Item: SAP Analytics Cloud
Rating: 8
Author: Adarsh Ashwath, PMP®

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SAP Analytics Cloud for all of our Dashboarding needs. Use it for Planning and Predictive Analytics. This is also for Financial planning and Sales forecasting. Before this, we were lacking a web-based front-end tool for Planning. We did not have any dashboarding tool before this. So most of our reports excel based. Since this tool does not have any desktop deployment, it makes it so much easy to roll out updates. With SAP BW backend, setting up security for user access is seamless.

Pros and Cons

The best to create charts in dashboards
easy integration with other SAP systems
Regular updates

Integration with non-SAP systems can be improved
Visualization needs to still catch up with Power BI
More live data connections are required

Return on Investment

30% time saving in achieving desired Visualization
12% ROI achieved
Several levels of improvement in strategic reporting investments

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop

Power BI has a lot more connectors for several databases. SAP Analytics Cloud is very good for the SAP backend. It needs a lot more improvement with non SAP database connections. Power BI also has more visualization-like charts. SAP Analytics Cloud is good too. Power BI is better. SAP Analytics Cloud is better than Tableau in many ways.

Key Insights

Do you think SAP Analytics Cloud delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SAP Analytics Cloud's feature set?

Yes

Did SAP Analytics Cloud live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SAP Analytics Cloud go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SAP Analytics Cloud again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI, Tableau Online, Tableau Desktop

Usability

SAP Analytics Cloud is very very strong and stable for what it offers. We have experienced hardly any crashes, whether it is connected to an SAP Source or non-SAP Source. It is pretty robust with live data connections and import methods as well. Works just fine even if there are huge calculations on live connections.

Support Rating

SAP's support can be tricky at various levels whether it is for SAP Analytics Cloud or be it other SAP products. They need to improve on this quite a bit. Their call center or help desk or service center need better trained professionals. They can do better to provide round the clock support.

Likelihood to Recommend

SAC is logically the best investment for a SaaS-based BI solution for an enterprise that has already invested heavily in other SAP products. Great at user self-service reporting / Adhoc reporting. SAC is probably less appropriate for an organization that does not use SAP at all. There are a lot of other BI visualization tools that can deliver better visualization for a cheaper price.

SAC for SAP investment

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Analytics Cloud