Pyramid Analytics

Time Intelligence for SAP BW and HANA

The article discusses how Pyramid Analytics enables SAP BW and HANA users to perform advanced time intelligence by directly querying large SAP datasets for flexible date-time groupings and calculations—such as creating custom period buckets and comparing sales data across years—without needing data extraction or reloading, thus facilitating real self-service analytics with powerful time-based logic.

SAP BW and HANA users typically have massive amounts of data for analysis. Most analytical processes include date and time data, and the challenge is finding the right analytical tools that let users build time-based calculations directly using BW or HANA.

As explained in previous blogs in this series, the flexibility of Pyramid enables direct querying of SAP data, bringing back results instantaneously from either BW or HANA without requiring extraction and reloading into a proprietary database. With powerful calculation options, including time-based logic, Pyramid allows end users to get real self-service analytics with time intelligence working directly on SAP.

The key challenges of time calculations

Date-time groupings and “buckets”

The first and usually simplest component of time intelligence is to view amounts grouped in date “buckets” or periods. This is typically achieved after identifying the existing date-time field on a data set, usually at the transactional detail level. Once this data element is identified, time can be used as a key element in all reporting.

While SAP BW InfoCubes and HANA Views often have dates pre-bucketed, users may need to make adjustments or build alternative buckets to those presented in the underlying data models in SAP.

For example, seeing sales data at the individual day level can be too granular. Adding logical super groupings of dates and times allows reporting to show more useful period buckets. One approach is to total results by month, creating a separate “bucket” for each month and summing all sales by each month.

Date-time calculations

Suppose you want to see sales totals for 2017 and compare them to 2018. Here, you not only want to see the data bucketed into annual figures, but also the absolute difference and percentage change between the annual numbers. This is the second component of time intelligence: creating calculations over a range of dates and comparing them against previous periods.

Often, this level of calculation is not included in the SAP BW InfoCube or HANA View, as the exact calculation specification is best suited to the specific report. Historically, this was often solved with the now deprecated BEX reporting tool, which is not self-service and poses challenges around report and data usage.

These scenarios highlight what most analyses need to do: visualize data over time and compare time periods. However, this can be difficult with the wrong analytics tool, especially with SAP data stacks, since most tools require data to be pulled out of BW or HANA first. This creates issues with governance, security, data silos, and deployment.

For example, selecting a date in a parameter field and then calculating year-to-date and month-to-date totals based on the selected date is not natively supported by tools like Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI for SAP BW or HANA, often forcing data duplication to solve the requirement.

Pyramid’s time intelligence features

When combined with Pyramid’s direct query capabilities, Pyramid’s array of user-friendly time intelligence features is a game-changer. These capabilities, available via point-and-click options in a self-service model, work seamlessly for SAP BW and HANA data sources, covering basic to highly sophisticated calculations and functionality.

The logic is built using SAP’s native querying languages and executed on the SAP server, producing secured and accurate results without extracting or duplicating data.

For more on Pyramid’s solution for date-time grouping and time buckets on all supported data sources including SAP, see the following topics:

  • Date-time grouping capabilities let users quickly “bucket” time intelligence periods.
  • How to bucket time intelligence periods to quickly visualize grouping capabilities.
  • Custom date-time calculations amplify Pyramid’s dynamic time intelligence capabilities.
  • Date lists and ranges give users pinpoint control over date-time parameters within Pyramid.

SAP and Pyramid Analytics

Pyramid solves this entire problem with a complete solution that offers real self-service working directly on SAP BW and HANA. By delivering best-in-class functionality and performance on SAP BW without extracting or duplicating data, Pyramid preserves the full analytic power of the SAP engines, as well as the inherent security and governance.

Explore the Pyramid + SAP Blog Series to learn how Pyramid supports customers on SAP. Each post contains specific examples to illustrate 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