How SAP Helps Companies Take BI to New Heights

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In a real-time enterprise, business intelligence (BI) is freed
from the technology limitations that for decades have
prevented meaningful analytics from forming the basis for
true insight. In the not-so-distant past, built-in latencies from
having to query data combined with batch-oriented processes
devalued analytics; it was anyone’s guess whether a dashboard
could be built or a report could be run before the information
it returned was obsolete. A finance organization that did
planning and budgeting based on a week-old profit and loss
(P&L) statement was in all likelihood on the cutting edge of
what an organization could do from an analytics standpoint.
This is no longer the case. The organization that still makes
assumptions and decisions for the enterprise based on any-
thing but up-to-the-minute information runs the real risk of
falling behind a competitor that embraces the vast opportuni-
ties afforded by adopting a real-time mindset.
Innovation That Drives Results
Organizations in a variety of industries as well as in the public
sector are partnering with SAP for state-of-the-art analytics
that drive innovation.
An organization that has garnered a lot of well-deserved
attention is the State of Indiana, which is using SAP HANA
and SAP Lumira to combat what for decades had been an
unusually high rate of infant mortality in the state.1
Analyzing
the root cause of this problem was difficult, with 92 state
agencies running about 800 individual systems. The state de-
ployed SAP HANA to store and process data from 15 critical
1
In 2011, the rate was 7.7 deaths per 1,000 births; the US average was 6.1.
data sets — including unstructured data — that resulted in a
diverse volume of nine billion rows.
With SAP Predictive Analysis and SAP Lumira providing
advanced analytics and powerful visualizations, the state dis-
covered that while high-risk groups accounted for just 1.6%
of all births in Indiana, they accounted for 50% of all infant
deaths. With this new insight, the state approved $13 million
in funding for targeted programs to address the issue. Indiana
launched the “Labor of Love” program with a goal to reduce
infant mortality to 6.0 deaths per 1,000 births by 2020.2
Closed-Loop Decision Support
Data-driven insights are a real possibility for any organiza-
tion willing to make the transition to a new technology
platformthatbringslivetransactionalandanalyticalprocessing
together in real time without having to always call on IT,
breaking through the constraints of the past.
Achieving the full potential of analytics as a powerful dif-
ferentiator for the enterprise requires more than a diverse
set of enabling tools from a technology partner. At SAP, we
recognize that with analytics becoming integral to an over-
all business strategy, the enterprise also requires integration
capabilities. This is why we place a priority on closed-loop de-
cision support, where technology and the insights it delivers
are connected to planning, performance, and governance, pro-
moting a robust, end-to-end analytics platform.
It all starts with trusted data discovery resulting
from having the powerful, agile visualizations that SAP
2
See www.in.gov/laboroflove.
Adopting a Real-Time Mindset
How SAP Helps Companies Take BI to New Heights
Clemens Praendl
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Analytics
SAP

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Lumira delivers embedded in the SAP BusinessObjects
BI suite. This ensures data consistency — everyone
now has access to the same real-time data in an easy-to-
understand format that can easily be shared through-
out the organization. The business can build a long-
term plan that determines how the data will influence
business decisions and track progress against a set of
predetermined key performance indicators (KPIs).
And with SAP solutions for governance, risk, and com-
pliance (GRC), the organization can adjust the plan as
needed against any new regulations as well as ensure
and track access.
BI has always been about digging around to find
value in an organization’s data. Closed-loop decision
support brings in enterprise performance manage-
ment (EPM) tools to translate this data to meet fi-
nancial goals, with GRC functionality to manage the
business risk.
Your Business, Your Choice
To realize the potential of an analytics transforma-
tion, businesses must rethink their entire architec-
ture, and this is why SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA
(SAP S/4HANA) has come along at the perfect time
for companies to embrace analytics as part and parcel
of a sound business strategy.
In this next-generation business suite, in-memory
capabilities are enabled across both applications
and database technology. This establishes effective
operations based on a single source of truth, and
because standard processes are optimized against
SAP HANA, the business has a more rapid path
to data discovery. Data that drives insight already
resides in SAP HANA.
Editions of SAP S/4HANA for the cloud and
on-premise are now available,with planned quarterly
and yearly innovation cycles, respectively. SAP will
support both editions, ensuring that closed-loop
decision support is available to customers in which-
ever path to deployment is most appropriate for
their organizations. A business could choose to inte-
grate SAP Business Planning and Consolidation with
cloud applications, including SAP Lumira, or it could
deploy SAP Cloud for Planning with on-premise BI
tools, for example.
While there is not a one-size-fits-all model that leads
to trusted data discovery, all paths share a common
denominator: SAP HANA as the unifying technology
that brings about a single source of truth. With SAP
HANA Cloud Platform offering in-memory power
in a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) deployment model,
organizations can be up and running with advanced
analytics capabilities in a matter of hours, and even
build applications that integrate with SAP systems as
well as third-party tools.
Many trusted SAP partners are using SAP HANA
Cloud Platform to develop state-of-the-art applica-
tions that include advanced analytics as a matter of
course, creating another avenue for enterprises across
a number of industry verticals to quickly bring analyt-
ics into the fold. This underscores the importance of
partners in bringing analytics to the forefront as a key
component of the real-time enterprise.
Look Forward — or Move Backward
SAP’s forward-looking view of analytics and the
comprehensive analytics platform that supports this
view enable any organization to identify untapped
opportunities hidden inside a vast amount of data, all
while allowing for strategic decisions and minimizing
business risk. Whether a business wants to increase
revenue, improve customer satisfaction, explore new
markets, or even change its business model based on
trusted data discovery, SAP is the partner that can
best bring about this transformation.
The real-time enterprise is here, and for any
organization anxious to make that transition SAP
is ready to engage as a partner to help define
an analytics roadmap as a springboard to true
innovation. If you’re not looking forward, you’re at
risk of falling behind.
While there is not a one-size-fits-
all model that leads to trusted
data discovery, all paths share
a common denominator: SAP
HANA as the unifying technology
that brings about a single source
of truth.