SAP Analytics Cloud Reviews

We have our data stored in SAP BW. SAP Analytics Cloud is now the main Reporting Tool from SAP. We are gradually shifting the reporting from BO Webi / BO Lumira / BEx Wad to SAC.

It improves the buy-in from business for SAP technology.

Its user-friendliness is very valuable for end-users. It allows them to create dashboards without very experienced IT knowledge (compared to BO Lumira).

Though it's the best placed product when working with an SAP BW backend, it still lacks a lot of functionalities when compared to other tools such as Power BI or Tableau. 

The technical support of SAP is not perfect and could be much better. 

It takes a lot of time to have lacking functionalities implemented.

The integration with the BW backend can still be improved. Though both solutions are from the same vendor and the tool is positioned as "the" reporting tool on top of a BW environment, the integration between both still lacks a smooth integration. For example, authorization management is still not synchronized out of the box.

We were amidst the first adaptors of SAC and have seen it growing to a more mature level.

It is quite stable. We had very limited downtime in the past years. The continuous upgrades (cloud) can deliver sometimes moments of surprise, certainly when the layout is impacted.

It is very scalable.

Their technical support is not perfect and could be better. SAP Analytics Cloud is still lacking a lot of functionalities as compared to its competitors, and when we address these questions to SAP, it takes a lot of time to have these functionalities implemented.

Yes, multiple tools: WAD, BO xCelcius, Lumira. 

It is the future vision of SAP (for now).

The initial setup of SAP Analytics Cloud is easy because it is a cloud product. You can start using the environment very soon after the decision to do so is taken.

In house with a little help during startup from SAP.

Its pricing is fair when compared to its competitors.

Tableau, Power BI. From a user perspective, much more flexible and functional, but lacking the proper integration with SAP BW.

If your data is stored in the SAP environment, it is still the best tool in the market. Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are very nice in functionality and layout, but they lack functionality when you link them to an SAP database.

My suggestion would be to use the tools from the same vendor. The reporting tool should be from the same vendor whose backend system you are using. I advised the same in our company because we have a lot of tools. If you have an SAP data warehouse, then use tools from SAP on top of this data warehouse. If you have SQL Database, then Microsoft Power BI is more suitable.

I would rate SAP Analytics Cloud an eight out of ten.

We are in the experimental stage. We are still using other business intelligence tools. However, we are experimenting with the SAP Analytics Cloud as a possible replacement or alternative.

The storytelling is great.

It is scalable.

The solution is reliable and stable.

Before the implementation, I read a lot about SAP Analytics Cloud. However, I am sad to say other functions or functionalities were not included in our version right now.

We are not using it regularly yet. Maybe more testing on our part is needed before talking about a lack of features.

As I use the SAP Analytics Cloud, I'm using only data, so I am grabbing data and putting it onto the SAP Analytics Cloud. Our boss wants to connect the data directly to the SAP database. That is one of the things they would like to do before we totally use it as our business intelligence solution.

The budget management could be better. I forget the exact term. However, the finance department will use the functionality for budget management across all the departments within the company.

There is a feature where all reports will be centralized in one, and it will be shown on one big monitor. If you put it on a monitor with touch capability, it would be perfect. It would really look good for reporting.

The predictive analysis should be stronger.

I started using the solution in 2020. However, I am not using it yet on a regular basis. 

I tried it before implementation and based on my experience, that's why our company got licensed for the SAP Analytics Cloud.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze.

The product is scalable. So far, we’ve been happy with it. That said, said, we are in the stage of testing it right now. We are not yet entirely using it as our main DA.

I have not yet experienced technical support.

I’m not the one implementing it right now. Maybe our SAP basis team would have a better account of how the implementation went. I was more on the functional side. The technicality of setting it up is outside of my capabilities right now.

You only need a small team for deployment and maintenance.

We have consultants assisting us with the implementation.

The costs and licensing are outside my level of knowledge. I don’t deal with it directly.

That said, there may be additional costs involved. Some functionalities of the SAP Analytics Cloud are not yet included in our version.

We are end-users.

We are not using it in the cloud. We are in the on-premise platform at this moment. It’s a hybrid, currently.

I’m not sure which version of the solution we’re using.

My current job is in SAP production support, so I am the one handling incident reports or incident tickets and problem management for all the SAP-related tickets. I’m somewhere between a user and a consultant. I’m not a reseller.

I’d advise potential users that it's better to connect it directly to the database so that it will have data harmony from your ERP if you are using SAP as well as this SAP Analytics Cloud. That way, you can create reports and extract data anytime you like. Right now, we are just pulling data in SAP and then into the SAP database and putting it on SAP Analytics Cloud to create a story or a report itself.

I’d rate the solution nine out of ten. This is mostly due to the business intelligence functionality only, as I have not yet really tried out the other functions.

I primarily use the solution for reporting. We talk to people in all different roles and in all different types of companies and organizations. It's just to get a more well-rounded scope.

We use it to build a human capital dashboard and I use it to report on workforce data, hires and exits, movements, and items of that nature.

I like the forecasting capabilities. 

There is a really nice insight feature that I enjoy using. It automatically adds input, which is quite helpful. 

The initial setup was super simple. 

The customizations need to be better. In order to do some basic functions, in order to create certain basic functions in input control, you need to know a couple of basic programming languages. It would be better if these input controls were easier to create or to get working. For example, in Tableau, it's so easy. You just add these controls. However, in this product, for certain basic functions like dropdown boxes, it's more difficult for the basic business user. If you're not in IT, it's not as easy as Tableau.

The product needs to offer more options for navigation. There need to be dropdown filtering op boxes. Right now, when you filter, what you have filtered is not presented - the selection isn't on the screen. If you're looking at it, you don't know if you've got the right number unless you hover over it.

Some of the functionalities that do not use any IT or business language, such as BIAL, which is a subset of JavaScript, and something called CSS, need to be incorporated.

The analytics app is designed for programmers. You need to know programming languages in order to use the solution effectively, and some users aren't programmers. Unfortunately, if you want something that should be simple to do, that's not available as you need to have that programming language.

I'm a new-ish user; I just started this year. I would say I've used it for less than a year.

The product seems very secure. It seems very stable. I've had no issues. There are no bugs or glitches. It does not crash or freeze.

The scalability is very good. I am not using it to its current potential, however, this is one of the benefits of the program, as is it can be scaled out for the whole organization, due to the ability for it to connect directly to the cloud data and right to the SAP.

Different business units are using the solution, including HR, long-term care, and transportation. I'm not sure how many users are leveraging it, however. We are a city-wide organization and different government areas use it.

It is not widely used right now, as we are still in the demo stage. That said, I can say that the organization is planning on committing to it.

I've never had to use technical support except to go to my own IT staff for help, and therefore I can't comment very well on SAP's level of assistance.

I'm also familiar with Tableau.

We were using Excel and Tableau, and we stopped using Excel due to the fact that there's no scalability there. It's just very slow and cumbersome. That was Microsoft, actually. With Tableau, we are also using it for other things. Due to the nature of this software, it's good for some projects, and Tableau is better for others. This one's more suited towards data that is coming directly from a live system. Tableau works really well with flat files.

For me, the implementation was very simple.

Our IT department provided me with the access rights and provided me with the appropriate links, as well as all of the training materials that SAP has on their website.

My deployment was small and quick. For the whole organization, it takes much longer. I am using it with a flat-file, inserting data into the cloud to connect with it, and therefore, my scope is very small compared to the whole organization. It did not take me long at all.

I handle the maintenance myself. It doesn't require much maintenance. I do work with IT when I need to.

I used our IT staff, however, they have been working with representatives from the company in order to deploy the product organization-wide.

I can't speak to the licensing or costs. I'm not involved in that aspect just yet.

There seem to be three different levels of licenses, including one for a viewer, and one for a designer and one is for analytics.

This is currently the solution we are evaluating.

My advice would be to all-out purchase the analytics application, as some of the features are in just the designer mode, and they are not going to be sufficient. You're going to need some of the features that are contained in the third option, the analytics application.

Users need to be very familiar with what they have called the data modeler and should spend some time modeling and rendering data in their data modeler or just importing data into something called the dataset. With the dataset, users have more flexibility, however, the data modeling, that's something I didn't know starting out. Had I done it differently, I might have used the data modeler.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We're using SAP Analytics Cloud for analyzing financial and commercial information.

What I really like most about SAP Analytics Cloud is that it's very easy to create charts with it.

What should be improved in SAP Analytics Cloud is the speed of importing information and data from SAP S/4HANA, because it's what we're using. We noticed that gathering the data from the main database takes a bit of time.

Another way to improve the product is for them to let others access some information without being part of our SAP company system. If I want a customer to check information directly using SAP Analytics Cloud that would be good, because currently, it doesn't seem to me that this is possible directly in the product. Of course, there's another path to take to reach that goal, but a direct connection for external people who may want to check some information could be useful.

I've been using SAP Analytics Cloud since last July.

SAP Analytics Cloud is a stable product.

The initial setup for SAP Analytics Cloud was quite easy. On a scale of one to five, with five being the best, I'm rating the setup a five. I did the setup with the help of a team, e.g. not just by myself.

I find the pricing of SAP Analytics Cloud reasonable. On a scale of one to five, with five being the best, I'm giving it a score of four out of five for the price.

We adopted Qlik Sense a few years ago, then we started with SAP, and after having tried SAP, we decided to stay with SAP Analytics Cloud. We discharged Qlik Sense.

We're using SAP Analytics Cloud in our company.

I still don't have an idea on how scalable the product is.

I'm unable to give feedback on the technical support for SAP Analytics Cloud, because I don't deal directly with SAP, but with another company that assists us, and they work with SAP.

My advice to others looking into implementing SAP Analytics Cloud is for them to
check the cost of implementation, because the cost of the product is not high, but sometimes the implementation could cost a lot more, e.g. the connection to your access system could cost a lot.

I'm rating SAP Analytics Cloud nine out of ten.

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. 

I am a professional consultant and programmer and we are customers of SAP. 

This is a robust solution and I like that it's oriented to develop what we need in our ERP. I like the platform and the fact that it's the same ecosystem. 

There is something about SAP Analytics that is complicated and more technical, certainly in comparison to a solution like Power BI which is more intuitive and where it's easier to find data. Power BI has the added advantage that many people work with Excel. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

It's stable because it's all in the cloud. 

The solution is scalable but we haven't really tested it. Deployment requires a couple of people; one for design and the other working with what you need for analysis.

SAP calls me once every three to six months to ask how things are going. 

The initial setup is very easy because you can work with data models and if you know the database and you know how to model, both are intuitive. I haven't had many issues with deployment. 

In general Power BI seems to be more professional and user-friendly, it's certainly easier to find data. I prefer Power BI if I want to work quickly with clients because it's easier to use and I can send a link whereas SAP is more difficult to access and I can never be sure that the client can get access. The first steps are more or less the same with both products although SAP Analytics has perhaps more details to analyze what you see on the screen and Power BI has more of a classical interface.

Take your time and study the product because when you use SAP Analytics Cloud, you'll find it's very easy to make graphs and tables, to analyze and cross data. It's important to understand how it works but to also have a very clear idea of where you're going. There are online courses available as well as online help which is very useful. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

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. 

The solution is used for planning and budgeting.

The SKU, the story build all are user- friendly. For the story build one just has to drag and drop it. And for the table, you just need some sort of selections and everything there.

There is plenty of room for improvement. They have different products, and you need to integrate all of them to have one functionality. For example, data extraction happens in Datasphere. Then it would be best if you had some connection between the Datasphere and the SAP Analytics Cloud to get the data, as this is causing headaches sometimes. The knowledge base and Jedox also could be more meaningful. I have tried to search for some specific knowledge base and technology base, and I didn't find them. I have learned it by trial and error.

There is room to improve the integrations between the different products. The AFS, and the Data action, need improvement. Sometimes they release new tools and updates, but not in my area.

I have been using the solution for twelve months.

It is a stable product. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Fourteen consultants are using the SAP Cloud for planning and budgeting and are impressed with it as they did not introduce any other tool. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

Since it is a stable tool we did not have to contact the technical support team.

The initial setup is a little difficult. It takes time to learn about the Datasphere and the SEB. Actually, I have joined an ongoing project, so I didn't know how much time it would take.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.