SAP Analytics Cloud Reviews

We use this solution as part of an embedded analytics use case for an ERP application. SAP are starting to embed Analytics Cloud as a solution within their ERP application, which gives you the options for closed-loop analytics, as you go from insights to action within a single ERP application. It can also be used to bring together multiple data sources, different sources of data from various applications and use the application to blend and trade analytics solutions across different parts of the organization. The product suits small to large enterprise, it supports all user types. We are partners with SAP and I'm an analytics practice lead.  

A point of differentiation in the market for Analytics Cloud compared to other analytics products, is it offers not only business intelligence within the application, but also it has inbuilt AI and machine learning capabilities that can be used not only by data scientist types in the organization, but for general users who can get the benefit of inbuilt predictive features in the tool. The other really compelling part of it is that it's also a planning application. You can do full life cycle from plan through execution in a single platform. That's quite unique for SAP. A lot of the other software vendors do analytics products and they do planning products. This is quite a unique combination that has both BI predictive and planning in a single application. And that's really where its strengths is.

I think what could be improved is a lot of those intelligent features that I mentioned, the AI and predictive functions within the tool work really well with data that you import into the platform, but it doesn't work as well with SAP live connections. If they could make those predictive features available to any source, whether it's SAP or non SAP, it would be a really, really compelling product. 

I'd like to see formatted reporting as an additional feature, such as pixel perfect style formatted reporting. I'd also like to see the product on parity when you compare acquired data and live data models, to know that the features are identical. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

I believe the stability needs more work. The product was first released about five years ago and it's still maturing, which means a lot of new functionality is released with each update. Sometimes that can be a little bit disruptive as features change. 

The scalability is pretty good, you've got options of either having it publicly hosted, or you can also have a private hosting option in a restricted area in the cloud data center. You can also add capacity to it quite easily. It's elasticity as an application for scale-out is pretty good. And underneath the covers, it runs SAP HANA, which is an in-memory database. So that makes a pretty performance. I'm happy with it. 

The technical support could be improved. 

I would say that Analytics Cloud is definitely improving although it's not yet fully comparable. There are some features in BusinessObjects that are not yet in Analytics Cloud, but I would say, from my perspective, that the overall the benefits and advantages of using SAC outweigh BusinessObjects. 

Initial setup is somewhere in the middle of straightforward and complex, it just depends on the source of information. It's not overly simple and it's not overly complex. We have the solution up and running with customers in three weeks for a trial, and that's sending up the application, connecting it to their source systems and demonstrating one really good example of a dashboard or report. We carry out the deployment internally. There's very little maintenance required because it's software as a service, a SaaS offering, a lot of that housekeeping and maintenance and upgrade of the solution is managed by SAP, by the software vendors. Again, that's one of its strong selling points, it requires very little administration overhead.

I believe that SAC is cheaper than BusinessObjects for a basic user license. It's difficult to compare because one is an on-premise pricing model and the other is subscription based. You're not really comparing apples with apples. For some of the more advanced functionalities, though, it can be more expensive. Analytics Cloud is subscription-based. There are different tiers of licensing that give you different access to different functionalities, but assuming you have all of that, there is no additional hosting or set up costs, its fully included in the price per user. 

It's really important to think about data governance in the solution because it's very much a self-service application. It can be quite open for users to create their own versions of data, so it's really important that you think about customers, think about a data governance model to make sure that there's clear ownership of data, and there's a clear single source of truth for enterprise data in the model. It's easy to create a situation where it's open, but you still very much need to consider having a data governance strategy that underpins your Analytics Cloud implementation.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are a consultant, so we build solutions for customers. Some of their use cases are for dashboarding, business intelligence, predictive capabilities, and planning.

I like the predictive features of SAP. It's an easy to use tool for an end-user.

You don't need a lot of technical knowledge to use the product and it is very easy to learn and easy to use. It gives you flexibility in designing your own dashboard with its new analytics designer.

These are new features that they implemented three or so months back. It provides you the ability to design your own dashboards with more flexibility and it opens more opportunities as well.

Pricing is fine for the BI license, but when it comes to client license, that fee is a bit high.

I have been using SAP Cloud Platform for the past year and a half. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Sometimes it has less flexibility when doing something. You can only do with what is available in SAP. We can't double up anything in SAP. I would take off two points for that. 

The version was launched about a month ago. We are in partnership with SAP, we're gold members. We implement SAP a lot. Working with open-source data in terms of Google Drive. 

The primary use case is working with open-source data in terms of Google Drive and other platforms. The environment currently runs on SAP, so SAP Analytics Cloud is a good way to go. The client can get value for money, instead of having to bring Oracle into an environment in which the integration might be clumsy. It makes sense to have SAP on the ground because they are running currently on HANA, which is why SAP was the first option on the list.

I love a lot of things about the product. The first is Smart Discovery and Smart Insight. It's amazing having predictive analysis and AI algorithms. A second valuable feature about SAP Analytics Cloud is the fact that it integrates with third-party applications such as Google Drive and Excel, which is amazing. Also the look and feel of the product, the user experience is very, very intuitive and the collaborative support that you have within the solution means you can share pictures, make comments, etc. It's very collaborative.

Improvement could be made in the pricing of the product which is very expensive, more than Oracle and Power BI and similar solutions. Currently, only one data modeler can work at a time. If you're working on a project and you have five data modelers, for example, if person A corrects or makes a change, person B won't see it. It makes it difficult because if you have three or four modelers working on the project, everybody should be able to work seamlessly without having to disturb one another. That's my only negative about SAP Analytics.

In the next release, I think they need to have voice-driven analytics, rather than just clicking and texting as it is now. A voice to text solution would make it funkier and more amazing. A move to include Android mobile platforms, would also be good, currently, it only works with iPhones and other Apple products. The number of people using Android is huge, so if they can extend the mobile platform to Android it'll be great. 

I've been using the product for about seven months. 

Though it is a relatively new solution, it is stable. 

I've been in touch with technical support because SAP has a presence in Nigeria. We can also get support from South Africa, and that was really helpful. 

I think deployment took us about a month and I think that was because this was very, very robust. Once you're able to get the data models it's just a matter of uploading.

The client actually wanted SAP. We checked other vendors to see if they could match what SAP could offer.

The program runs on the cloud. We push the data from the source offline entirely in the cloud, and the cloud takes over the analytics. It's a bit of a hybrid solution for now but we are thinking of moving fully into the cloud so that everything just happens in the cloud, and we get our insights and our KPIs displayed on the dashboard.

There can always be improvements and updates are coming in regularly but if you can afford this solution I would say 'go for it!' 

For now, I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

I use it if I want to see boardroom dashboards, or to see a combination of things in a chart. I also use it for planning analysis.

One feature I've found most valuable is Discovery. It is a logistics tool that will place the dashboard for you on the fly. For example, if you select a country, it will give the entire picture of where a product is high and where it is low. Another feature is peak capabilities in the applications. Another is planning KPIs

Now, improvements are coming quarterly whereas previously it was on a monthly basis. Even with this, it is still a market leader.

I have been working with SAP Analytics Cloud for almost one year.

I don't know that it's stable. This cloud is occupied by major businesses who want to do a dashboard on the fly with data discovery.

In terms of scalability, it is cloud-based so it is scalable. 

No one should be able to go into our access, but they will give the space. You're the owner of the product space.

I have rarely needed to be in touch with technical support for the setup.

Previously, I used to work with products called Explorer and HANA and they didn't support it in a quick manner.

I have previously used Tableau.

The initial setup was easy and user-friendly, I did it by myself without any consultant.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd give SAP Analytics Cloud an eight.

Although we currently use version 4.2, there are upgrades very regularly. I work for multiple clients and each client has a different version. It depends on the analytics cloud SAP are distributing to their respective clients. For now, we have 10 clients but the plan is to expand this. 

Planning is the most valuable feature of the product because it's integrated and that means we don't need to rely on an independent planning environment. We have all the data available in ACP and fixed cloud and we use the same data for planning.

In terms of improvement, planning can sometimes not work the way we expect it would or should. Most of our customers are from VPC. They want to typically assimilate the scene and reflect what they are using. We sometimes have a hard time assimilating the same information on VPC.

I do understand that each and every product has its limitations. We are able to retrieve the information the customer is looking for, but whatever they are doing in VPC is what they want to be able to do in SAP, so SAP really needs to focus on that area to ensure that whatever they are doing in VPC is also in SAP.

For additional features, I have to say that so far they satisfy the requirements. I haven't worked on the planning models or the predictive models, but when it comes to planning there is a concern about the ability to match the exact requirements of the customer with what the product offers.

I've been using this product for almost two years. 

It seems to be a stable product and we haven't had any issues. It works as expected and in the long term, stability will really depend on how they update their system. 

The product is scalable.

We have, on occasion, contacted SAP for some of the issues we've had and they then forward it to the technical department who email us and solve the problem. We haven't opened any waiver messages.

The initial setup was complex. If the information is straightforward then it's fine, we're able to retrieve and carry out the basic operations, data actions, data logging, etc. and deal with it ourselves. But when you're trying to aggregate more information, for example, if you have a previous year's data and they want to see it as one column and for the current year they want to see a monthly view, it's possible in VPC but not possible in SAP. 

We carry out the implementation ourselves and there is a great variation in the time it takes. It depends on the customers' requirements. With some of our customers, we were able to deploy in three weeks, but there were others that took up to four months. It depends upon the directives we receive from our customers. Not every customer has the same requirements and each customer is unique and we need to plan accordingly.

For now, we are only using the solution on public cloud but we have several customers in the pipeline and we are planning to use private cloud for future clients.

I've worked for many business warehouses over a period of 18 years and I strongly recommend this particular product because whatever I do in multiple tools, in reporting or dashboarding, for example, I carry out a planning process where everything is integrated, so I strongly recommend SAP.  

I would rate this product a 10 out of 10 because I'm impressed with its function. 

We are a solution provider and this is one of the solutions that we implement for our clients.

The filtering options are useful.

The user interface is quite good for developing reports out of models.

There is no direct connector from SAP to Redshift, so we are required to use a third-party product that was recommended by SAP. Going forward, we would like to use connectors that are developed by SAP directly and do not require us to pay any additional licensing fees. In general, this solution should support as many databases and data warehouses, including cloud-based deployments, as possible.

There are a couple of complex reports that we cannot generate using a live connection. With the full data option, however, it is possible.

Hierarchies are not supported as of now, so it would be great if there were support for two or three-level hierarchies. It is helpful when we can drill down further into the hierarchy.

I would like to see more enhancement in terms of AI and ML. Currently, they have R visualization support in the product using a direct plugin. We need to have support for Python scripting, as well.

I am a consultant and I have been working with SAP Analytics Cloud for six months.

The solution itself is stable as of now, but we have had some challenges with connectivity. We're not sure if it is related to SAP or AWS, and it is stable at the moment, but we have had challenges.

With respect to scalability, we have only uploaded about half a million records as a pilot for the customer. At this point, we are not pushing more because we don't have the data. We do have plans to build in that regard, but for now, we cannot fully judge scalability.

We are developing solutions for enterprise-level companies.

The technical support is fine, and we have not had a problem. The SAP expert team is there if you need to speak with them.

Most of the technical support we are getting is from the marketplace. We get very good information from the SAP support portal.

For analytics, I have been working with SAP for the past twenty years. I have used the on-premises solution of business intelligence.

The initial setup is straightforward. The first time we deployed this solution it took between three and five days. This was due to some complexity that we had, including connectors. After our first experience, it now takes a maximum of two days to deploy if we have the proper documentation and connectors.

We have also recently tried Tableau and they are also pretty good. I do not find much difference between them. It is, however, the choice of the customer.

Some people like the Tableau reporting, whereas others like the SAC reporting, and it is based on the data being reported. SAC is pretty new on the market so Tableau is more flexible in terms of legacy support. A good example is Redshift. Tableau has a direct connection and SAC does not.

We have also used QlikView in the past.

We are trying to get the reports out of AWS Redshift. We are consolidating all of our data in the Amazon Data Lake, and we have it in AWS S3. It is from there that we are pushing to Redshift, but we had a challenge because there is no native connector.

This is a solution that I recommend to anybody with SAP in their landscape. We used to prefer QlikView and Tableau, but as of now, I suggest trying SAP Analytics Cloud to see the results first. There is a lot of seamless integration and you can avoid a lot of licensing costs. It is also pretty good at connecting multiple SAP systems together. It is quite useful in terms of data connectivity, data transmission, and modeling. 

Our customers definitely prefer SAP Analytics Cloud on Amazon Redshirt, regardless of the third-party connector that we had to use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I primarily use SAP Analytics Cloud for developing automated reports and for developing dashboards. The BW takes queries and provides the reports and dashboards.

I find the linking analysis, blending and predictive analysis features most valuable. Additionally, Smart Insights is a good feature.

It would be helpful if it had multiple PowerPoint marks built-in so that it could be shown in PowerPoint presentations. It would also be helpful if you could download this external content onto the Flash File.

I began using SAP Analytics Cloud a few months back.

Up until now I have not encountered any kind of stability issues.

Right now we have 30 to 40 users using it, with plans to increase.

There is no problem with SAP Analytics Cloud support. I do think there should be some training provided. We only have eBooks. I don't think we have any kind of e-learning. It would be good to have SAP training for Analytics Explorer, including some instructor-led training.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Deploying SAP Analytics goes from development to production. It doesn't take much time and is very quick. Setup depends upon the requirements as well as the back-end work to be done.

It's usually around two hours or less. 

When deploying SAP Analytics Cloud, they should provide documentation on clear steps regarding the migration. 

We implemented it ourselves.

Regarding pricing, I don't know exactly how much it is. I am not aware of the price.

I would advise anyone looking into SAP Analytics Cloud to go for it.

One a scale of 1 - 10 I would rate it an 8. To raise that score they need more exporting options.

We're using the solution to analyze our clients' data to create dashboards for them to decipher the sales patterns, income generated, geographical locations of sales, etc., to get a better understanding of how to spread out the user base.

The ease of use of the solution is its most valuable feature. We haven't tried all of the features yet. The graphing and the ease of using the analytics tools have been great. It's all drag and drop; you don't need to code anything.

Improvement-wise, it would be great if there were more analytics features in the time series. Having an accessible, easier time series or trying to incorporate more analytics products like ARIMA would be a good addition. 

Statistical analysis should be a bit more profound than it is.

The ability to clean the data up would be helpful.

You have to create your own data sources and that's when you have to connect to SAP. If we could go through an SAP source, then design what kind of data we want to pick for an audit in SAP, that would be ideal. I don't want to need to audit the user creator. It would be better if we had the ability to have one person go in and say, okay, I want this data from these different tables. Then, in the backend, it could create it. That would be a vast improvement.

I'm not sure how many databases can really connect to the solution. I've just used Oracle and HANA. They need to ensure the amount of data sources they can connect to is high so that they can compete with a solution like Tableau.

I've been using the solution for three months.

The solution is quite stable.

I'm not sure if the solution is scalable as I haven't tried to expand it. According to the data I have of the sources of data that I am collecting, it's fulfilling my requirements right now. 

Currently, whatever data I have, it seems able to handle it quite easily. It becomes a bit slow at times, however. 

We have clients that range from small to medium-sized enterprises. Some have a user base of around 60,000.

I've never contacted technical support.

I've used Tableau and R in the past. I've also worked with SAS a bit and Python coding among others. When I came to the company, they were using the solution.

There's not too much awareness of SAP except for SAP HANA. Many companies have invested in Tableau or Click, but if the pricing was better, this solution might become more popular.

I'm a consultant as well as a user of the solution.

We're a small team that does work for our clients. If our clients want analytics done, we use the solution to work on their data. Our team is about 15 people. Our clients are typically small and medium-sized enterprises.

With some clients, there'll be some hand-holding with them to understand how SAP benefits them. At the same time, we've got some real large giants who have 3,000+ users and they are using a CPS room. They want lots of analytical capabilities. Some use Tableau or Click. The awareness of this solution isn't as good as those.

I'd recommend others try the solution. It's quite a good tool with a lot of features and different user levels. Users don't need to be trained professionals; anyone can start with smaller analyses on their own. A few video tutorials should be sufficient to get someone started. It's only when you get into more complex items that you may need more assistance.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.