SAP Analytics Cloud is a public cloud service that provides a full suite of analytical capabilities that includes:
- business intelligence
- planning
- predictive
Data from any source, SAP and non-SAP, can be integrated and used to create rich dashboards, known as stories. Stories can connect to live data or to data that has been copied to the storage area of SAP Analytics Cloud.
SAP Analytics Cloud is aimed at business users for self-service analytics.
SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics powered by SAP Analytics Cloud
Included with SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics, is a version of SAP Analytics Cloud. This version is known as the embedded version. The embedded version provides a limited set of features compared to the full-use version.
For the embedded version of SAP Analytics Cloud, the only data source allowed is SAP S/4HANA. In addition, only live connections are possible. But for an SAP S/4HANA business user who requires operational analytics within their work flow, this is usually all they need.
SAP Analytics embedded version is wrapped in the SAP Fiori UI. This means the business user can move between the applications of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics and the SAP Analytics Cloud stories for a seamless experience, without having to jump to a different application.
Stories can be defined as jump targets from the SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics applications. For example, starting from a KPI tile on the SAP Fiori Launchpad, the user launches a drill-down to a detailed analysis that is presented using a well-formed story. Navigation can also go the other way. For example, starting with a story, a user might notice an unusual spike in the data that needs investigating. So they move from the story, carrying all the filters that have been set so far, to a multidimensional report to go deeper adding more insightful attributes, and more granular data to uncover the root cause of the spike.
SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics includes ready-made SAP Analytics Cloud stories. However, SAP do not provide a large number of ready-made stories because it is more likely that business users will want to create their own custom stories. This can be done using the intuitive, graphical interface of SAP Analytics Cloud.
A feature which many business users will appreciate is the ability to save filter selections and bookmarks from the SAP Analytics Cloud stories. This is achieved using the same variant management framework as used by SAP Fiori apps of SAP S/4HANA embedded analytics.