Pyramid Analytics

Dashboards and report bursting directly off SAP BW and HANA - Pyramid Analytics

Pyramid Analytics, an SAP-certified partner, enables direct querying and live interactive dashboard creation on SAP BW and HANA without data extraction, while uniquely supporting automated, secure, and personalized report bursting and scheduling through intuitive drag-and-drop tools, overcoming common third-party limitations in SAP data analytics and distribution.

Pyramid is an official member of the SAP® PartnerEdge® open ecosystem and is fully certified by SAP on SAP BW/4HANA, SAP HANA, and SAP Netweaver. The Pyramid Platform is also available on the SAP Store.

In previous blogs on SAP BW and HANA, the flexibility of Pyramid was discussed, particularly its ability to directly query SAP data, returning results from either BW or HANA without extracting or reloading raw data into a proprietary database.

Designing and presenting a live, interactive dashboard using SAP BW or HANA is only the beginning of distributing data to stakeholders, each with their unique view of data. Automating the printing of personalized data and analysis in various pixel-perfect formats ("report bursting") is key. Scheduling and securely auto-distributing these reports is a critical requirement. Pyramid uniquely achieves this with simple point-and-click, drag-and-drop functionality for SAP data.

Alternatives and Their Challenges

Most third-party applications for the SAP data stack expect customers to extract and duplicate SAP data into their own engines to deliver analytic functionality. This undermines the ability to work collaboratively directly on SAP BW or HANA. Additionally, most of these tools do not offer report bursting/publishing, scheduling, or deep security functionality and governance.

Pyramid’s Solution

Pyramid offers a distinct advantage for working with SAP BW and HANA:

  • Highly sophisticated multi-model dashboards can be produced through the “Present” point-and-click module without extracting data into a separate or proprietary engine. These dashboards can be deployed to thousands of users, who query BW and HANA directly, maintaining SAP-defined data security access and analytic logic.
  • The same content can be added to the “Publish” report publication app. Templates can be auto-scheduled and auto-distributed to different end-users using data-driven logic, with queries remaining native and direct to SAP.

Business Case

Lisa, a BI Analyst at Argus Cycles, has a “dream branch dashboard” built using SAP BW and HANA data. She distributes it monthly as a standalone package to all 50 branches. A data analyst prepares the data and emails each dashboard individually. Auditors have raised security concerns, and management is concerned about manual overhead and staff dependencies.

Lisa needs a solution that can directly query their existing SAP BW and HANA system, display additional HR dashboard components from a separate HR SQL Server source using common filters, and output dashboards in Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint formats. Pyramid’s architecture meets all these requirements.

Present Dashboard Design

  • The dashboard includes five visuals analyzing different business aspects (product, sales, HR, sales promotions, branches).
  • HR data is accessed from a different source.
  • Filters for state and year apply to all visuals, even if data comes from disparate data models.
  • All SAP data is accessed by direct-query, without loading data into an in-memory database.
  • HR branch data from a different data model appears on the same dashboard as SAP data.

Publish Template Design

Pyramid’s “Publish” tool provides multiple output formats and the ability to generate and distribute a separate report for each user as per their parameters.

Branch Sales and Net Margin by Product Category Report

To publish this report, Lisa must be able to filter the report by State and distribute it to all branches.

Output Formats

The Publish tool offers multiple output formats that can be selected.

Report Bursting

State and Year filters can be dragged and dropped onto the Publish tool’s canvas, enabling automatic report bursting.

Scheduling

Flexible recurring reports can be scheduled to automate distribution and eliminate staff dependencies.

Security and Distribution

Pyramid securely distributes emails in an automated fashion according to a predefined CSV file or using a programmable formula.

Summary

Pyramid provides powerful self-service dashboard, scheduling, and distribution tools with direct access to SAP BW and HANA systems.

  • The “Present” tool allows users to slice content from multiple sources, accommodating additional data sources in a dashboard without loading data into an in-memory database.
  • The “Publish” tool distributes pixel-perfect publications in various formats, sliced and securely distributed per user’s view. Publications can be automatically scheduled and distributed according to a predefined CSV file or programmable formula.

This concludes the series of blogs related to Pyramid’s support for features common to both SAP BW and HANA, addressing:

  • Pyramid’s scalable environment for processing large amounts of data using direct access for all calculations
  • Sleek, self-service with drag-and-drop capability for collaboration, time intelligence, and context calculations

Future blogs will discuss how Pyramid, in contrast to Power BI and Tableau, supports SAP BW’s unique features such as ragged hierarchies, numerical formats, multiple currencies, captions, time-dependent hierarchies, and multiple data connections to SAP BW with different parameterization.

SAP and Pyramid Analytics

Pyramid solves the challenge of working directly on SAP BW and HANA by delivering best-in-class functionality and performance without extracting or duplicating data. This preserves the full analytic power of SAP engines, as well as inherent security and governance.

Explore the Pyramid + SAP Blog Series to learn how Pyramid supports customers on SAP, with each post illustrating key functionality:

  1. 1.Real self-service BI for SAP
  2. 2.Self-service BI directly on SAP BW
  3. 3.Collaborative analytics for SAP BW and HANA
  4. 4.Time intelligence for SAP BW and HANA
  5. 5.Running Totals Made Easy for SAP HANA and BW
  6. 6.Dashboards and report bursting directly off SAP BW and HANA
  7. 7.Realizing the power of parameters in SAP BW and HANA
  8. 8.SAP BW Time-Dependent Hierarchies
  9. 9.Ragged Hierarchies and Data Formats in SAP BW
  10. 10.Building Calculations directly on SAP BW and HANA
  11. 11.Building data models into SAP HANA

In upcoming blogs, further features and comparisons will be discussed.