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Introduction
Welcome to the blog posts of the SAP CX Services Marketing Practice.
We are happy to share with you our experience around Marketing Business, Technology and Analytics.
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Background
Our exemplary user story is about building a simple dashboard and identifying relationship circles. Combining data from various data sources and building a combined dashboard is universal to all industries (eg. Airlines, Retail, telecommunication or banking).
Visualized relationship circles help to get better insights into the consumers family & friends network. Unfortunately the SAP Marketing Cloud data model does not support multi-dimensional relationships.
The first part of this user story can be answered enhancing the data model by implementing a 'Custom Business Objects' while the second part refers to building models and creating a story in SAP Analytics Cloud.
The definition of the business question by the marketing experts or business users should always be the first step before the actual implementation of the dashboard starts.
Picture one: screenshot from the final dashboard visualizing the relationships
Implementation
Please refer the below diagram for the high level approach.
Picture two : Design approach for extensibility options available in SAP Marketing Cloud
Part 1 : Business Logic
Always start with Business KPIs and break it down into business entities. Try to identify the association between these entities. Further classify each entity into fields.
1.Identify all the fields you need in your report/dashboard to fulfil the business requirements
In our case its the contact/customer from SAP Marketing Cloud. Relationship details from external system.
Example : "External ID" of the primary contact, Family Head identifier, Family ID/Subscription ID, Relationship Type, SourceObject ID/Primary ID, Sink ID etc.
2. Categorise them into standard fields and custom fields .
In our example “External ID” of the primary contact can be mapped to “Source Object ID/Primary ID”, the “Family Head” flag can be a custom field.
3.Identify the corresponding Standard entities
All the standard and custom fields identified which is master data and also qualifies 1:1 relationship can be part of Standard Contact Table/Profile
4.Identify the need for Custom Entities
We do need custom entities/table for external data representing 1:n relationship i.e Relationship Type, Primary ID, Sink ID
Part 2 : SAP Marketing Cloud
1.Always try to extend the Standard entities via Custom Fields and Logic App first. With this method of extension, we will be able to consume the extended fields both in SAP Marketing Cloud as well as in SAP Analytics Cloud without any additional effort.
Family Head Identifier and Family ID becomes custom extended fields in the Contacts master.
| Contact | Family Head Identifier | Family ID |
| Anna | 1 | |
| John | 2 | |
| Julia | Y | 1 |
| Sara | 1 | |
| Lim | 3 |
Picture three : Screenshot of Custom fields and Logic app showing the custom fields Family Head Flag and ID created
2.Build the Custom Business Objects using Custom Business Objects App
Relationship details becomes custom entity due to its 1 : N relationship and Custom Business Objects (CBO) /Z table has to be created for the same.
| Primary ID | Sink ID | Relationship Type |
| Anna | Julia | Daughter of |
| Anna | Sara | Mother of |
Picture four : Screenshot of Custom Business Objects holding the relationship links
3.Create your custom CDS view to include Custom Business Objects entity mapped to standard entity using Custom CDS Views App
To learn more about how to create Custom CDS views, click here:
https://blogs.sap.com/2016/09/02/how-to-create-custom-cds-views-for-sap-s4hana-marketing-cloud/
Picture five : Screenshot of base Custom CDS View showing the data sources and association from Custom Business Objects to Marketing Interaction Contact Facet.
Picture six : Screenshot of the uppermost Custom CDS View showing the base CDS view association with Interaction Contact.
4.Finally create your custom analytical query using custom Analytical Queries app
| Contact | Family Head Identifier | Family ID | Relationship Type |
| Anna | 1 | ||
| John | 2 | ||
| Julia | Y | 1 | Daughter of |
| Sara | 1 | Mother of | |
| Lim | 3 |
Picture Seven : Screenshot of Custom Analytical Queries App /View Browser App showing the query name.
Part 3 : SAP Analytics Cloud
Create new model using live data connection to your SAP Marketing Cloud system with "2C“ standard query name as data source
For custom query :
Go to View Browser App in SAP Marketing Cloud and display the details of your custom query.
In the “Annotation” Section the SQL view name is displayed (see Screenshot)
The data source name is composed of the prefix “2C” followed by the SQL View name and consume this model in a pre built story template.
Picture eight : Live data connection to SAP Marketing Cloud System with Data Source details.
Opening the Story from the Marketing Cloud is possible.
To learn more about how to connect SAP Marketing Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud refer to help/Integration Guide.
Summary
With this blog, you have seen how to build multi-dimensional relationships to get better insight of your customers family and friends network for marketing activities.
Also, you have learnt how to use custom SAP Marketing apps (Custom Business Objects, Custom CDS view and Custom Analytical query apps) to implement your business story and visualize the same in SAP Analytics Cloud.
You should now be able to implement your own custom app to fulfil business questions .
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Your SAP CX Services – Marketing Practice team.
