SAP Data Access
Got data? Is your team using it? A prospect call this week revealed a customer with a highly refined BW architecture and good data flows – except the analysts were still manipulating, joining, massaging, and fighting with it. In other words – the users didn’t like using it.
Customer Sales Forecasting
When I was last using BW, I was analyzing sales data for forecasting. I had a cube with the data and the standard Excel interface. When you open the ‘file’ it has the BW query display at the top. But I needed more. I estimated the size of my data, potential growth, and figured out how to ADD another BW query display at 50,000 rows down – with the same format. Then I added a few more.
The result was a very large file, with multiple data sets, that created an output showing 5 years of sales data in a 12 month display. I could review each product, for each market, for each month – the sales for June – for the last 5 years. In some cases, it was literally the same number 5 years in a row.
Analysis Job
Why on earth would someone create a monster like that? The job was demand planning and even though the tools didn’t fit, the job didn’t change. Analysis was the goal and data was the path. Your employees are assigned tasks to do, see things you don’t, get ad hoc requests, and the unspoken part of the job is: “figure it out”. What happens? Figure it out or someone else will.
Python / SQL / Spark
What do your analysts want to use? Do you know or did you tell them what to use? Tool preference is really important, but so are standards. When building a Home Depot firetruck kit with my 6yo and she wants to use her little pink hammer – that’s the right tool. When my angel wants to wipe her hands on her shirt – that is not the right tool. Regardless of the tools, you need good data so that your users can efficiently analyze it quickly.
Analysis Ready Data
30 years working with SAP, years of decades of work with the world’s largest companies, we understand (most of) what end users need. We offer our data with the following:
- Intelligent Exchange Rates
- Currency Conversion Logic
- Dates / Times as Date / Time Data Type
- Primary Key Callouts
- Views with Full Text Names and Full Text Headers
- Adding Data with Clicks
Contact us today and let us know how we can help you.
