- SAP Managed Tags:
In an earlier blog we introduced a new application for keeping track of your CPEA/BTPEA credits. This blog announces a new version of the application (version 2.0.0), packed with a lot of updates, additional insights and an improved user experience.
The main improvements in version 2.0.0 are:
- Multi global account: More than one global account can now be connected to the application, allowing you to monitor all your accounts in a single place.
- SAP Analytics Cloud integration: Some modules are now also available through a SAC Story. They are embedded in the application but also available directly for users that just want to consume the information (see e.g. cross charging).
- Business tags: To allow for cross charging and allocating costs to different cost owners, tagging is introduced as a key feature.
- Contract values: As keeping track of your credits is the main aim, we now also compare your usage with your contract and show projections based on forecasts.
- Account structure overview: The application now visualizes your account structure in a hierarchy which will help you understand its costs better.
- Improved alerting: The alerting mechanism is enhanced and now offers a live preview of the configured thresholds.
Let’s take a closer look at the key modules in this new version.
Overview
A single-view cockpit summarises the most important KPIs for your account. It highlights your most-consuming services, a high-level breakdown of the costs and a view on the consumption over the past days. The different in-depth modules can either be accessed from the embedded launchpad tiles, or via the grouped menu at the top.
Billing Verification
This is a fundamental module of the application and provides insights in which services are active in your accounts, and how they are distributed over the directories, sub accounts and spaces. It displays information about the current usage and cost as well as its daily change, and projected forecast for the remainder of the month. In terms of configuration, it allows you to set the correct forecasting method as well as the technical allocation metric for space-level cost allocation. This space-level cost allocation is also displayed in a SAC dashboard for transparency.
Cost Breakdown
In this ‘drill-down’ view we take a closer look at your account structure and show you how the charges are distributed across your BTP landscape. You will see a main ‘Customer’ element which aggregates the costs in case of multiple connected global accounts. Also free-of-charge and free-tier services are shown but without an associated cost. This report comes in both a daily view (today’s values) as well as a monthly view (per year, month-by-month).
Credit Expenditure
Looking at your contract value, there is a set number of credits available which are consumed over time. This consumption is outlined in the first chart, extended with a projected consumption for the remaining duration of your contract. This projected consumption is steered by the forecast configuration you set in the Billing Verification module. In addition to that we’re also calculating potential billing differences that might have occurred on your account. A ‘contact SAP’ button will appear if that is the case to discuss and rectify the situation.
Cross Charging
While analyzing your spend throughout your BTP account and matching it with your contract is important, being able to allocate these costs to different departments, projects and teams is of utmost importance too. This is where the cross-charging module provides you with a tag manager to label the different areas of your account, so that costs can be aggregated for each of them. This view is available from both the application as well as SAC interface, allowing you to provide ‘view-only’ access to this dashboard to the relevant cost owners.
Monitoring & Alerting
Adding a bit of pro-activeness comes in the form of alerts (emails) that are generated as soon as specific conditions are met. Is a specific service consuming more than it should? Is your consumption-based account being charged on top of your credits? Did your usage increase more than x% since yesterday? All and each of these checkpoints can be configured so that you are notified instantly and can take action to remedy the situation.
Cost Optimization
Finally, the application also aims to educate and provide suggestions for account optimizations and cost-reduction strategies. The concrete implementation of this is yet to be worked out, but the Cost Optimization view summarizes a first set of options for you. This opens the door to further developments around trigger-based automations, or AI-infused suggestions specific to your environment and usage.
Next Steps
Are you ready to try it out and deploy the application in your landscape? Start our SAP Discovery Center Mission, or Head over to GitHub where you will find all the relevant information on how to get started. Feeling lost? Reach out to myself or your assigned SAP Customer Success Partner and we will help you out.
A happy user, having feedback, or wanting to share further ideas to improve the application? Leave a comment below.
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