Model/Story building Practices with SAP Analytics Cloud

[harkirat_kaur]

SAP Analytic Cloud make faster, more confident decisions and is the most advanced cloud-based analytics solution that can be incorporated into our business these days. SAP Analytics Cloud is a powerful data visualization tool that helps businesses of all sizes do more with data. By transforming static spreadsheets into actionable insights, you can make better fact-based decisions, uncover hidden trends and improve your business performance quickly. SAP Analytics Cloud combines all analytics capabilities – including business intelligence, planning and predictive analytics – in a single cloud-based solution.

Here I am sharing my experience working on cloud analytics. There are three fundamental components that are the foundation of everything that you can create with SAP Analytics Cloud: data, models and stories.

Data – In order to analyze our business, we have to collect some data(raw) first. Typically businesses collect massive amounts of data from a variety of sources such as finance, point of sale, HR, marketing and procurement. The data that is collected by our business then has to be stored somewhere. Simple way to store information is in a spreadsheet(local system) or for large data, in a more complex database.

Models – The first step in gaining insights from Analytics Cloud is to connect the data we have collected about our business to the software(SAC). this can be accomplished either by importing data, such as from .csv or Excel file or by making a data-connection to an on-premise or cloud-based datasource. Once our data is connected, we will use it to create a model. A model is a clean and defined version of our raw data, and it will be the basis of our analysis. Data appears in SAP Analytics cloud in rows and columns, just like in a spreadsheet. Model will define each column of data as either as dimension or a measure. The process of creating a model is called modeling. Below is model created using data from spreadsheet.

 

Stories – Stories are where you explore and visualize our data for reporting, planning and analysis. There are two areas within stories that can be used for these purpose: data view and pages. Each story can have multiple pages  that are set up a canvas or grid. We can even make our canvas pages responsive. Pages with tiles that consists of charts (bar,360-degree view etc), graphs and other objects. Below is story created in SAC which has four pages and presents data in various views as tabular, graphical and charts.

Advantages of Story building in cloud Analytics are:

• Discover actionable insights in real time


• Powerful, integrated analytics-as-a-service tool


• Collaborative enterprise planning


• Helps in advanced predictive analytics


• Fast, confident decisions

In short, can say SAP Analytics cloud is one stop platform for storytelling.

P.S. – For System requirements and Technical Prerequisites https://help.sap.com/doc/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/release/en-US/11b4e5ff76eb4747bc255d7037be...