Inside Insights: Choosing a Cloud Analytics Tool with Hau Ngo

In this next episode of Tech-Driven Business, Mustansir Saifuddin continues the conversation with Hau Ngo of  Summerlin Analytics to discuss what enterprises should consider when choosing a tool like SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). They cover everything from system landscape, data sources, visuals, security, and cost considerations. His key takeaway: look at how an analytics tool fits into your business, timeline, and total cost of ownership.

Hau is an SAP Analytics Architect and an early adopter of SAP Analytics Cloud. In 2017, he helped a technology company in California consolidate global sales reporting across 7 different ERP systems. This effort culminated in one executive dashboard that displayed real-time information, eliminating weeks of manual coordination and data wrangling. Subsequently, Hau has presented his work at conferences such as SAPPHIRE 2019 in Orlando Florida, and has gone onward to help additional customers streamline their reporting processes and visualize the key company metrics. His experience with SAP Analytics Cloud extends to customers with various systems such as SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, BW/4HANA, and S/4HANA. 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:05.170] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Welcome to Tech-Driven Business. Brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. In this episode, I welcome back Hau Ngo of Summerlin Analytics. Listen in as he shares key points to consider when choosing an analytics tool like SAP Analytics Cloud or SAC.

 

[00:00:27.750] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Hello, how are you, man?

 

[00:00:29.530] - Hau Ngo

I'm doing well, Mustansir how are you doing?

 

[00:00:32.610] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Doing well. Welcome to Tech-Driven Business again.

 

[00:00:36.030] - Hau Ngo

I'm good to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

[00:00:38.470] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Awesome. Hey, so I know we've been kind of talking about different topics so far, and today I would like to kind of zoom in into this very important point where a lot of customers, when we talk about considering SAC as their cloud analytics tool of choice. What are some of the considerations they should take into account? That's how I'm thinking we can dig a little bit deeper, at least from a cloud analytics point of view.

 

[00:01:11.490] - Hau Ngo

Yeah. So it really depends on what their system landscape looks like, if they have the legacy ECC or S/4, or maybe they have a BW or HANA Data Warehouse. So all those decisions sort of come into play. And I don't think a lot of customers are aware that SAC Analytics Cloud as a tool has different functionality depending on what you have on the back- end. So we can talk about that in this episode.

 

[00:01:43.230] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Absolutely. And I think that kind of is a good segue to what I was alluding to earlier. When we talk system landscapes, it means a lot of different things depending on who you're asking. In this example, I'll use the system landscape, especially from a data source point of view. Especially when we're talking about creating models in SAC and those visuals, how does that come into play when you're dealing with, let's say, for example, an ECC source system or an S/4 for that matter, or compared to a non-SAP source, what are some of the things that you should take into account when creating your SAC models?

 

[00:02:30.070] - Hau Ngo

Oh, sure. So one thing SAP does really well is they market their tool in terms of features and benefits and everything you can do from a Dashboarding perspective. I think the inherent problem, though, is SAP has such a large product matrix that it's hard to say, does this feature work here versus another one? So if you're using the legacy ECC as a source, there's really nothing you can do in terms of getting around it. You have to have some sort of data warehouse because SAP Analytics Cloud works best with a proper data warehouse. But if you happen to have an S/4 system, you can connect your dashboarding tool directly to S/4. And I was going to say on my first project in late 2017-2018, the integration between the front-end Analytics Cloud and all the back-end system weren't fully fleshed out or developed at that time. But if you were to fast forward to today, you're almost looking at feature parity for all the different systems. Before, it used to be that we have to import the data into the tenant, into the cloud tenant first, to have everything in terms of all the functionality, all the utility of the tool.

 

[00:03:46.820] - Hau Ngo

But now a lot of that feature set is rolled out to BW, to the HANA data warehouse, of course, data warehouse, cloud, and now even S/4. So there are differences now, but they're getting much less and smaller between the different systems.

 

[00:04:04.770] - Mustansir Saifuddin

That's good to know, because especially you see, a lot of customers have a mixed bag of systems and depending on whatever source system they are using, it seems like the tool itself is capable of consuming that data, right. In a way that is, from a user standpoint, it doesn't really matter what is the source, it's just the visuals. And the tool itself can mask that from them, right?

 

[00:04:34.680] - Hau Ngo

Yes, absolutely. And then I think in certain cases, I think my current client now we're exploring even a use case, a dual use case where some reports come from their BW system that we're initiating, and then a different set of reports come from S/4. But the UI, the interface is still SAC, so to the user is transparent, but depending on the use case, it could come from a data warehouse or their transactional system.

 

[00:05:03.690] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Right. And I think that kind of brings up this point. Right? The lines are getting blurry when it comes to the data itself. Right. It is real time information versus data stored in a warehouse and being consumed based on whatever frequency is getting updated, right?

 

[00:05:22.310] - Hau Ngo

Yep, absolutely.

 

[00:05:24.810] - Mustansir Saifuddin

So, talking about tips, right? Can you share some ideas or tips that when it comes to using different visuals in SAC, are there any best practices or any ideas that you like to share?

 

[00:05:43.410] - Hau Ngo

Oh, sure. So the cloud itself, the tool itself, Analytics Cloud, has a number of different chart visualizations and they're categorized primarily by function. For example, you have a group of bar charts for comparisons. If you want to see trends, there are a set of line graphs, and then there's pie graphs and tree maps for distribution. So you have a good number of chart types to choose from, depending on what you wish to communicate with. That being said, the three that I've seen the most on my last ten projects has been bar, number one, numeric, the large numbers, the aggregation as number two, and tables as number three. And what I found early on, when I try to experiment with all the different chart types, it tends to confuse people if they're not statisticians. Right. You can't just throw a scatter plot and assume people know what that means. So what I find is most people tend to stick to those three bar numeric and table as the three most common chart types. If you stick with that and start from there, you should be in good shape.

 

[00:06:57.150] - Mustansir Saifuddin

That's a good tip. I mean, keep it simple. It seems like the more simple you keep, the better usability you get out of that, right?

 

[00:07:05.940] - Hau Ngo

Absolutely. And a lot of these folks, they do generate their existing dashboard from Excel. And if you were to look and use the existing dashboard from the managerial report deck, they almost typically use those three chart types.

 

[00:07:23.270] - Mustansir Saifuddin

I think one of the things that I'm looking at from a prerequisite point of view, talking about, what are some of the prerequisites required for a client. When they're using SAC as a self service tool? Because it's almost like a parallel, right. Things that are done currently in Excel, especially when you're doing some kind of manager or reporting that you want to customize in Excel and you want to take those skills into SAC. So what are some of the things that they should have in place from a prerequisite standpoint if they want to use this as a self service tool?

 

[00:08:04.000] - Hau Ngo

Oh, sure. So I think that may be a two part answer. From a personnel or staffing perspective, I would suggest that our audience consider finding someone, whether they be internal or external, who is excited about dashboards and what this tool can do for the company. And I'm not talking about the technical features of the tool, but the way the tool itself can benefit someone's day to day chores or workload. And now imagine if you were a business analyst and you can tell your team that they don't have to open their laptop and log into SAP to see the numbers. And that would be cool, because if they got an email each morning with a full color PDF with all information they needed, that simplifies and cuts out that friction. Right. And for the field staff, if they could open up a phone or a small tablet and get the customer sales history before going to a sales meeting, that would be easier than what they're using now. And from a technical perspective, companies with an S/4 landscape should consider SAC as a reporting tool of choice. I'm working on a proof of concept where I'm embedding the SAC dashboards into the S/4 environment for a customer, and maybe we can talk about that on a future episode.

 

[00:09:28.670] - Hau Ngo

But if you have a BW or Hana data warehouse and you're deciding between SAC or another cloud based tool, then I would strongly suggest you consider SAC. And that's because you get tighter integration with live data connections and you don't really have to worry about the security.

 

[00:09:48.550] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Yeah, for sure. And I think that kind of is a good segue into my next question, which is all about leveraging what you already have in place, right. So when you are dealing with an S/4 or data warehouse cloud source system, what are some of the quick wins when you want to leverage the security models the roles definition that you have in your source system, do you have some examples that you can share with us?

 

[00:10:17.800] - Hau Ngo

Oh, sure. So I would say the quickest wins you can do when you're going in and highlighting the features of a new tool is to eliminate the unnecessary things that you would have to do, which is building data model, model data validation, and setting up security. If you could connect your dashboard to existing data warehouse or S/4 system, you're halfway there. And the beauty of SAC in terms of integration is there is no security. You inherit the security profiles of your source system, whether it's BW Hana or S/4. And the front end tool with single sign on respects all of the privileges you set up versus another tool where you have to kind of maintain or even duplicate that setting. With SAC, you don't have to worry about it, single sign on takes care of all of that.

 

[00:11:13.790] - Mustansir Saifuddin

I think that can go a long way, right? I mean, I'm thinking from the ease of use as well as the ease of deployment. It seems like if I can leverage my source systems for my security and my roles that are already in place, it can make much easier for folks to kind of leverage that information. That mapping that is already in place.

 

[00:11:40.450] - Hau Ngo

Yeah, I would say it's an easier sell. And also long term, there's only one point of failure. There's no dual maintenance that someone has to maintain in different systems. So I think it's an easier path as well. In terms of the actual tool itself, you can have some limitation in terms of whether user is a content viewer where they can consume the information or if they're a power user. Right. But in terms of the actual line by line, row by row authorization, let that be taken care of centrally in either your data warehouse or your S/4 system.

 

[00:12:18.830] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Okay, that makes sense. Now, what are the opportunities? It seems like that's a good feature to have. Right. And that comes out of the box from SAC if you want to do any additional security in SAC because I know there are some planning functionalities as well as just pure reporting and dashboarding capabilities. Are there features available in SAC that allow you to further customize your securities or the role?

 

[00:12:49.410] - Hau Ngo

Yeah, sure. So for some customers, they have data sets that they upload, whether they're doing manual compiling of information or planning or something like that. You can still set up security inside analytics cloud from a team perspective. So you can define team roles where certain team members can see the financial information but other team members cannot. So there are some security functionality, but it's more around who can see what sensitive information that's maybe not in your systems, but in these confidential flat files.

 

[00:13:29.990] - Mustansir Saifuddin

That's good to know because I think your point earlier, right, when you talked about source systems, and especially when you're dealing with multiple source systems, it seems like it may be a better idea to have SAC drive some of the security of the role definitions. Right, because you have a mixed bag of information coming in to your models.

 

[00:13:48.530] - Hau Ngo

Yes, absolutely.

 

[00:13:50.930] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Good to know that. It's interesting when you look at this overall, we talk about everybody's looking at cloud analytics as the way to go and it's just so much simpler and the technology has advanced so much across the board. Right. It seems like the most logical choice for customers to move forward in the direction. Would you say so?

 

[00:14:17.290] - Hau Ngo

I would say so. I think what you're going to see moving forward is maybe not SAP specific, but more cloud based technology. Just because from a deployment perspective, the vendor only has to maintain one instance or one master copy of the tool. It's just so much easier to use than what I think we've had a struggle with in the past, where even though a lot of customers are doing similar things, we have to have our own installation on custom repository. Here I've noticed at least on the early days, SAP was rolling out features every two weeks and it was really hard to keep up. But now the products seem to have matured a lot more. So I think at this point we're going to focus more on usability versus features.

 

[00:15:07.910] - Mustansir Saifuddin

For sure. I know we covered a lot of different things in the session. Would you like to share any one key takeaway that our listeners can take it with them?

 

[00:15:19.750] - Hau Ngo

Oh, sure. So we talk about SAC quite often and some of the different considerations for implementing this tool. But overall there are other tools and if you consider implementation and tool selection in a broader perspective, I've been lucky to be in a few early conversations during the tool selection phase and most customers seem to struggle with either SAC or another cloud based tool such as Power BI or Tableau and deciding which one to use. And most of the time the conversation seems to be centered around features versus cost between these tools. And what I've seen in terms of outcome from a couple of these meetings with different companies is that the SAP centric customer tends to stay under the SAP umbrella due to the tighter integration and security benefits that we spoke about. And other customers with non SAP systems in the mix choose the other tools because they have similar features at a lower cost. But that cost saving is usually offset by higher development times. So that's just the cost of doing business when you're integrating different systems. But that's just something to think about.

 

[00:16:42.830] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Yeah, and that's a good tip, right. And a good takeaway, especially when you have all these choices available to you. One thing that folks tend to leave behind is the fact that sometimes costs can be a factor in most cases, it is a factor. But what is the cost? Are you looking at the cost at this point in time, or are you looking at a future cost perspective? Especially when you're doing integration? Right. And this is all about maintaining your systems in the long run, right. So you have to keep that in mind.

 

[00:17:18.090] - Hau Ngo

Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of customers, they're very intelligent, but sometimes they get too focused on a certain thing and they get tunnel vision. But like you said, if you were to step back and look at the total cost of ownership of not only the tool, but maintenance, and will this be accepted? And which tool can actually be embraced by the business community? So those factors are taken into account. I would leave, I guess, the audience with one thing. People now are more impatient than they were in the past, because at the speed of things and their expectations have changed. Right. So app development, dashboard development, it's much faster. And if your tool can meet that demand from your customer base, then you're golden. The fact that you can whip up a dashboard in an hour or two is great, but if you're taking three months to get a lower cost tool up and running, that might be a deal breaker for your community, for sure.

 

[00:18:20.070] - Mustansir Saifuddin

And that's a great takeaway. I mean, it's something to keep in mind, especially when you're doing any cloud based analytics, right? What is the time to delivery that matters? Thank you so much, how. This has been a great session. Thanks for some of the insights into what things we should consider, especially when you're going with SAP analytics cloud as a tool of choice. So really appreciate your time and we'll look forward to meeting with you in the future.

 

[00:18:47.940] - Hau Ngo

Yes, absolutely. Have a good one, Mustansir.

 

[00:18:50.930] - Mustansir Saifuddin

You too.

 

[00:18:55.770] - Mustansir Saifuddin

Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business, brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Hau has shared some key pointers for you to think about when choosing SAC. His main takeaway? Look at the bigger picture when choosing a tool. Be careful when being driven by cost. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting Isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes.