Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Customer Success - UPD/New Clicks - APOS Publisher for Cloud

Schedule and Broadcast Timely, Personalized SAP Analytics Cloud Reports

Customer Profile

United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD), a division of the Clicks Group, is South Africa's leading full-line wholesaler to pharmacies, hospitals, dispensing doctors, health services and affiliated healthcare channels. Established in 1968, UPD has grown to include seven distribution centers with over 15,000 pharmaceutical, surgical and front shop items. UPD is also the license holder of the Link pharmacy brand which has independent, owner-managed pharmacy stores in South Africa and neighbouring African territories.

Lanscape & Core Challenge

UPD upgraded from their legacy data warehouse platform to SAP's next-generation analytics platform, combining SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud to create greater data democratization. This combination decentralizes analytics responsibilities away from IT and empowers business users by simplifying and demystifying the data warehouse concept through self-service modelling and visualization capabilities using a semantic layer. UPD needed a "push" strategy, in which reports are sent to a variety of recipients including:

Corporate Leadership
Group Executives
Operations Managers
Distribution Principals
External Parties

Problem: Volume limitations prevent timely distribution of content to stakeholders. Scheduling a SAC Publication is not supported on SAP Datasphere data.

Volume limitations and personalization issues greatly complicated the process of pushing timely reports out to recipients.

Customer Success – UPD New Clicks - APOS Publisher for Cloud

Requirements

Timely information delivery: provide timely access to data required by users
Personalization: filter data sent to external partners, using a single report to satisfy information needs of different recipients
Automation: reduce need for human intervention
SAP Datasphere compatibility: use live data from SAP Datasphere
Report consolidation: use multiple stories and story components for different recipient needs
Destinations: Email, SharePoint, Network folder, SFTP
Formats: PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, body of email
Audit readiness: provide a record of data at the time the report is run
Exception handling: manage system down time and slow data rendering

Barriers

Personalization using Bookmarks in SAC would be time-consuming
Volume limits in SAC Publications prevent desired service levels
Timely delivery of reports is uncertain due to low priority of Publications within SAC processes
SAC does not support scheduling a Publication on SAP Datasphere data
No support for Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint
Limits on widgets per schedule affect report consolidation options
Limits on non-SAC recipients create difficulties reaching all stakeholders

Outcomes

APOS Publisher for Cloud enabled UPD to meet their broadcasting requirements, providing:

Scalable, personalized, timely broadcasting to meet volume requirements
"Schedule on behalf of Datasphere users" functionality to allow UPD to broadcast from live SAP Datasphere data
Support for multiple formats, including Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
Report consolidation to meet the information needs of all recipients

"Deploying Publisher for Cloud allowed us to automate the broadcasting of our many multi-page PDF & Excel scorecards and reports so that managers and executives have them in their inboxes first thing in the morning. Overcoming this major obstacle has allowed us to fully realize the benefits of SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud."