How Does Moving to SAP S/4HANA Impact Your Approach to Business Intelligence?

S/4HANA is the latest ERP solution from SAP and is the core of the ‘Intelligent enterprise’. Taking advantage of in memory HANA technology, business processes can be radically improved and analytics enhanced.

How? In the video below, Richard Taylor, Partner at Birchman, discusses how moving to S/4HANA can improve your approach to Business Intelligence:

A strong SAP S/4HANA BI strategy starts with understanding how this shift changes the way your organisation reports, analyses and acts on data.

Defining Business Intelligence Outcomes Before System Design

Moving to SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) is a chance to rethink how your business uses data, not just how it runs transactions.

A clear roadmap helps you turn that opportunity into real, measurable value. It keeps your SAP S/4HANA business intelligence aligned with your wider business goals from day one.

A practical BI roadmap for SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) usually moves through these stages:

• Define your BI strategy and the business outcomes you want analytics to support.
• Map your data sources and identify any gaps that need to be addressed.
• Adopt embedded analytics within SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) for real time transactional reporting.
• Layer SAP Analytics Cloud on top for visualisation and selfservice analysis.
• Introduce data warehousing tools when you need to combine SAP and non-SAP data sets.

This staged approach avoids the common mistake of treating analytics as an afterthought. It also makes your SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) BI strategy easier to fund, deliver and evolve over time.

S/4HANA business intelligence: what changes after ECC

Full Transcript of the video:

When a company moves from ECC to SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) it changes their BI approach. In a nutshell, the in memory technology in HANA enables you to run your transactional reporting in real time, as opposed to the old model of having to extract it to a data warehouse like BW. So, this changes the approach.

Unfortunately, what we see is a number of organisations leave the BI part to either a second phase or an afterthought and that’s the real missed opportunity.

You’ll need to go live with S4 first but we recommend that you try and minimise the delay between going live with S4 and having actionable business insight. Its this business insight that’s going to enable you to run your organisation efficiently and drive a continuous business improvement.

We also see that organisations have a lot of BI that is not useful or not used as much as it could be and therefore we recommend that you actually start at the beginning and look at your BI strategy. A well defined SAP S/4HANA BI strategy helps you focus your effort on the reporting that genuinely moves your business forward.

What is the BI that you need in your organisation to drive efficiency, to drive continuous business improvement, to support your business goals and objectives and your business strategy? And what data do you need to support that strategy and where have you got gaps? And then put a data plan in place that enables you to address those gaps.

If you look at this in the context of S4, as you move to S4, you get some significant improvements in BI. So, within the solutions, you’ve got embedded analytics, KPI’s, dashboards and reports; this is all real time, based on real time transactional data and that can change the way that you operate your business processes. This is where your SAP S/4HANA business intelligence really begins to deliver value.

So, we recommend you start there, looking at how that changes your reporting approach.

The next step we recommend is to put SAP Analytics Cloud on top of S4/HANA, with a live connection; this will provide you with visualisation of the real time data and enables you to interrogate the data from a business user perspective in a variety of tools, whether that be dashboards, query analysis or general reports. This is the low hanging fruit in terms of moving to S4.

The next element is really then when you need to start combining data sets. And there’s a big advantage of using tools such as BW/4HANA and Data Warehouse Cloud, because they come with integration and business content that enables you to structure your data, so you’ve got consistency in terms of how you report.

We see organisations that are using a hybrid approach, so they’re using tools such as BW/4HANA and Data Warehouse Cloud for their SAP data and then a data lake for non-SAP. And then, they’re combining and integrating these data sets as they need to for their reporting requirements. This is where SAP BW/4HANA consulting can help you design a structure that scales with your needs.

In a nutshell, we are recommending that you don’t miss the opportunity to focus on BI as part of your move from ECC to S4. Look at the strategy from a top-down perspective, really address your business needs from a business intelligence perspective in terms of how to help your organisation operate and drive forward.

And my final thought and comment on this is that – and not to try to boil the ocean – look at the quick wins from a BI perspective and work on an interactive approach where you’re building a continuous evolution of BI to meet your needs.

When SAP Analytics Cloud and BW/4HANA Are Needed

Good planning is what separates a successful SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) BI strategy from a collection of disconnected reports.

The right tool depends on what you are trying to achieve. The table below provivdes a simple guide to where each option fits:

Start by delivering quick wins and building capability over time. Focus initially on embedded analytics and SAP Analytics Cloud to provide immediate reporting and insight, then introduce data warehousing as requirements become more sophisticated.

Engaging experienced SAP BW/4HANA consulting support early helps you design a structure that is consistent, scalable and built around your reporting requirements.

With a well planned SAP Data Warehouse Cloud strategy in place, you can then bring together SAP and non-SAP data sources into a single, trusted view, enabling consistent reporting and smarter decision making across the organisation.

Modernising the BI Architecture During an S/4HANA Programme

An S/4HANA programme can be an opportunity to modernise the underlying BI architecture rather than simply migrate existing reports and data models into a new environment.

As transactional reporting moves closer to the core ERP system, organisations can reconsider which analytics should remain embedded, which should sit in SAP Analytics Cloud and where broader data integration requires a warehouse, data fabric or data lake approach.

This is particularly important for organisations working with both SAP and non-SAP data. Rather than forcing every reporting requirement into a single platform, a modern architecture can use different capabilities for different needs.

Embedded analytics can support operational decisions directly within SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA), while SAP Analytics Cloud can provide broader visualisation and analysis. SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere can then support structured reporting and the integration of data across business systems.

The goal is not to create the most complex architecture possible. It is to create one that supports the organisation’s current reporting priorities while leaving room to scale as data requirements evolve.

Taking this approach during the S/4HANA programme can also reduce duplication, improve consistency and make it easier to establish a trusted foundation for future analytics.

A modern BI architecture should therefore be driven by business requirements rather than technology choices alone. Start with the decisions the business needs to make, identify the data required to support those decisions, and then determine which SAP capabilities provide the most appropriate foundation.

About Birchman

At Birchman, we help customers define their digital transformation strategy and roadmaps to deliver business change and transformation.

As an SAP platinum partner, we couple our Digital Transformation expertise with industry leading knowledge and SAP experience to drive business-wide change. If you’re ready to transform your business, speak to one of our digital transformation experts here: https://birchmangroup.com/contact

FAQs

Question #1: Should businesses update their BI strategy before moving to SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) ?
Ans: Yes. Reviewing your BI strategy before the move helps you avoid carrying across reports that are no longer useful.

It also lets you take full advantage of the real time analytics that SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) makes possible, rather than treating BI as an afterthought.

Question #2: What analytics capabilities are available in SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) ?
Ans: SAP S/4HANA includes embedded analytics, real time KPIs, dashboards and operational reports built directly on live transactional data.

These capabilities let business users act on current information without waiting for data to be extracted to a separate warehouse.

Question #3: How does SAP Analytics Cloud complement SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) ?
Ans: SAP Analytics Cloud connects live to SAP Cloud ERP (S/4HANA) and adds visualisation, self service analysis and planning on top of your real time data.

It enables business users flexible tools such as dashboards, query analysis and general reports, making it a natural first analytics layer.

Question #4: When should organisations consider SAP Datasphere or SAP BW/4HANA?
Ans: SAP BW/4HANA consulting can help you design enterprise reporting, while SAP Datasphere supports unified reporting across SAP and non-SAP sources.

Question #5: How can businesses create a future ready SAP analytics roadmap?
Ans: Start with a top down BI strategy, identify your data gaps and adopt embedded analytics and SAP Analytics Cloud as early quick wins.

Then build out your SAP data warehouse cloud capability over time, evolving your analytics continuously rather than trying to do everything at once.

Question #6: Does moving to S/4HANA remove the need for SAP BW/4HANA?
Ans: No. Moving to S/4HANA can reduce the need to use a separate data warehouse for certain operational and real time reporting requirements, but SAP BW/4HANA can still play an important role in enterprise reporting.

It is particularly useful when organisations need structured reporting, consistent data models and complex reporting across large volumes of SAP data.

Question #7: Which reporting should remain operational after go-live?
Ans: Reporting that supports day-to-day decisions and relies primarily on current transactional data is generally well suited to embedded analytics within SAP S/4HANA.

This can include operational KPIs, dashboards and real time reports that help users manage business processes directly. More complex cross-system or historical reporting may be better suited to SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BW/4HANA or SAP Datasphere.

Question #8: How should legacy reports be assessed before migration?
Ans: Legacy reports should be assessed based on their business value, usage, data sources, frequency and relevance to current business requirements.

Reports that are rarely used, duplicate other reports or no longer support meaningful decisions may not need to be migrated. This review helps organisations avoid carrying unnecessary reporting complexity into the new S/4HANA environment.

Question #9: What data-quality work is needed for real-time analytics?
Ans: Real-time analytics depends on reliable transactional data, so organisations should address issues such as inconsistent master data, incomplete records, duplicate information and incorrect business rules before relying on real-time reporting.

Establishing clear data ownership, validation processes and data-quality standards can help ensure that the insights generated from S/4HANA are accurate and trusted.