SAP Business Data Cloud Reviews

We are using SAP Analytics for complete enterprise. We are customers and I am a business analytics manager. 

The product has helped us to unify reporting between all departments and throughout the entire company; it has improved our organization by streamlining operations. 

Data integration is very good. It's a very good product and cost-effective.

I would like to have more tabular reporting capabilities, like page reports. 

I've been using this solution for more than two years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

We've had a good experience with customer support. They're active and we have an exclusive relationship manager to move us forward with the product. It provides us with extra care.

The previous solution we used was not addressing our enterprise needs. 

The initial implementation took a week and then we gradually adopted it throughout the company. Deployment was carried out in-house and we currently have 200 users who range from C-level to end users. We have three people who help out with maintenance and they have backgrounds in engineering or architecture. 

Analytics has improved our bottom line by improving processes. 

We get competitive rates for our licensing so I'm not complaining. 

We evaluated Tableau and Power BI before choosing SAP. The decision to go with SAP was connected to our underlying data. If your data is on SAP and your data warehouse is SAP Business Warehouse, as in our case, it made sense to go with SAP Analytics. 

I think it's important to be strategy-driven based on your underlying data. If you are an SAP-based organization, this is a good solution. If you are non-SAP, then you might be better off looking at an alternative solution. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

The solution is good for handling projects via dashboards for finishing projects and understanding budgets (if we're over or not), financials, working capital, et cetera.

If you need to give a chart for training for sales, you can show profits for the company. You can use it for smart discovery and for using data to search and give you more date information about the data and what happened when.

The pricing is decent.

The onboarding process is pretty good. 

It offers good backup capabilities. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability is there if you need it.

Technical support could be more helpful and responsive. 

We've been using the solution for six years. 

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution is scalable and easy to expand.

While technical support is okay, sometimes it takes a bit too long to get help when you open a ticket.

It's easy to onboard users at the outset.

It's a good investment. 

The pricing is okay. It's not overly expensive. 

That said, sometimes I only need to deploy one user and it's expensive. You need to buy it in bulk, for maybe five users or more. 

We are an implementor. 

We are using the latest version of the solution.

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

It is a comprehensive BI solution that provides reporting, planning, and predictive analytics in one solution. You don't have to buy three different products.

It is very flexible. It can be implemented very quickly. It has a lot of out-of-the-box scenarios that you can use for quick deployment.

It should have the flexibility for scoping the story and models. When you use it in a three-layer architecture, you struggle with the fact that you usually have just one SAP Analytics Cloud tenant, and you have to switch the connections, which might be an issue for bigger developments. For the development role, there should be an option to switch between development and production scenarios. 

I have been using this solution for a year. I am using its latest version.

It is definitely stable.

It is scalable. Many customers are using this solution. They usually have less than 100 users.

Their support is fine. Its information and support pages are also very organized.

It is a cloud solution. You don't have to install it. You just buy the license and activate the users.

Its licensing is on a monthly basis.

I would recommend this solution. Generally, their roadmap is full of good innovations. They focus a lot on things that can be improved and bring the improvements that you don't even realize that you need. They are great.

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

We use it for all our reporting right now. Everything is happening in SAP, and all dashboards are there, and all data comes through in real-time. We have thought management there, and Azure Operations Management is dependent upon SAP.

It's so user-friendly. The configuration is done by the user, not by an IP or anybody. It's also very flexible.

I would like to have some functionality when they have a live connection with our BW. Some of the functionalities SAP promotes, like integration, aren't available to me. I would also like to have more advanced features for predictive analytics.

We have been using SAP Analytics Cloud for a few months.

I'm not satisfied with technical support because they're taking some time. Sometimes I think they could be faster.

It's cloud-based, and no installation is required. Deployment time and the number of personnel largely depends on the project. The implementation time was less than three months, and I think it was quite easy.

I think we have 50 active licenses. Right now, I think it's okay, and it's fine for us. It's not that costly as such for the time being.

I would recommend this product to potential customers.

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

We are using this solution for the analysis of the daily sales with this particular project that we are working on. 

We also analyze what items are used daily, and how many items there are. We are using this solution to gather this information.

We are also using this for protection.

The most valuable features are the analytical application and the user story.

I have used all of the features that are available with this solution, including the dropdown list filter, radio button, and R Visualization.

Related to storage there is the Numeric point, geo-map, latitude, and longitude.

The interface is user-friendly.

With the R Visualization, the coding is somewhat complex.

SAP Analytics Cloud requires a lot of coding and I would like the coding to be somewhat minimal. When I use other tools, they don't require a lot of coding. There is coding for columns and that is fine, that is minimal. 

I have been working with SAP Analytics Cloud since I started with this company, two and a half years ago.

We are using a live connection.

It's a stable solution. We have created the connections and we help pull the data. We have not had any issues.

We have not tried to scale this solution. We had two users, but now I am the only person who is using this solution.

At this time we only have one project running with SAP Analytics Cloud. We are expecting that more will decide to use it, but we haven't had any contracts related to this solution.

We have not contacted technical support or submitted any tickets.

The initial setup was complex.

It took seven months in total. Three months to deploy and before going live, there were several months of testing to ensure that everything was completed.

I completed the setup and deployment and needed help from an integrator for the data.

I would recommend SAP Analytics Cloud to others. It is a good solution but I want to suggest that they minimize the coding by using the analytical application.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have many use cases. These include the SAP Analytics platform tool and the SAP Analytics Cloud project. Some of the tools these products provide tend to fit the same situation. But other use cases can depend on the clients' resources including on-premise servers, or on-premise application. There are many installation requirements, for example in Cloud connect. We often need consultancy support from SAP to assist us.

SAP Analytics Cloud is very popular amongst most companies around the world. There are three editions of the product. 

The analytics privacy is the best in the market in BI platforms. SAP Analytics Cloud has a planning tool and integration tool. It is the best business intelligence platform. It's not very complex. Its many features make it the best in the market. It also has new extra storage. I have had very good experiences with SAP Analytics Cloud. There are many standards for setup. The SAP Analytics Cloud connects with the SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) or S/4HANA (SAP's ERP for large enterprises) or any other things around the application server. SAP Analytics Cloud has machine learning installed, which includes a Smart Discovery and a smart BI tool. It's the best feature if you need machine learning. The Smart Discovery is the best tool for me in catalog discovery tools. In addition to SAP Analytics Cloud, there is SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, includes other tools about business intelligence, and SAP HANA Cloud tools

SAP Analytics Cloud can connect to any server architect, database server, or application server. There are many models for implementation to the Cloud or on-premises. The implementation process for SAP Analytics Cloud could be improved, as there are many application servers, in the company. Also, there are many applications. This implies there are many KPIs to connect with other applications. Connection and integration with other applications have a lot of restrictions at the moment. As a result, the implementation process is complicated. SAP Cloud connect is easier to implement on-premises. Future releases could include a provision to remove some of those restrictions. 

Previously, I had 15 years of experience with SAP BI, using Business Objects. I have been using the latest version of SAP Analytics Cloud, for two years as a consultant. I used SAP Business Objects premium, previously, and SAP Analytics Cloud version. My related lengthy experience with Business Objects has helped me learn SAP Analytics Cloud more easily in the last two years. I am mainly experienced in using the IDM tool. I lead on Cloud installations and I have had a lot of training. I also know the core model design. I can explain the model design and related server applications. My main experience is with the design model. I have experience with graphics transformations. Also, I have designed KPIs tools in SAP Analytics Cloud working with customers to specific KPIs. I consider design knowledge to be the most important task for daily tasks. For example, in S/4HANA or SAP ECC, we have to design services, for backups and data.  In Venezuela and Latin America, we have to design the ETL process and model those in the SAP Analytics Cloud. We also have to design the dashboard for the customer. Many companies have SAP in Venezuela. As a freelance partner, I work independently. Companies utilize my services when they have a specific implementation of an SAP application they need.

It has many features as a platform. SAP Analytics Cloud has various editions. It depends what it's going to be used for and expected. It has a public edition, and an SAP Analytics Cloud public edition. SAP Analytics Cloud also has a premier edition, which includes customer tool access. The premium edition is the paid-for edition. The premium addition also has better access than the other editions of SAP Analytics Cloud. The client is a large commercial company specialising in telecommunications. I'm working on support and implementation at the moment. Stability can sometimes depend on the size of the company, as a smaller company will generally have less complicated requirements than a large company. It also depends on the design model, and the consultant to know the model and the required customer solution.

You need to know many things about the business. SAP Analytics Cloud, requires consultancy implementation. You have to have good technical skills and knowledge in your business unit or area. These are major concerns. My previous experience with business intelligence products has helped with implementations of SAP Analytics Cloud. It's easier if we have the assistance of a BI consultant, and the team have knowledge about the implementation. The team must be trained in SAP. I keep my knowledge of SAP, and the latest improvements, up-to-date daily. I run webinars for staff, as I am required to train others. The recent versions of SAP have many improvements, but staff need to be kept in the loop about these. For example, currently, I am looking at HANA Cloud within the platform. It is always important for the team to keep the documentation up-to-date, so that, if anything changes or features are added it is included with the latest information.

Implementations are usually carried out in conjunction with the vendor team, which includes SAP and BI consultants.

The best way to keep up with relevant information about SAP Analytics Cloud is in public forums. I check those daily, including any blogs. There are many useful articles on the internet about SAP Analytics Cloud. I rate SAP Analytics Cloud as a 10, based on the implementation, functionality to the users and it is the best tool to measure KPIs in the Cloud.

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 solution provider and the SAP Analytics Hub is one of the products that we implement for our customers.

Our company integrates SAP Analytics Hub with rest of the SAP solution stack for our customers.

What I like best about this solution is that it is built into the SAP line, making it easier to integrate with other SAP products.

There is a steep learning curve with SAP Analytic Cloud for others from Non-SAP world, compared to other cloud solutions like Azure, GCP, AWS etc. 

Access to SAP training labs are a challenge compared to other vendors and the learning content can be structured better. Now, the content is spread across developer forum. Practice labs can be improved. 

Specific learning paths are not available for some of their products like SAP Data Intelligence which needs to be integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud and there are no hands on Labs to practice SAP DI on Access.

The learning interfaces on Developer forum can be more user-friendly experience. learning experiences on GCP & Azure are a breeze.

I have been working with the SAP Analytics Hub for the past three or four months.

Stability is not a problem for SAP products with Managed services.

Scalability has not been an issue, as these are cloud solutions and use micro-services to scale up and down to reduce cost. However, understanding data helps make wise choices about the tools used.

I have not been in touch with technical support.

No. Integration across SAP's product line makes it easier to get started on any new innovations quickly. One word of caution, please spend some time working on any product with SAP's Co-Innovation Labs to validate your solutions.

Trying to consumes SAP cloud services in hybrid cloud model will be easier than trying to set them on your own by buying infra & installation etc.

In-house team

I don't have a view on this. 

I am not expert in this area. A well defined Problem and A well understood solution will help reduce the cost, get the best prices and choose the licensing model that avoids vendor lock-in.

In a multi-cloud world, one has to realise that there is no One product which meets all requirements. Hence, SAP also allows integration of its platform with services from other cloud service providers and other non-SAP database platforms too.

The SAP Analytics Hub is a product that I recommend because, for SAP customers, I think that it is a good fit.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I have always appreciated SAP for its data capacity. That's a basic requirement since there is always a lot of data. We could be dealing with 100 TB of data. SAP is the only tool that can survive with that volume. 

Another good thing about SAP is that it has powerful tools like the SAP Data View and HANA and BO configuration. They will always give you better results with any type of data and any amount of data within a short time.

For report scheduling, I always prefer SAP because it has the most powerful scheduling features, like sending reports to more than 1,000 customers per day. That option is not as good in Microsoft BI and in Tableau it only exists as an add-on option.

The analytics part of SAP has not been that good up until now. They're still in the infant stage and development is still going on. SAP has some cloud analytics and they're trying to configure it in Lumira, but it's not that good at this point. 

I have been working with SAP for about seven years.

SAP is famous for technical support. You get 24-hour support and there are different types of support offered. We experienced issues in one of our implementations and we got very good support from SAP. They worked for almost three days, around the clock with us, to resolve the issue.

Deployment is another area that is lacking. The implementation is a bit difficult comparatively because it's a big system. SAP always prefers to have its back-end as the SAP ERP system, which is complex. But, once it's configured, it is good. 

SAP BW is also a bit complex, but once it's configured you are safe. With BusinessObjects, it is the same thing because it has more than 10 reporting tools. So deployment and training users will take time. 

But SAP introduced the SAP Lumira solution. Lumira's deployment is simple and it can communicate with Tableau and Power BI.

In terms of pricing, SAP is good for very large companies that have a lot of data. But small companies that don't have that much data and that can't afford SAP can go with Microsoft Power BI. You can get that for about 700 Indian rupees, which is almost $10, per user. When it comes to pricing, Microsoft is the best.

If your company is dealing with terabytes of data, go with SAP and don't think about the pricing.

SAP brought out PA, it's Predictive Analysis solution to compete with Tableau and Qlik. But since then I haven't seen much improvement in it, compared to Tableau. Tableau is the market leader and they focus on analytics; they come out with a lot of analytics solutions, such as clustering. SAP has been lagging.

But if you're talking about enterprise companies we always prefer SAP, because Tableau or Microsoft doesn't work with terabytes worth of data.

If you go with Power BI or Tableau, the data can be extracted into local tools. But with SAP Lumira, which I worked on two years ago, so it could be that it has changed since then, I found that there is no option like that, so we always have to connect it directly with the data. But SAP HANA can connect with Lumira, and that could be the best solution.

Microsoft Power BI can be easily configured with all other Microsoft products. When using Power BI, I can configure it easily with Azure Data Warehouse, with SharePoint, etc. Similarly, SAP can be integrated easily with HANA and with BW. But where SAP is lacking is that when I'm connecting my view with Azure Data Warehouse, I always have to go with the ODBC option. There is no OLE DB available in SAP.

If you're going to have different vendors, one for data warehousing and another for reporting, that's where you will find the issue, especially for SAP. SAP will charge for all the connectors and it will be expensive compared to the others. Buying a connector for Tableau is cheaper.

SAP also provides semantic layers. That is a powerful tool that I have really found to be effective, and it is something that is not available in Power BI or in Tableau. With the semantic layer, you can create a design before extracting the data. Power BI and Tableau don't have that option. They have something like it, but they are not that effective if you are going for real-time.

My first preference is always SAP because its products are more structured. SAP has its standards, so go with SAP ERP. That way, your customer is a standard object. There's a standard keyword that SAP has, as well as the concept of dividing one object into different levels, like the key text, hierarchy, and attributes. That's a good thing about SAP. But if you're going to with any other ERP or data warehouse, these things will be lacking.

SAP will always name all objects with a unique ID. Whether it's in ERP or BW, we get a unique ID for all the objects. That unique ID will not be available in other reporting tools or other data warehouses. And that's a bad thing about SAP. 

But ultimately, it's based on the company level. I will not recommend SAP to a small company because it would have to pay a lot for SAP, and not only for the implementation but for the maintenance. I will recommend a small company go with Power BI or Tableau. Most such companies will have Microsoft products, so it's easy for them to configure, whether they have data in SharePoint or in something like Microsoft Access. And Power BI is cheap. For mid-level or large-scale companies, I always prefer SAP.

SAP will always help you to simplify your data. But if I'm connecting data with Power BI and Tableau, I always have to think about how much data I have in the back-end, because that will affect the performance of my reports.

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.