Content
What are the Requirements for Modern Reporting and how can SAP Embedded Analytics and SAP BW address them?
In a data-driven business world, companies face the challenge of not only collecting information but also analyzing it quickly, accurately, and in the right context. Traditional reporting approaches are increasingly reaching their limits: data is stored in silos, reports are often delayed, and business departments depend on IT when new analyses are required. At the same time, requirements for flexibility, real-time capabilities, and ease of use are increasing, especially in times of self-service BI and data-driven decision-making at the operational level.
Modern reporting must therefore address several challenges at the same time: the integration of heterogeneous data sources, ensuring data quality and governance, and providing real-time insights for different user groups. In addition, there is growing pressure to integrate analytical insights directly into business processes rather than viewing them in isolation.
This is exactly where the combination of SAP BW and Embedded Analytics comes into play. While SAP BW provides a consolidated, harmonized, and historized data foundation as a central data warehouse, Embedded Analytics enables the direct integration of analytics into operational SAP applications. This combination creates a powerful architecture: strategic reporting based on reliable data models meets operational real-time analytics directly within the business process context.
Whitepaper "Comparing SAP BW, Datasphere & Embedded Analytics"
Which SAP BI tool is really the right fit for your reporting strategy?
This whitepaper shows you how to future-proof your SAP reporting landscape using a range of approaches.
Download
What can SAP Embedded Analytics do?
The Components of SAP Embedded Analytics
The individual components of Embedded Analytics can best be explained using the following illustration:
The Layers (Architecture) of Embedded Analytics
- The Engine: Live Transactional Data (e.g. SAP HANA Database)
Embedded Analytics works directly on live data without any time delay. Data does not need to be copied to another system. - The Transmission: Virtual Data Models (CDS Views)
Core Data Services (CDS) Views prepare the raw data in the background. They provide the “logic” that transforms raw data into information that can be analyzed. - The Dashboard: The Front End (SAP Fiori Apps)
SAP Fiori apps provide visualizations directly within the application that employees use every day. No additional software is required.
Main types of SAP Fiori Apps: Analytics, Transactions, and Fact Sheets
SAP Fiori offers different app types for reporting purposes, which primarily differ in their focus (real-time analysis vs. static lists), level of detail, and intended use case. The main differences lie in their structure, interactivity and underlying technology.
The following section outlines the different SAP Fiori apps used to display reports and highlights their respective use cases:
- Smart Business KPIs
KPIs are displayed on tiles either as simple numerical values or as mini charts and are organized through the SAP Fiori Launchpad. Business users can flexibly choose which KPIs should be displayed on their personalized launchpads by selecting from catalogs assigned to their roles.
For more detailed analysis, users can simply click on a tile to access drill-down information. The Smart Business runtime environment provides access to detailed analytical configurations, enabling users to perform drill-downs and analyze KPIs in greater detail. The runtime environment has been enhanced with intelligent controls such as Smart Filters and Smart Charts to further optimize the analysis process.
2. Overview Pages
An Overview Page is a special SAP Fiori app designed to improve the user experience through a clear and structured layout. Each Overview Page consists of predefined cards of different types that are displayed on a workspace below a filter bar. Changes made in the filter bar are applied to all cards within the app, ensuring a consistent view of the data. Users can interact with the cards by clicking on them and navigating to additional applications, such as reports, KPI details, or transactional apps.
- Multidimensional Reports:
Multidimensional analysis provides a flexible and interactive way to examine complex datasets, allowing users to gain insights more intuitively. It starts with an analytical query in the standard view, which serves as the starting point for data exploration.
From there, users can break down and investigate the data according to different criteria by adding dimensions, key figures, and structures to rows and columns, adapting the analysis to their specific requirements. This approach is particularly beneficial for advanced users, as it enables in-depth data exploration and helps uncover trends and patterns that support informed decision-making.
- Analytical List Pages:
The Analytical List Page (ALP) is an integral part of SAP Fiori and was designed to transform KPIs into dynamic analytical dashboards. These dashboards include KPIs, charts, tables, and visual filters to provide meaningful data visualizations. Based on SAP UI annotations, the ALP offers the flexibility to examine data from different perspectives, enabling a thorough root cause analysis and supporting timely decision-making.
- Smart Business KPIs are the “early warning system” directly on the Launchpad.
- The Analytical List Page and the Overview Page are tools for daily work, helping users visually identify problems.
- Multidimensional Reports are the tool for experts to answer complex questions through free “slicing and dicing”.
This categorisation results in the following criteria for selecting the right app types:
- Expertise of the key users: It is important to ensure that the users who will work with the SAP Fiori apps have the necessary skills to use them appropriately.
- Line of Business (LoB): Aligning the SAP Fiori app with the needs of the respective departments leads to higher satisfaction among business users.
- Report type and frequency: It is important to determine what type of report is required, whether it is a mass report, an individual report, or a mix of both, and how frequently the report should be delivered.
- Report complexity: It is essential to assess the complexity in relation to the KPIs that need to be displayed.
What are the Benefits of SAP Embedded Analytics?
Real-Time: Data is displayed directly as it exists in the underlying tables. For example, correction postings become visible immediately without the need for data loading processes.
Lightweight: Thanks to its lightweight data modeling approach, Embedded Analytics reduces data redundancy, requires fewer modeling layers, and enables calculations to be performed at runtime in SAP HANA.
Operational: Embedded Analytics provides users with better opportunities to intervene directly in day-to-day business operations and make informed decisions based on real-time data.
Ad Hoc: Embedded Analytics offers extensive self-service capabilities and allows users to personalize reports according to their individual needs.
Typical Use Cases for Embedded Analytics
Based on the points above, Embedded Analytics cannot replace a data warehouse, but it can be a useful addition for operational analyses and process monitoring of S/4HANA data.
If you are faced with the following requirements, it is worth considering the use of Embedded Analytics:
1. Operational sales management directly in the SAP system: Sales management wants to analyze current incoming orders, open quotations, or delivery delays at any time without having to wait for nightly BW loading processes or separate reports. With Embedded Analytics, real-time KPIs are available directly in the SAP Fiori apps. Sales employees can immediately navigate down to document level and initiate actions directly from the analysis, for example checking delivery dates or prioritizing customer orders.
2. Finance and controlling analyses for business departments without BW dependency: In controlling, short-term analyses are regularly required, for example on cost center deviations, margin developments, or open receivables. Many of these requirements arise ad hoc and need to be implemented without lengthy BW modeling. Embedded Analytics enables business departments to build flexible analyses directly on transactional S/4HANA data and make them available in SAP Fiori dashboards.
3. Production and supply chain monitoring in real time: In production planning, it must be possible to identify immediately when material shortages, delayed deliveries, or machine downtimes put production at risk. Embedded Analytics enables the direct analysis of current production and logistics data within S/4HANA. Critical situations can be made visible via analytical apps or KPI tiles.
What can SAP BW (BW/4HANA) do?
SAP BW is a data warehouse platform that collects large volumes of data from various sources (SAP and non-SAP systems), structures it, and prepares it for analytics, reporting, and planning.
The core functions of SAP BW include:
Data Integration: It consolidates data from heterogeneous sources, cleanses it, and combines it into a central and reliable source of information – a “Single Point of Truth”.
Historization: Unlike operational systems, SAP BW stores data over long periods of time, enabling historical comparisons and trend analyses.
Reporting & BI: The system serves as a powerful foundation for transforming business data into meaningful reports, dashboards, and analyses for controlling, sales, and management.
Key Benefits of SAP BW
These core functions result in the following key benefits of SAP BW:
- Central and consolidated data foundation for enterprise-wide reporting: SAP BW can harmonize data from different source systems and provide high data quality through standardized transformation and cleansing processes.
- Historization of data for time series analyses and long-term reporting: The possibility to combine real-time data with historized datasets provides a better foundation for strategic business management and data-driven decisions.
- Consistent key figures and KPIs through central modeling: This enables companies to achieve greater transparency across business processes and corporate key figures.
Typical Use Cases
1. Group-wide sales reporting with different ERP systems:
An international company operates several SAP and non-SAP systems in different countries. Revenue, incoming orders, and margins are recorded and analyzed differently. SAP BW serves as a central platform to harmonize the data and provide consistent KPIs. As a result, management receives consistent sales reporting across all entities.
2. Finance and controlling reporting with month-end closing and planning:
In finance, data from accounting, cost accounting, and planning must be brought together consistently. Without a central solution, Excel-based shadow reporting with different data statuses often emerges. SAP BW enables standardized reporting for profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cost centers, and forecasts. Controllers and the CFO therefore receive a “Single Source of Truth” for month-end closings, budget deviations, and management reports.
3. Production and supply chain analysis for operational reporting:
A manufacturing company wants to identify bottlenecks in the supply chain at an early stage and centrally monitor production KPIs. Data from SAP S/4HANA, warehouse management, and external logistics systems is brought together in SAP BW. This allows responsible teams to analyze which materials are becoming scarce, which plants are causing delivery delays, or how production costs are developing. The combination of historical data and current transaction data creates a reliable basis for operational decisions.
Conclusion
What is the difference between SAP Embedded Analytics and SAP BW (BW/4HANA) ?
SAP Embedded Analytics and SAP BW follow different approaches but complement each other perfectly within a modern reporting strategy. While Embedded Analytics focuses on operational real-time analytics directly within business processes, SAP BW provides the foundation for enterprise-wide, consolidated, and historized reporting.
Embedded Analytics demonstrates its strengths particularly in scenarios where fast decisions within operational processes are required. Business departments gain immediate access to current SAP S/4HANA data without having to rely on separate reporting systems. Dashboards, KPIs, and analyses are integrated directly into the applications and support users exactly where decisions are made. This makes Embedded Analytics especially valuable for operational steering, real-time monitoring, and self-service analytics.
SAP BW, on the other hand, delivers the greatest value in complex system landscapes and strategic reporting scenarios. Whenever data from multiple sources must be consolidated, harmonized, and historized, SAP BW creates a central “Single Source of Truth” on which consistent corporate KPIs, financial reports, and enterprise-wide analyses can be built.
The key question is therefore not “either-or”, but rather: Which requirements need to be fulfilled?
Embedded Analytics is particularly suitable when:
- Real-time data is required directly within the business process
- Operational decision-making is the primary focus
- Analytics should be closely integrated with SAP S/4HANA
- Business departments require flexible self-service reporting
- Reporting requirements are simple to moderately complex
SAP BW is particularly suitable when:
- Multiple SAP and non-SAP systems need to be integrated
- Consistent KPIs and central data models are required
- Historical data analysis and long-term trend reporting are important
- Governance, data quality, and compliance are key priorities
- Complex enterprise or group-wide reporting is required
In practice, it is becoming increasingly clear that the greatest strength lies in combining both worlds. Companies use SAP BW as a stable data and governance platform, while Embedded Analytics provides operational real-time insights directly within business processes. This creates a modern analytics architecture that supports both strategic and operational requirements.
Conclusion
Organizations that focus exclusively on operational real-time analytics within SAP S/4HANA can already achieve significant value with Embedded Analytics. However, for complex, enterprise-wide reporting requirements, SAP BW remains a key building block. The combination of both technologies offers companies the highest level of flexibility, transparency, and future-proofing for their reporting landscape.
Which Reporting Tool is the best Solution for your Requirements?
In many companies, it becomes clear that neither a pure Embedded Analytics scenario nor reporting based exclusively on SAP BW can fully cover all requirements. Especially in grown IT landscapes, hybrid analytics architectures emerge in which both technologies are combined in a targeted way. The advantage: operational real-time analytics and strategic enterprise reporting can be connected without having to compromise on performance, data quality, or flexibility.
The following section presents some possible hybrid scenarios:
1. Operational Real-Time Reporting + Strategic Management Reporting
Suitable when:
- Business departments need current process data
- Management also expects consolidated corporate KPIs
- Operational and strategic reports have different requirements
Practical example:
Sales management analyzes open customer orders directly in SAP S/4HANA using Embedded Analytics and immediately identifies delivery delays or revenue deviations. At the same time, management uses SAP BW for group-wide revenue developments, forecasts, and historical trend analyses over several years.
Why a hybrid approach makes sense:
Embedded Analytics provides speed and process proximity, while SAP BW provides consolidated and historized data for strategic decisions.
2. SAP S/4HANA as an Operational Data Source + SAP BW for Data Harmonization
Suitable when:
- Multiple source systems exist
- Data models need to be standardized
- Different KPI definitions exist within the company
Practical example:
A company operates internationally with several ERP systems as well as additional CRM and logistics solutions. Embedded Analytics is used for local real-time analyses in SAP S/4HANA. SAP BW, on the other hand, harmonizes global KPIs such as revenue, margin, or delivery performance across all systems.
Why a hybrid approach makes sense:
Embedded Analytics alone can only represent complex enterprise-wide data harmonization to a limited extent. SAP BW complements this capability centrally and in line with governance requirements.
3. Step-by-Step Transformation Towards a Modern Analytics Architecture
Suitable when:
- Existing BW landscapes are already in place
- Companies are gradually migrating to SAP S/4HANA
- Investments need to be protected
Practical example:
A company has been running extensive BW reports for years and is introducing SAP S/4HANA in parallel. Operational real-time analyses are initially implemented using Embedded Analytics, while existing management reports continue to run in BW. Step by step, reporting scenarios are modernized without abruptly replacing existing processes.
Why a hybrid approach makes sense:
Companies can benefit from innovation without having to abandon existing reporting structures and investments.
These examples are only illustrative, as each company’s specific starting point needs to be considered. Get in touch with us, together, we will develop the approach that best fits your requirements.
Contact us!
Do you have any questions about SAP BW or SAP Embedded Analytics? Our experts are happy to help. Schedule a web meeting with us or leave your question in the comments section below.
You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Active Campaign. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.
More Information
