Advanced Features of SAP Analytics Cloud

Advanced features make SAP Analytics Cloud a comprehensive, powerful tool for driving business intelligence, improving decision-making, and enabling strategic planning.

With its powerful capabilities on data analysis, planning, and visualization capabilities. Exciting features introduced in the?SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)?Q3 2024 release aim to

empower users(data analysts to business leaders) with better insights, improved planning capabilities, and a smoother overall experience and to make to make informed decisions

Key Points into the key Advanced Features in SAC.

Admin and Service Management-

SAC’s continuous evolution toward greater efficiency, control, and seamless integration with enterprise workflows as part of the Service Monitoring and Management, Admins

can now more effectively monitor system performance, user activity, detailed insights into data connections and the ability to troubleshoot common issues.

• SAC now allows optimized scheduling for stories, where admins can define specific intervals for data refreshes and push these updates directly to end-users' emails or in scheduled reports, including in PowerPoint format.
• Enhanced control over data imports has been introduced, allowing admins to define upload jobs using templates. This ensures consistent data uploads and reduces manual errors as part of the Improved Data Management:.
• As part of the Integration and Compatibility: SAC enable live data syncing within Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, providing real-time insights directly from SAC reports.
• Administrators as part of the Security and Privacy Features, gain more control over data privacy and object visibility, enhancing both security and data governance.

Just Ask (Natural Language Query & Natural Language Processing)-

"Just Ask" is SAC’s natural language query feature to enhance planning processes by making them smarter, more automated, and accessible to a wider audience. Its features include

• Conversational Interface allows users to interact with data using simple, conversational language.

??For example, asking "What were sales last quarter?" generates instant, visual answers like charts or tables.

• Data Exploration feature simplifies data exploration, especially for non-technical users, by making it easier to retrieve insights without complex querying or analysis.
• With Seamless Integration of Stories, Users can now embed questions into their existing stories and dashboards, making dynamic insights available in real-time without the need for manual updates.?

AI for Planning & Analytics-

• By embedding these AI-driven tools into its core functionality, SAP Analytics Cloud simplifies the processes of financial planning and data analytics, enabling users to create more accurate, dynamic,data-driven business plans.Just Ask feature allows users to interact with data through natural language queries.
• As part of the Predictive/Scenario Planning SAC uses predictive algorithms to forecast future financial outcomes based on historical data. It generates predictions such as revenue forecasts, demand planning,and financial projections with minimal user input. Users can run "what-if" analyses and simulations to explore multiple business scenarios. SAC's AI helps determine the impact of different variables on financial outcomes, enabling more informed decision-making.
• AI-Powered Simulations provides Smart Planning Insights by analyzing historical trends and projecting future results. It can suggest optimal budget allocations, cost-cutting measures,or investment strategies. SAC automatically analyzes data and highlights key influencers, anomalies, and trends. Users can get explanations for data points and understand underlying causes with minimal manual intervention. AI identifies unusual trends and outlines in datasets, helping users spot potential risks or opportunities.
• SAC uses AI to assist with driver-based modeling, identifying key business drivers and automatically adjusting them based on predictive outcomes. The AI automates complex processes like cost allocation and revenue distribution, reducing manual effort while improving accuracy. The Smart Discovery feature leverages AI to automatically uncover patterns and relationships in datasets.Identifies key variables influencing performance and suggests strategies for optimization.
• SAC’s Smart Predict feature uses machine learning models for predictive analytics, helping users predict outcomes like customer churn, sales forecasts, and supply chain disruptions.

Users can create regression, classification, or time-series models without needing advanced data science knowledge. These models can be directly embedded into dashboards for continuous monitoring of predicted outcomes.

Data Analyzer-

Component upgrades with in the Data Analyzer brings below major features aimed to enhance usability, data exploration, and integration capabilities.

• Enhanced Context ?can now directly filter by a certain member, regardless of the drilled position in the table. Additionally, you can open the member selector dialog for dimensions and works for members of a second structure in a BW query by streamlining data exploration and interaction within the tool1.
• Live SAP BW Integration is further improved, Users can seamlessly access and analyze data from their SAP BW systems directly within SAC2.
• Report-Report Interface (RRI) is a ?much-anticipated feature, especially for BW customers. With RRI, end users can jump from an executed query (sender) to another report (receiver) as maintained in the RRI back-end transaction (RSBBS). This feature enhances navigation and cross-report interactions within SAC3, aimed to enhance usability, data exploration, and integration capabilities within Data Analyzer.

Enterprise Planning-

Aimed at improving planning capabilities, streamlining data management, and enhancing the overall user experience, the below features are part of Enterprise Planning.

• Plan Auditing enhancements are introduced, providing the administrators with the capability to purge audits based on other filters, providing more efficient management of audit logs.

This ensures data integrity and compliance.

• Plan Entry remains a core feature, allowing users to input, adjust, and manage planning data directly within the application.
• Planning Process Management area includes improvements related to workflow, approvals, and collaboration within planning processes.
• Standard Unit Conversion, working with different units of measurement (e.g., currency, volume, time), users can seamlessly convert values to a common unit, facilitating accurate planning and analysis.
• Value Driver Tree (VDT) is a powerful tool for financial planning and analysis. In Q3 2024, expect enhancements to VDT functionality, allowing users to model and analyze value drivers, scenarios, and their impact on overall performance.

MS Office Integration-

• PowerPoint reporting should ensure consistency while displaying data from SAC, Now the users can avoid static screenshots and can interact directly with data during presentations.

Salient features added for PowerPoint are as follows:

1. SAP Analytics Cloud Add-In to enable users to intuitively add accurate and trusted data to their presentations using existing SAP Analytics Cloud widgets.
2. Seamless Integration with PowerPoint to incorporate SAC visualizations, charts, and tables directly into PowerPoint slides. Presentations stay up-to-date with the latest data from SAC models.
3. Reuse Existing Widgets Instead of manually recreating visualizations, leverage the widgets you’ve already built in SAC. Connect to SAC tenant, to find relevant stories and associated widgets, and seamlessly add them to PowerPoint presentations. Data-driven presentations with embedding live SAC widgets ensure presentations are data-driven and reflect real-time insights.
4. Excel features have been enhanced, particularly through the SAC add-in for Microsoft Office. This integration allows users to perform planning and analysis tasks using the familiar Excel interface while connecting directly to SAC for real-time data updates. Key highlights with Microsoft Excel features are as follows.
5. Real-Time Data Integration in Excel can interact with SAC data models and import live data directly into Excel spreadsheets for analysis and reporting.
6. Enhanced Collaboration enables co-authoring capabilities, allowing multiple users to work simultaneously on Excel documents while maintaining live data connections to SAC.
7. Customizable Report functionalities, such as pivot tables and advanced formatting, can be used in tandem with SAC data, enhancing the flexibility of report creation and data analysis.

Mobile Analytics-

Focused on making SAC mobile more secure, versatile, and conducive to collaborative efforts.? Here are the highlights:

• Cloud Biometric Support, ?SAC mobile applications now support biometric authentication, allowing users to log in securely using fingerprint or facial recognition. This streamlines access and enhances security.
• Story Design & Extensibility, Users can now enjoy an improved interface for story creation, offering better control and customization options on mobile devices.
• User Collaboration tools have been introduced to foster teamwork. Users can share insights, comment on reports, and interact with colleagues directly through the mobile app, enabling faster decision-making on the go.

These features with SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) empower organizations to make data-driven decisions efficiently. Powerful advanced features like AI for intelligent decision-making, Predictive analytics & Automated Insights

With enhanced planning, Smart Discovery & Smart Predict to streamline data analysis makes SAC a very efficient tool. Natural language queries with "Just Ask" allow users to interact with data seamlessly, making complex insights accessible and easier.

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