilities. All reporting will be streamlined via the Report Center. Report Center will be the entry point and central UI and will be leveraged to seamlessly (hopefully) transition from old capabilities to the new without drawing attention to specific reporting tools – essentially consider SAP Analytics Cloud technology as an upgrade to the existing tools.
Obviously, you will control everything in SAP Analytics Cloud via SuccessFactors Role Based Permissions. That hopefully includes the collaboration tools. I don’t think that collaboration function in SAP Analytics Cloud will be used in SuccessFactors as well (commenting reports, create events, discussions, etc.). At least not with the first releases and enhancements.
SAP Analytics Cloud focuses on using stories. I also spent some time to model the data I exported from SuccessFactors. I do miss an easy list reporting option like Ad Hoc Reporting in SuccessFactors. The SAPDAY Reporting Team spent a lot of time to harmonize data sources (including LMS). Within SAP Analytics Cloud, it is easy to pull data from each module together to create reports similar to Ad Hoc Reporting, but with more functionality (custom calculation, formulas, conditions and formatting) available.
SAP Analytics Cloud can deal with analytics and predictive analytics as well. For me, it is a do-it-yourself Workforce Analytics. A lot of customers are not ready for Workforce Analytics yet. I do think that SAP Analytics Cloud is a good start, but also a small competitor. You also can pull Workforce Analytics metrics data in SAP Analytics Cloud. It will be interesting to see how both tools evolve over time.
A simple, but good question would be: Will SAP Analytics Cloud cost extra? On one hand, I would say no, because one day it will replace all SuccessFactors reporting tools. Why ask for an extra fee when reporting is part of the foundation/platform? On the other hand, SAP asks for a flat fee if you want to use BIRT templates in Ad Hoc Reporting in the past. Also, SAP Analytics Cloud is a SaaS Tool, which will can sold without SuccessFactors.
Reply by SAP: There is no additional license cost for customers for SAP Analytics Cloud technology embedded in SuccessFactors and acting on data in SuccessFactors. Customers will require license for SAP Analytics Cloud when they want to pull in data from sources other than SuccessFactors or for planning and in this capacity SAP Analytics Cloud will be positioned as an add-on to extend SuccessFactors for enterprise BI, beyond HR use cases. Digital Boardroom is not included in the free version as well.
Conclusion and my Opinion of SAP Analytics Cloud
I didn’t review all of its features yet, but so far SAP Analytics Cloud is a very attractive solution and fulfills expectations on consistency, ease of use and in-memory performance. If customers are ready to leave legacy dashboards and on premise reports behind, SAP Analytics Cloud is a great cloud solution where you can start with clean sheets. This approach also makes sense if you’re taking a day forward approach, whereby new dashboards, reports and analytic uses center around new cloud based apps and any kind of data sources from anywhere.
From what I’ve seen, the new platform delivers a clean design with lots of data visualization elements. Due to the in memory performance on the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud is really fast in terms of speed and performance. It will be embedded in SAP SuccessFactors and it will be the upgrade to all existing reporting tools in SAP SuccessFactors (ORD, BIRT, YouCalc Dashboards, AD Hoc Reporting) and is the go forward solution for reporting.
Compared to all existing reporting tools in SuccessFactors, it would outperform each tool in nearly all aspects. That’s why I am also very optimistic that customers will be finally happy about the reporting / analytics solutions SAP provides. New customers will finally start to approach reporting and analytics through performance, usability and functionality and it will finally fit almost all requirements. Everything above is probably a case for Workforce Analytics.
I am happy to hear, that SAP Analytics Cloud will not require additional license cost if customers work with SuccessFactors Data. For some customers it is an interesting option to ask for license cost if they want to pull data from other sources than SAP Analytics Cloud.
SAP Analytics Cloud answers complicated questions in just a few clicks and can blend data from different sources, create compelling data visualizations, run AD Hoc reporting and more. The existing learning material base is already great and I personally can’t wait to work with the customers to show them how easy it is to use, to build complex reports and see how great dashboards look and how quickly you will be able to design and build things.
About the author
Michael Smith
SAP SuccessFactors Consultant
SAPDAY Sydney, Australia
email: michaelsmith@sapday.com
