Business Process Analytics: Types of functions and...

volker_vongloeden · ‎2013 Aug 09

When looking at Business Process Analytics in SAP Solution Manager you basically have two ingredients

Functional scope of the application itself (see previous blogs about Business Process Analytics and new features with support package 5)
Key figure content with several hundred key figures available for all SAP Business Suite products.

In my last blog I summarized the different key figure types and announced that I will probably write another blog where I summarize the different features and functions of the current Business Process Analytics application itself - that's what I want to do now.

Business Process Analytics - Overview

The Business Process Analytics currently contains 5 different analysis functions: Benchmarking, Age Analysis, Trend Analysis, Advanced Benchmarking, Detail Analysis. The first 4 functions are really performed withi the SAP Solution Manager and you can find a concise overview in the picture below.

The Detail Analysis describes the integration between the SAP Solution Manager system and the respective connected backend system (SAP ERP, SAP CRM, SAP SRM, SAP SCM). So after slicing and dicing your data in Business Process Analytics you always have the chance to jump into the connected system and check which process instances led to the results in Business Process Analytics and from the Detail list you can then even navigate into the single business document (e.g. sales order, purchase order).

Benchmarking

The basic functionality of Benchmarking was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics . It is important to know that the data is retrieved from an InfoCube within SAP Solution Manager and that only a limited number of characteristics (typically some organizational unit and process variant information like document type) is available for analysis. The graphical analysis should help to understand whether a problem exists globally or just in selected organizational/process areas.

Age Analysis

The basic functionality of Age Analysis was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics as well. Here the data is not retrieved from an InfoCube but the analysis happens as ad-hoc calculation based on the latest available result set that is stored on the connected backend system. A defined data column is taken into consideration (e.g. planned GI date, planned delivery date, net due date) and the Age Analysis visualized a distribution according to months or years. Hence the Age Analysis should help to split the backlog or exception data into two large sets

Old legacy data that should be removed from the SAP system and which might or might not have an impact on todays performance (see also Protect your SAP ERP investment & improve your core business processes)
New data where the respective business document is most likely still relevant for daily operations, e.g. a sales order that could still be invoiced.

Trend Analysis

The basic functionality of Trend Analysis was already described in the first blog about Business Process Analytics as well. Just like the Benchmarking, the Trend Analysis is available for all key figure types and reads its data from an InfoCube within SAP Solution Manager. The Trend Analysis works with the same limited number of characteristics as the Benchmarking. The main purpose is to display data over time (daily, weekly, monthly) in order to figure out if the figures are getting better or worse. So in the ideal case you identified problems, found out about the root cause, defined and implemented action items and would then see a

decreasing trend for backlog or exceptions key figures
increasing trend for automation rate key figures

Note: Backlog and exception key figures are stored in the InfoCube under the date of data collection (not the respective document date). Throughput key figures store the data according to the document date in order to avoid multple redundant entries in the InfoCube.

Advanced Benchmarking

The Advanced Benchmarking was only introduced with SAP Solution Manager 7.1 support package 5 as written previously. The principle is the same as for the Benchmarking, but the data is calculated ad-hoc based from the latest available result list and is not calculated on InfoCube data. This allows an analysis on many more characteristics (in comparison to the Benchmarking), so that also material/plant combinations could be analyzed. Additionally the Advanced Benchmarking also allows toggling between count of documents and value benchmarking of the respective documents (if the respective key figure contains some value information, e.g. this is not the case for outbound deliveries). The Advanced Benchmarking often allows much finer slicing and dicing than the Benchmarking and you can often identify the root cause even without jumping into the detail list itself.