State-of-the-art and optimized KPI reporting with SAP BW/4HANA and self-service BI from SAP Analytics Cloud

By introducing SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud as the frontend tool and for self-service BI, the Hager Group is laying the foundation for state-of-the-art, standardized KPI reporting that is both highly efficient and highly flexible. The new applications replace SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) and Microsoft Excel.

Since going live, SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud have provided many a lightbulb moment – especially in very performance-intensive processes such as direct costing. Today, the corresponding evaluations even for large Hager companies are available like a shot in less than 60 seconds. But that’s not all. Direct costing can be calculated at customer and group level now as well as at material, market and monthly level – providing genuine added value.

The new, optimized BI content for SAP BW/4HANA – the BI Content Add-Ons – that enables comprehensive analyses for all core divisions in the SAP ERP system offers major benefits too. Quotation data from Microsoft Dynamics 365, incorporated in SAP BW/4HANA over an interface, is also evaluated.

End users also benefit a great deal. They can now use SAP Analytics Cloud to independently perform queries directly on live data obtained from SAP BW/4HANA in the form of self-service BI, working on a desktop computer or on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. The queries can be performed at any level of detail, down to document and single item level. So KPIs from different divisions (such as Quality Management and Shipping) can now be linked and analyzed and new insights can be gained for the business – a competitive consideration.

Since SAP Analytics can be used to retrieve cloud KPI reports at the touch of a button in a compact, clearly prepared form on intuitive dashboards, there is no need to extract and prepare the data, as was previously the case with Excel reporting. This gives users more scope for core tasks such as interpreting the figures. All of this helps the roughly 500 BW users at present – even those without in-depth knowledge of BW – to enjoy working with the new BI solutions.

^{Source Photo: © Hager Group}

The introduction of SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud, which followed the greenfield approach, was a superb success thanks to ORBIS’s BI expertise in the SAP environment and the trusting cooperative relationship maintained between all the parties involved in the project. End user training held in line with the coaching approach and by the ORBIS experts contributed considerably to this development, ensuring knowledge transfer early on in the project.

Future plans include installing more BI Content Add-Ons, integrating new reporting areas into SAP BW/4HANA and expanding existing ones, and encouraging even more end users to use self-service BI.

^{Source Photo: © Hager Group}