SAP Analytics Cloud Reviews

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. 

We use this solution for real-time dashboards, modeling data and for predictive analytics. It is used on a daily basis by 300 people in our business. 

The visualizations have been the most valuable feature.

The integration with other vendors and solutions could be improved. The visualizations and reporting capabilities could also be improved. In a future release, we would like to have access to built-in API capabilities. This would remove some of the manual work involved in reporting. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The customer service team are very responsive and knowledgeable. I would rate them a four out of five. 

Positive

An in-house team implemented this solution. 

 This solution offers value for money and you get what you pay for. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

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. 

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. 

We use the product for grid storage, retail, and high-level management. 

The product is flexible and has features like AI, link analysis, and insights. It has many features. I can search, and it creates automatic charts without selecting anything. For example, I can ask, "What is the gross margin?" the tool builds a chart based on my question.

SAP Analytics Cloud's visualization capabilities for data analysis are good. 

The connection works only for importing data. Currently, there is no real-time integration between SAP Analytics Cloud and CRM. There are some features present in the classic but not in the optimized version. If I need to create something specific, I often have to switch the versions. It would be more convenient to have a single product that incorporates all the necessary features.

I have been using the product for three years. 

SAP Analytics Cloud is stable. 

The solution is scalable, and it has six developer users. 

The tool's technical support is not very easy, and they tend to ask many questions, taking more time to respond and get back with another question.

Negative

The tool's onboarding was easy and not complex. It doesn't require any maintenance. 

The solution operates in real-time, but we had an issue with it. Fortunately, the team resolved it. Usually, working with real-time or various-time connections prompts entering connection criteria like a new username and password.

It is also useful for financial planning. Additionally, I use it for costs related to time series jobs.Understanding the forecasting process can be like dealing with a black box. I recognize the need for flexible tools that allow me to choose the algorithm and see what's happening in the backend. It will help to determine whether the forecasting is working or not. 

I recommend the product. It is very useful. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

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.

The most valuable feature of SAP Analytics Cloud is its integration with SAP.

SAP Analytics Cloud should improve the dashboard.

I have been using SAP Analytics Cloud for approximately two years.

The stability of SAP Analytics Cloud is good.

I rate the stability of SAP Analytics Cloud a nine out of ten.

We are using SAP Analytics Cloud 24 hours a day.

I have used other solutions in the past. Microsoft Power BI has more powerful features, such as a dashboard, overall management, and maintenance.

The initial setup of SAP Analytics Cloud can take a couple of hours.

I recommend that companies using SAP consider not investing in separate analytics solutions in order to fully leverage the benefits of integration. This is because SAP utilizes the same database for administrative functions, such as Oracle for the ART. Consequently, the database itself does not offer significant advantages, as a connector is established between Oracle and other systems. While real-time integration is achievable, it does not adhere to the standard approach. Specifically, SAP S4HANA employs the HANA database for analytics while utilizing the Oracle database for ERP purposes. Therefore, it would be more beneficial for companies using SAP S4HANA to opt for SAP Analytics Cloud.

I rate SAP Analytics Cloud a seven out of ten.

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.