Introduction
The Group Financial Statement Review Booklet is first of all a new Fiori application for group accountants to achieve more transparency into group financial statements.
…in addition, it is also a new type of application and approach, which combines application guidance
with integrated insights enabled by UI5 components contributed by SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC).
A first version of this application was released with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release 2202.
In this blog we would like to provide all the necessary information to understand this new type of application.
What’s the Use Case?
Let’s first introduce the use case, that’s supported in the current release:
Group accountants need to monitor and validate multiple aspects of the financial statements during the closing process.
Typically, this work is done under high time pressure with many recurring validation tasks on aggregated group data, both top-down as well as bottom-up.
Predefined business pages, which are delivered out of the box on a silver platter provide a huge value for group accountants. Those pages include all aspects of the closing work and allow guided navigation, best practices for how variances are calculated, as well as interactive filtering and drill-down.
Trust and full transparency into the filters are just as important as well as the ability to slice and dice the data.
In this application we combine predefined pages in a guided mode as well as interactive analysis in a so called flexible mode.
DEMO / VIDEO
Built as Fiori Application with integrated Analytic Components
So let’s now understand the type of use cases from a more architectural perspective:
As you probably know, we are currently offering embedded SAC stories within SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
This covers already a lot of dashboarding use cases. Nevertheless our customers are asking for true business applications, which guide business users with integrated insights.
This is best achieved by specialized Fiori applications, which integrate analytic components.
With this approach, we empower business applications to do the following:
- Optimize for certain business tasks and processes
- Guide the casual user – with contextual information – out of the box
- Support insight-driven processes and intelligent automation in the future
What is the difference between a Fiori application with integrated analytic components as opposed to embedding SAP Analytics Cloud as complete product?
Let’s finally connect the dots to the architecture pictures you most likely know from embedded analytics in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Our group financial statement is calculated based on the CDS model in Group Reporting using analytical queries. Those queries are exposed via our multidimensional protocol and consumed utilizing analytical components via UI5. Those analytical components are powered by SAP Analytics Cloud.
Which important features you should know?
Feature | Where to click | Preview |
How to use predefined columns or adapt the columns? | Choose column selection in guided mode or use “Choose Columns” in context menu. |
|
How to change the scaling to millions or thousands? | Position cursor on “Amount in Group Currency” and select “Scaling” from the context menu . | |
How to change the dimension properties to adapt display, sorting and hierarchies? | Position the cursor on a dimension name, such as “Consolidation Unit” and then select “Properties” from the context menu. | |
How to see the infobar and adapt the page filters. | Click on the “Page Filters“: | |
How to find a summary on global and page filters? | Go to page menu and choose “Context Information“. | |
How to add additional filters, which are not part of the layout. | Go to “Page Filters” and choose “Add Filters“. | |
How to use hierarchical filters in a side panel. | Go to “Page Filters” and choose “Show Filter Panel”. | |
How to export the page to spreadsheet? | Go to page menu and choose “Export to Microsoft Excel”. |
More Information / Further Resources:
Link to the Introduction Video (9 Minutes)
You will find more information on this topic using the following ressources:
Getting Started/Initial Setup Infos with the App.
Further Infos:
Roll-out Session in SAP Learning Platform – > Choose Topic 13
Show and Tell Session with more detailed demo (Time 30 Minutes)
Questions and Answers:
Question: | Answer: |
What does “powered by SAC” mean? | We are reusing the same controls and access libraries in Fiori/UI5 as we use in SAP Analytics Cloud. With this we achieve improved consistency across our analytic capabilities. |
Do I need a license for SAP Analytics Cloud for this use case? | No |
Can I use this application in SAP S/4HANA On Premise? | No, at the moment this application is only available in S/4HANA Cloud 2202.
We follow the cloud first strategy. We plan to add to the next OP-Release. |