ADDING SAP ANALYTICS CLOUD TO ON-PREMISE

WHEN DOES IT MAKE SENSE AND HOW TO MAXIMIZE ITS VALUE

JS Irick
Director of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and Principal Consultant
TruQua Enterprises
A Little About Me
¡ Have the best job in the world; working with a talented team to solve the
toughest business challenges
¡ Prior to joining TruQua in 2011, started my career as a Lead Engineer at the
University of Chicago, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience
¡ Currently the Director of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at TruQua
¡ Responsible for building best practices for SAP implementations in the areas
JS Irick of SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA reporting, and SAP S/4HANA customization
Js.irick@truqua.com
¡ Have spoken internationally on the topics of Machine Learning, SAP
@jsirick Planning, SAP S/4HANA and Software development

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About TruQua

¡ TruQua is built on the principle that customers deserve right-sized solutions through true
quality. TruQua’s name comes from the that principle.
¡ Started by Scott Cairncross, the former head of the SAP Enterprise Performance Management
(EPM) Regional Implementation Group (RIG) for Americas within the SAP EPM product
development organization and David Dixon, a former FI/CO Platinum Consultant at SAP and
co-author of “Building the Data Warehouse” with Bill Inmon.
¡ TruQua is an official software & services partner with software engineering expertise to
integrate SAP with other solutions and bridge any SAP software gaps.
¡ Specialists in software solutions, project implementations and deployment strategies for:

§ SAP S/4HANA Finance § SAP HANA § SAP Leonardo

§ SAP Central Finance § SAP BusinessObjects § Machine Learning
§ SAP Group Reporting § SAP BW & BW/4HANA § BlackLine
§ SAP Analytics Cloud § SAP PaPM (FS-PER) § Magnitude Solutions
§ SAP BPC § SAP Cloud Platform § Vertex Solutions

¡ Certified Great Place to Work in the Small and Medium Sized Companies category in both
2017 and 2018

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During This Webinar
During this 60-minute webinar attendees will:
¡ Understand the 6 scenarios in which extending your current planning process with SAP Analytics Cloud
might be right for you
¡ Get actionable advice on how to leverage SAP Analytics Cloud to maximize planning improvements
and value to the business (and how to measure its impact!)
¡ Walk through a real-world example showing how to avoid common challenges when onboarding a
new Business Unit via SAP Analytics Cloud
¡ Learn how to boost your predictive capabilities and accuracy through the power of SAP Analytics
Cloud’s driver-based planning and what-if analysis

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Where are you located?

¡ North America
¡ South America
¡ Europe
¡ Asia-Pacific
¡ Australia/New Zealand

POLLING QUESTION

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Agenda

What is SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)?

“Carve Out” Scenarios

Integration

Demo Scenario

Wrap-up

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What is SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)?
Where are you with regards to your SAP Analytics Cloud
project lifecyle?

¡ Information Gathering/Evaluating Potential Planning Solutions

¡ Building a Business Case
¡ Currently Implementing
¡ SAC is already in production and being utilized

POLLING QUESTION

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What is SAP Analytics Cloud?
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is SAP’s response to the challenges of Planning and Analysis in the Digital
Economy

These challenges include:

¡ Inconsistent modeling and planning processes across the organization
¡ Not able to respond quickly to market disruptions, competition, and actual performance
¡ Inability to harvest insights from Big Data
¡ Unable to augment financial analysis with artificial intelligence to create a more accurate forecast
¡ Lack of confidence in plans and forecasts leading to time wasted validating and reworking data
¡ Inability to discover true costs and key drivers of profitability to make better data-driven decisions

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What is SAP Analytics Cloud? (Cont.)
¡ “[SAP’s] strategic direction for planning follows on and aligns with [SAP’s] broader Analytics strategy.”

Standalone planning and with SAP

S/4HANA and other Cloud apps SAP Analytics Cloud

Customers requiring an on premise BPC*

solution

Ø SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP’s primary strategic Planning solution moving forward.
Ø The majority of new enhancements for planning will be delivered via SAP Analytics Cloud for
Planning, and this includes enhanced value for BPC via hybrid planning and analysis scenarios.

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A Guided Tour
Hop aboard for a quick tour of SAP Analytics Cloud

We will be looking at four key areas of SAC:

¡ Robust planning engine
¡ Embedded analytics
¡ Built in predictive tools
¡ Collaborative features

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Your Landing Page

Key Feature
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Robust Planning Engine
Distribution Versioning

Inline Adjustments and Allocations

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Embedded Analytics
Built-in Comparison Multi-Chart Drilldown

KPI Targeting

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Built In Predictive
Time Series Trending Smart Insights

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Collaborative Features
SAP is leading the field with “Collaborative Enterprise Planning”. Collaborative Enterprise Planning seeks
to better align planning software with the way your company plans

¡ Private Versions: No more saving versions to your desktop. Private Versions allow easy creation of
forecasts, and can be easily shared with team members. Once the forecast is ready, it can then be
promoted to a Public Version
¡ Built in Discussions: Quickly and easily communicate with team members
and link them directly to reports
¡ Process Workflow Tools: Assign monthly tasks easily with email, popup
and calendar notifications

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“Carve Out” Scenarios

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Where Can You Start Today?

While SAC includes a fully featured Excel front end, and native built in spreadsheet like
views, a simple lift and shift will not provide excellent value. Especially if today’s
planning process includes a large amount of Excel or backend customization.

Unlike other Planning Solution that silo your data, SAP Analytics Cloud allows for Hybrid
Planning Scenarios, extending and expanded your planning process, not replacing it.
This means that instead of a minimal value technical Proof of Concept, you can create
a “Carve Out” scenario, where an underperforming part of your Forecasting or
Budgeting process can be migrated to SAC.

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Choosing Your Carve Out Scenario
Choosing the right scenario can make or break your SAP Analytics
Cloud proof of concept, impacting your roadmap for years to come.
Remember: we are trying to show improvement, not just validate
technically
¡ Accuracy Improvement: Do SAC’s robust predictive functionality,
better scenario handling, value driver trees improve accuracy?
¡ Usage Improvement: Do SAC’s mobile first UX, collaboration tools,
process flows and user based Launchpad increase usage?
¡ Compliance Improvement: Do SAC’s process tools and scheduling
improve overall process compliance?

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Is there an area of your planning process which can be
improved by the SAC features you’ve seen

¡ Is there an area of your planning process which can be improved by the SAC features you’ve seen?

¡ Yes
¡ No
¡ Maybe
¡ I don’t know

POLLING QUESTION

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If You Can’t Measure It…..
Prepare for your Proof of Concept by gathering usage statistics for the prior
few months
¡ Accuracy Improvement: Measure Forecast Accuracy (not only high level
percentage, but Standard Deviation if you can)
¡ Usage Improvement: Gather Usage Statistics. NetWeaver security logs or
BPC Statistics can be leveraged for this
¡ Compliance Improvement: Measure not only how many forecasts were
late, but the overall submission time to see if everyone’s coming in “just in
time”

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Understand Usage Improvements

Source: TruQua Enterprises, LLC

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Choosing Your Carve Out Scenario
The most effective Carve Out scenarios we have worked with share the following attributes
¡ Low Excel Usage: User base is not a big excel consumer
¡ Multiple Versions/Scenarios: For highly iterative processes, SAC’s private versions provide huge quality
of life improvement
¡ Driver Based: Value driver trees provide a huge step forward for Driver Based Planning Scenarios -
including instantaneous updates, KPI “reverse calculations” and powerful visualizations
¡ “Predictive Ready”: By testing predictive algorithms on prior months, we can see if this planning
scenario is a good fit for SAC’s robust predictive engine
¡ “Timely”: If the forecast is highly visible, or if management wants more insight to the in progress
forecast, SAC can provide “One stop shopping” for hands on management

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Which Carve Out scenario attributes are most important to
your organization?

¡ Overcoming Low Excel Usage

¡ Ability to provide Multiple Versions/Scenarios
¡ Driver Based
¡ Predictive Ready
¡ Timely

POLLING QUESTION

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Integration
Understanding Your Integration Options

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Integration: Your Two Flavors

Key Decision Point

Live Data Connections

Traditional Data Connectivity

¡ SAC can query data directly from your on

¡ Data is pushed back and forth from SAC to your
existing Planning Solution. Data movement can
be close to real time, or highly regimented.
¡ Both BPC and S/4HANA have strong native
integration, with further improvements on the
roadmap.
premise (BW, BPC and HANA) systems through a
live data connection. This allows you to minimize
the amount of data needed to push to SAC.
¡ Note that your laptop is issuing the query, data
never touches the SAC servers.
¡ We call this the “Cloudless Cloud”.

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Demo Scenario
Rosie’s Lemonade Stand

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Rosie’s Today
Today Rosie’s business is strictly point of sale (her lemonade stands).
Rosie’s planning is based on predicted users at each lemonade stand.
This planning is a mix of traditional planning as well as predictive models
based on weather and local events.

¡ The forecast is created for each Lemonade stand by its manager,

these numbers are rolled up and combined with corporate planning
(R&D, SG&A, etc. ) to create the overall forecast.
¡ Rosie is currently using SAP BPC, with HANA modeling mixed in.

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Rosie’s Major Acquisition

In order to expand her business, Rosie has acquired Dottie’s

Bottles a major organic juice distributor.

The first major hurdle in the planning process is how to integrate

retail sales into Rosie’s supply chain planning. Rather than
perform a heavyweight expansion of Rosie’s BPC
implementation, Sales Planning will be performed in SAP
Analytics Cloud. This is greatly decrease the logistical hurdles of
integrating the new business, and help ensure a successful
launch of Rosie’s bottled products

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Demo: Rosie Goes to the Market

¡ Rosie’s Lemonade Stand has acquired Dottie’s Bottles, an organic juice

distributor
¡ Rather than perform a major rollout of BPC Rosie’s Analysts are going to
perform sales planning on SAC and integrate with BPC

SAP Analytics Cloud SAP BPC SAP HANA

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Wrap Up
Where to Find More Information
¡ https://www.sapanalytics.cloud
¡ Tons of helpful guides and videos

¡ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69A-AYIJnyCN_CpJOkAKmQ
¡ SAP Analytics youtube channel

¡ https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/forrester-nw-q4-2018/
¡ Forrester report on NLG, ML in Planning Applications

¡ https://www.sap.com/products/roadmaps.html
¡ SAP Analytics Cloud Roadmap

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Key Points to Take Home

“Carve Out” scenarios Any planning project

SAP Analytics Cloud is not
allow you to strengthen should have solid,
an “All or Nothing” your existing Planning measureable success
Planning Solution
Process criteria

Live Data Connections

It is critical to re-examine
your processes to
maximize your SAC value
give you the latest
visualizations and analytics
without moving your data
Understanding your user’s
needs remains a key for a
successful planning project

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Contact Information

JS Irick, Director of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and Principal Consultant
TruQua Enterprises
js.irick@truqua.com
@jsirick

For more information about TruQua, please visit http://www.truqua.com

info@truqua.com .truqua.com @TruQuaE

www.linkedin.com/company/-truqua-enterprises

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