3 Key Milestones On The HANA Journey By Karthik Palanisamy, Vice President, Analytics and SAP Services
Think of HANA as a journey by keeping the long-term vision and the business case in mind at all times. Otherwise, it will be a very expensive point solution. To pave the way for a smooth journey, an earlier article offered three tips for getting started on the Road to SAP HANA: find a champion, focus on a specific gap and show some quick results. What’s the next step to gaining improved analytics, data consistency, and empowered end users? Start by defining three key milestones for the journey: overall goal, main action steps and desired benefits. Here’s one company’s example: Goal: Develop an enterprise analytics strategy to provide cross-business visibility. Actions: Set the strategy, identify gaps, architect data foundation and start implementing analytics applications — such as SAP BusinessObjects and pilot/start investing in SAP HANA. Benefits: Improved and consistent access to information and BI solutions – users can quickly leverage both SAP and non-SAP data enterprise-wide and don’t have to rely on IT for reports. Driving consistency in data and analytics Carry out an assessment of your current state BI environment with the help of both IT and business users, identify gaps in analytics and capabilities to achieve and drive business results. Once the gaps are identified the next step is to socialize the options and strategies to address the gaps and get business leadership buy-in. Only then can a strategic roadmap be created to encompass the current needs and the future state business strategy. To help drive consistency in data and analytics for making insightful decisions that affect multiple business units, consider including the key business report writers/analysts from all functional areas as part of the gap analysis team. They will bring in the business knowledge and acumen to aid the technical team members who have the technical skills related to the tools and systems. The long-term goal is to ultimately have an analytics organization that plays a pivotal role between IT and the business across the enterprise — the catalyst behind governance of data and BI, consistency in process and reporting and proactively aligning capabilities with evolving business needs and strategies What BI goals would drive analytic consistency in your organization? |
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