SAP Business Data Cloud Reviews

SAP Analytics Cloud is very easy to use, and you don't require much technology. It has a very good library and analytics. It is easy to configure and offers good visualization. 

I expect more integration from SAP Analytics Cloud. 

I have been working with the solution for three years. 

The tool is very stable. 

SAP Analytics Cloud is scalable. 

The tool's deployment is very easy. 

The tool's pricing is medium, and licensing costs are yearly. 

I rate SAP Analytics Cloud an eight out of ten. I wouldn't recommend it to non-SAP customers. 

SAP Analytics Hub serves as a platform for reporting and creating dashboards. It offers powerful capabilities for cross-functional reporting and dashboard creation across various modules, making it a valuable tool.

SAP Analytics Hub offers a user-friendly interface with effortless configuration, seamless updates, and real-time availability of information. It avoids the complexities associated with batch processing, providing a smooth and efficient experience.

Pricing and support are integrated into the system. However, the support process can be challenging, particularly when navigating the SAP support site, which lacks user-friendliness and ease of access.

A good level of understanding is needed to use the system efficiently. Users who are unfamiliar with the topic area may find this difficult.

I have been working with SAP Analytics Hub for two years.

The system is highly stable and regarded as a mature product in its field.

The system empowers you to achieve a granular level of detail, enabling you to scale up to line-level data. 

It offers seamless navigation and analysis capabilities in both forward and backward directions, providing the flexibility to meet your specific requirements. By configuring the system appropriately, you can attain this desired level of granularity.

I would rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

I have experience working with Oracle, SAP, QED, and MicroStrategy. Specifically, on the Fusion side, I work with Fusion HRM.

When it comes to SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud), I have some familiarity with it, but it is more from a functional and project management perspective rather than the technical side.

The initial setup process is not straightforward and may require a significant amount of time to complete.

Once the setup is complete, the system becomes capable of handling even the most challenging scenarios. However, it is important to note that modifying or updating the system is not a simple task and may require considerable effort and expertise.

I believe that the deployment process can be completed within a reasonable timeframe, likely within three weeks. This timeframe should be sufficient for a successful deployment.

Their methodology allows for the possibility of deploying the system with a small team. 

If you opt for the cloud version, it eliminates the need for a larger team typically required for on-premise deployments.

I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten.

They are pursuing a highly assertive approach to target businesses of all sizes within the industry.

They are highly capable of closely aligning with your specific needs and effortlessly matching your desired numbers. By engaging in detailed discussions and conveying your requirements, they can readily accommodate them.

I would rate SAP Analytics Hub a nine out of ten.

Despite its complexity, the system is versatile enough to accommodate a wide range of scenarios, making it suitable for various use cases and considerations.

Currently, we are customers of the system, but I also have prior experience working with the system as a partner. In my current role, I am actively engaged as an SAP customer.

SAP used to provide two tools, SAP BI and SAP BPC. The SAP BI tool provided analytics, while the SAP BPC tool provided budgeting and planning functionality. However, We later consolidated these two tools into one tool, SAP Analytics for Cloud. This tool provides both budgeting and analytics functionality.

I have seen a lot of benefits from using SAP Analytics, but I think people have not yet fully realized its potential. I believe the system is still in its revolutionary stage because it has a lot of capabilities that have yet to be fully explored. In order to take advantage of these capabilities, we need to have a business story and our own analytics or business analytics requirements. I myself have only used SAP Analytics for a very small use case, but I can see how it could be used for enterprise-level planning, reporting, and dashboarding.

The most valuable feature of the tool is machine learning. The machine learning algorithms are inbuilt and strong. I really like that feature because we don't need to do any coding. Normally, we used to do coding in Jupyter notes or Anaconda. It's another tool for analytics or for data science. We used to write Python code, and then try to fetch the data from the backend system, and perform the analysis, based on the batch. SAP Analytics is more real-time analytics and the use case which I use the tool for, with S/4HANA itself. SAP Analytics makes it much easier for me to have the data directly in real-time, to perform this machine learning. I have also seen some good automation features for budgeting and budgeting processes. This combined feature gives a very good flavor to perform the analytics.

SAP has always had one problem with its products, they make them very closed systems that are difficult to integrate. This is not only a problem with SAP Analytics but also with other products, like middleware systems. These systems, such as GRC, reside in the second level of defense, rather than the first. All these analytical systems normally require a huge integration, because they are not working independently. They are dependent on the backend systems. In any analytical system, we don't have data. Basically, we fetch the data or we try to take the data from any recording system such as an ERP recording system, CRM recording system, or any recording system. We perform the analysis in the analytical layer, which is our analytical tool, such as frauds, business integrated screening, SAP GRC, or even the SAC, SAP Analytics for Cloud. All of these require a huge integration. The problem I faced with SAP Analytics was the ease of integration and the cost. SAP Analytics for Cloud is not cost-friendly. we encounter the same issue with all SAP tools. Although SAP has a very beautiful and seamless integration within their system, it is not as easy to integrate them with non-SAP tools, as our Enterprise system does not have all SAP systems. They instead have multiple systems, including Oracle and Microsoft systems. Even though SAP has very beautiful plugins, which we can utilize and get benefit from that, it is not as friendly compared to other tools.

In 2012 or 2013, SAP's interfaces were a big challenge because they were very engineering-oriented and dry, making them difficult for business users to understand. Fiori was introduced as a solution to this problem, and it has been successful in doing so. However, I believe that SAP still needs to work on the integration aspect.

SAC is not the number one tool for analytics. However, if an organization has SAP backend products, then SAC falls within the system of analytics. The system of analytics requires a system of recording, which is the ERP system, CRM, or any other backend system that automates business processes. I believe that a little work is required in that aspect by SAP to improve.

I have been using the tool for several years.

The tool is stable.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

Most of the organizations I work for have a maximum attention licensing agreement with SAP, so the support service is amazing. We've never faced any delays with that.

If we have more backend systems using SAP, it's really easy to set up SAP Analytics, but if that is not the case it becomes very difficult to integrate.

SAP Analytics can be very costly to license, which can make it difficult for organizations to implement.

I evaluated SPSS and Alteryx.

I give the tool a seven out of ten.

I was looking for a tool that could help me add value-added services to my department, such as predictive analytics from the audit perspective. I wanted a tool that could analyze text, mostly based on natural language processing. There are other heavy tools that could be applied to the audit lifecycle to improve the process. I was looking for a data analysis tool that would help me roll out the fifth generation of our internal audit department. I considered several options, including SPSS, Alteryx, and SAP Analytics. There is a generation of auditors and assurance professionals called 4.0 or 5.0 who are turning from performing basic analytics to using advanced analytics tools with AI to enhance their audit processes. They are becoming more proactive and using bottom-up analytics. This is a little bit technical for some people. In the same way that we have fourth-generation audit insurance, we have the fourth industrial revolution in the generic industry, we have a revolution in the audit department, a fourth-generation revolution, where we apply AI tools, RPA, robotic process, and advanced analytics to improve our processors. This allows us to perform more audits, 15-20 instead of 10, and to do so using a complete database rather than samples. As an auditor, we will no longer be providing reasonable assurance that we cannot provide everything, we will be able to provide assurance on the entire database. The analytics will automate this process for us, so I'm launching that strategy. In my strategy, I have, for example, some contracts I want to automate instead of reviewing them manually. Each and every contract, for example, comes to the audit department. Instead of reviewing the contract manually, and spending hours, converting this from the OCR text, and then applying the NLP on it, trying to identify the risks and the threats within this contract, and trying to audit based on that risk template, I can automate this process. I'm a certified professional in GRC and ECC. I've been working in this field for a long time. I've seen predictive analytics in action, and I've tried to compare the effectiveness of different tools, like SPSS and Alteryx, with SAP Analytics. I'm doing this because I want to see how much these tools can help me with my overall strategy. But I know that no single tool can guarantee success. We need a bunch of tools. For example, we have this SAP Celonis, which can help us understand business processes and do business process re-engineering and analysis. This SAP Celonis will help automate the process of understanding business processes, instead of having manual meetings with the business and trying to understand everyone's understanding of the process. We can rely on the data to tell us the truth. The central truth is the data. SAP Celonis will take the event log and try to analyze the process on our behalf, and try to give us the anomalies in our business process. The strategy has a different flavor, different tools, and different aspects. SAP Analytics would be more helpful in the audit execution process, and reporting stage. There is another tool that helps with fraud management. It's called business integrity screening. This tool basically fetches data and tests it for us. The tool also gathers information from SAP Analytics for Cloud and performs predictive analytics with strong machine learning algorithms. SAP Analytics is not the only thing I use to achieve my goals. It is a part of my strategy, and it helps me automate certain aspects of my plan.

An organization that has its backend systems as SAP would be making a smart move to go with SAP Analytics, but if they have a mix of SAP or non-SAP systems, I never advise organizations to go with SAP Analytics. An organization that does not have SAP in the backend and still wished to use SAP Analytics should perform a proper requirement analysis first.

We're using the solution for a client who wanted to see live dashboards from backend data in the S/4HANA system, to be transferred into SAP Analytics Cloud.

The most useful feature of SAP Analytics Cloud is planning because it helps users with making predictions and forecasts. Clients can forecast, make data allocations, and other actions. The solution is useful for planning.

An additional feature that needs to be added to SAP Analytics Cloud is exporting because right now, you can only export to PDF and PowerPoint. It would be good to have multiple export options, for example, to Excel and other apps.

Pricing is an area for improvement in SAP Analytics Cloud, apart from exporting.

I've been using SAP Analytics Cloud for nearly three years.

SAP Analytics Cloud has good stability.

Scaling up SAP Analytics Cloud is easy. It has good scalability.

I had a couple of requests and the support team for SAP Analytics Cloud was good. On a scale of one to five, I'm rating support as four out of five.

The initial setup for SAP Analytics Cloud is straightforward. How long the deployment takes depends on the client, for example, the solution was already implemented when my team started working with the client, so it was just a matter of transferring existing reports to the SAP Analytics Cloud environment.

The implementation was done by a consultant with good knowledge of SAP Analytics Cloud.

I don't have the exact price for SAP Analytics Cloud, but it could be improved and made cheaper, especially when compared to Power BI.

I evaluated Power BI, and it's fairly good, especially in terms of pricing. It's also easier to use, apart from being cheaper than SAP Analytics Cloud, but both are good products.

My company has more than one hundred users of SAP Analytics Cloud, particularly people in project planning and business intelligence departments. The solution requires only two to three people for deployment and maintenance.

My company has plans to increase usage of SAP Analytics Cloud, and there's been some internal training and knowledge sharing going on.

My advice to others who want to use SAP Analytics Cloud is that it's a good tool, especially if you were using older SAP analytics tools. Currently, SAP Analytics Cloud is the most advanced tool, and it helps you with your plans and strategies.

I would rate SAP Analytics Cloud eight out of ten.

I work on the planning and price planning and I create dashboards.

It is user-friendly. 

It's easy to set up.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is helpful.

It's scalable. 

We have not found any shortcomings. It does what we need it to do. However, while most of the things have been incorporated, doing data action optimization wasn't something that we could have done. We needed data action capabilities. 

The scope is limited to a few accounts. We need to limit that data in order to get enhancement in terms of performance. There are a few little challenges there. This needs to be considered in the planning stages. For example, how to enhance or limit data and look up or delete statements. You need to consider data locking and access control.

I've been working with the solution for four or five months now. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

We have 15 to 16 people using the solution in our company currently. 

The solution is easily scalable. however, that does mean it will get more expensive. 

There are dimension restrictions. The scope is limited to only five to six accounts. That is one challenge. So we cannot have more scopes.

Technical support has been good. They are helpful and responsive. we're satisfied with the level of support on offer. 

Positive

The initial implementation is very straightforward and simple. it's not complex. 

I don't have the exact details of the pricing. It's my understanding that as you scale, the price will rise. 

We did look into other planning solutions. 

We are using the corporate edition. I'm a user and consultant. 

I'd advise new users to use it as much as possible. It helps make it more stable and scalable. It's very user-friendly and intuitive for both the management and technical team - no matter who uses it, it's not too hard to deal with.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. There's still from for improvement, however, I am largely happy with the product. 

We use the product for analytics across various business processes and sectors. It helps us analyze SAP ERP data.

The platform's main benefit is its integration with SAP ERP data. It’s effective for data integration and integrity.

The platform could easily integrate with other ERP data solutions. Additionally, it should be faster compared to competitors in the cloud space.

I have been using SAP Analytics Hub for eight months. 

I rate the product stability a nine. 

I rate the platform's scalability as nine for enterprise businesses. It’s not suitable for smaller companies.

The technical support services need improvement in terms of speed. 

The product can be deployed on the cloud and on-premises. 

The product is expensive. The cost starts from $1,000,000 per year. Moreover, there are additional costs involved for customization. 

I advise others to be aware of the total ownership cost of the product for the next three to five years.

I rate it a seven out of ten. 

The solution is primarily used for dashboarding and planning. My clients come from various industries, including chemical energy, fertilizers, cement, real estate, and telecommunications.

The solution has improved decision-making through its predictive analytics capabilities and effective dashboarding features. It supports better business forecasting and planning.

The product's most valuable features are reporting and planning, driverless planning, business vertical-wise planning, dashboarding, forecasting tools, and business forecasting. 

Real-time reporting is one area that needs improvement for the product. Currently, it operates on a batch-based system, and it would be beneficial if it could update in real-time directly from SAP S4HANA without batch jobs or file uploads.

I have been using SAP Analytics Cloud for three years.

I rate the platform's stability an eight.

I rate the product scalability an eight. 

The technical support services are good. However, the response times need improvement.

The initial setup process has moderate complexity. 

The product is expensive. 

Overall, I rate SAP Analytics Cloud a nine out of ten. 

The product's native integration with SAP ERP systems is particularly valuable.

The product could improve by enhancing connectivity issues and speeding up response times for support queries.

I have been working with SAP for more than 15 to 20 years.

The product is stable. 

We have contacted SAP support primarily for connectivity issues. While the support team was helpful, reaching the right executive took about a week, which could be improved.

Neutral

The initial setup took approximately three months, involving thorough integration with our SAP ERP systems.

The platform is about 50% more expensive than Power BI.

If the customer uses SAP ERP, I would recommend SAP Analytics Cloud. Otherwise, they should investigate other tools.

I rate it an eight.