Data from mobile devices, IoT sensors, cloud-connected trade partners, and other new sources has propelled business analytics forward in recent years, thanks to improvements in processing power and new software innovations. SAP ECC users who have elected to continue on the platform may still use SAP Analytics.
Analytics may be used in a variety of ways by businesses. Advanced analytics helps firms optimise their supply chains by evaluating vendor performance, recognising ageing inventory, and optimising delivery routes. Advanced analytics are Dashboards provide manufacturing executives with a better understanding of the overall efficiency of their equipment. New business possibilities may be discovered as a result of greater knowledge of consumer moods and purchasing habits by product managers.
Organizational leaders, on the other hand, may have a hard time getting started. It's possible to implement an analytics strategy while still using SAP ECC.
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Establish business objectives
Leaders should start with the large picture, defining the desired outcome of analytics. This vision will evolve over time, but it will shape many of the shorter-term decisions.
Who are the business users and what do they value? Beyond ERP, which platforms hold the most important data? What can the firm learn from this data? What are the supply chain, customer insight, production, and marketing priorities? Are there any specific business sectors where analytics might have a big impact?
These responses can help executives develop unique ECC analytics use cases.
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Create a data management strategy.
To implement an analytics strategy, data must be gathered from many sources, harmonised, and organised. Because SAP ECC is a complicated product, companies require a plan for collecting all SAP data. An organisation using non-SAP software or expecting to use external data sources must select how to combine the data for analysis.
There are solutions to this problem, such as data warehouses and cloud-based data lakes. The best strategy for a corporation relies on the kind of data, its location, and turnaround time. Each choice has its own integration, data governance, and compliance needs.
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Choosing analytic tools
SAP has reporting and analytics tools. The Business Warehouse (BW) and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) are frequently combined. BW is a relational data warehouse with OLAP cubes for multidimensional analysis. BW was designed to operate with SAP data, but it also works well with non-SAP data. It has its own reporting and analytics tools.
SAC delivers reporting, executive dashboards, visualisations, and predictive analytics solutions. SAP S/4HANA is a SaaS application built on SAP's HANA database. SAC is also available to ECC users.
Tableau, SAS, Power BI, and Domo are non-SAP options.
- Build on your triumphs.
Start by focusing on one or two unique use cases, and then expand from there. If these use cases are effective, the executive sponsors who allocate business resources will be able to see the benefit.
Leaders will be more likely to get the go-ahead to take the ECC analytics strategy to the next level if they set clear and precise goals for increasing business performance.
