Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Hybrid Publishing Concepts for SAP BI & Analytics

Hybrid publishing is not a hypothetical concept. APOS customers have come to us with hybrid publishing requirements, including merging content from SAP BusinessObjects and SAP Analytics Cloud, which we were able to fulfill. Watch this video to see some of the real-life use cases we’ve enabled through APOS Publisher for Cloud:

Video Clip – APOS Publisher for Cloud – Use Case Scenarios

It should be the goal of every organization’s BI & Analytics team to get the right information to the right people at the right time and in the right format.

Here are some concepts you should consider to achieve that goal. These concepts are hybrid, in that they apply to both your SAP BusinessObjects and your SAP Analytics Cloud deployments, and can be used to tie their information distribution capabilities together. I will focus on SAP Analytics Cloud below, but these concepts are equally applicable to SAP BusinessObjects, and can be realized there using APOS Publisher.

Pull vs. Push

The default distribution method for SAP Analytics Cloud is “pull.” What this means is that users need to log in to SAP Analytics Cloud to see the content they need. This method works fine if all of the people to whom you need to provide information are active SAP Analytics Cloud users. However, as Analytics become more important to operations at all levels of the organization, and to partners outside the organization, supplying timely and useful information becomes more difficult and less assured.

A “push” methodology places your Analytics in the path of people who need it to perform their duties. This methodology takes into account where your information consumers are, when they need the information you are supplying, and what format best suits how they need to use that information.

Learn more about “pull” vs. “push” publishing methodologies

Bursting Personalized Analytics

The corollary of pushing the right information to your information consumers is that they should receive only the information they need. Based on this requirement, you need to be able to personalize the Analytics you push out to those information consumers.

You can schedule stories for distribution in SAP Analytics Cloud, but what personalization you can add is labor-intensive.

Bursting is a data-driven process that allows you to “set and forget” your personalized messaging in a bursting definition. Conversely, you can make global revisions to personalized bursting by simply changing the data used in the process. Bursting removes significant IT burden and technical debt from your Analytics distribution.

See how personalized Analytics bursting works

Targeted Distribution

As much as we need to ensure that information consumers get the right information, we need to ensure that the data is received using the right method for them. The right method is the one that makes the information most available and timely.

That’s why we’ve built in multiple ways to choose from when bursting SAP Analytics Cloud stories, including

• Email (embedded or attached)
• Network file location
• Secure FTP (FTPS)

Learn how APOS Publisher for Cloud delivers targeted distribution

Strategic Timing

A key element of Story distribution is timing. Scheduling works for regular dissemination, but what if there are special circumstances that should automatically trigger information distribution?
This is where conditional bursting comes in.

When there are business-critical KPIs in your stories, you can use conditional bursting to set thresholds on those KPIs so that, should those KPI values stray outside parameters, the people who need to know are informed automatically.

Learn how APOS Publisher for Cloud enables strategic timing through conditional bursting

Dynamic Flexibility

The information within your SAP Analytics Cloud can expand and contract continuously, so bursting needs to adapt to the content. If your SAP Analytics Cloud story contains grids or tables that expand beyond what can fit into a window, scrolling should be added dynamically and ensure that the entire data set is sent and visible.
In another use case, suppose your story contains no data at a particular point in time. You should be able to specify that a story not be distributed if it is empty.

Data-driven bursting allows you to connect the bursting definition to a data source that dynamically drives all the properties within the definition.

Learn how APOS Publisher for Cloud enables dynamic flexibility

Tailored Format

Receiving information in the right format is as important as receiving the right information at the right time, because for many users the information delivered is just the starting point. APOS Publisher for Cloud provides extensive formatting options to allow you to provide information in the most usable format for the specific information consumer.

For example, an information consumer may choose to perform additional analysis, so it is important they receive the information as an Excel spreadsheet. If the information consumer needs to present the information to other, you can deliver it within a PowerPoint template. You can also dictate which SAP Analytics Cloud stories get placed into which slides, and even consolidate multiple pages from multiple stories into a single PowerPoint template.

Learn how APOS Publisher for Cloud delivers tailored formats

For more information, go to the APOS Publisher for Cloud webpage, or make a solution inquiry.