A recent report by Deloitte states that companies with a strong analytics culture are over twice as likely (48% vs 22%) to significantly exceed business goals than those without. That’s a very significant advantage. 

It’s therefore no surprise that in 2020, 54% of enterprises considered business intelligence (BI) essential to ongoing and future business objectives. Companies that have implemented BI solutions report a range of benefits, including: 

• Faster reporting, analysis or planning (64% reported as a strong benefit, 27% as a moderate benefit)

• More accurate reporting, analysis or planning (56% and 32%)

• Making better business decisions (49% and 35%)

• Improved operational efficiency (35% and 39%)

• Improved customer satisfaction (31% and 35%)
  
  

Organizations that don’t invest in BI risk being left behind in these areas. If you find that your competitors operate faster and forecast more accurately, it could be time to consider BI a priority investment. 

To do this effectively, your strategy has to be powered by the right tools. Your business can’t act on data whilst it’s still relevant if your backend can’t process it quick enough, so it’s important that you have the right database tech in place. 

There are plenty of database solutions that will do the job adequately. However, if you want something significantly better than adequate, it’s worth considering SAP HANA. 

What Is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA is SAP’s column-oriented, in-memory relational database management system (DBMS). As well as functioning as a database and application server, SAP HANA is also one of the go-to DBMSs for organizations looking for advanced and powerful BI functionality.

Here are three key reasons why.

1. Handle More Data

SAP HANA both allows you to store and process a huge volume of data and expands the types of data you can process for BI insights. 

SAP HANA is source-agnostic, which means that you can fetch data from external, non-SAP data sources from across your organization. It’s also compatible with other DBMSs, which simplifies data integration significantly. 

Where SAP HANA really gets its edge, however, is its machine learning and advanced analytics capabilities. These allow vast amounts of unstructured data, like text data, predictive data, spatial data and event streams to be processed alongside transactional data.

SAP HANA therefore offers 360-degree BI insights, providing a level of granularity and accuracy that goes beyond what most organizations currently process. As businesses start to compete on the quality of their data insights (as opposed to the extent to which they use them or not) this will be a significant long-term advantage.

2. Use BI To React in Real Time 

Unlike traditional DBMSs, SAP HANA can process transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) queries at the same time. Meanwhile, its memory-based technology offers vastly better speed and performance than disk-based alternatives.  

As a consequence, it supports the production of analytical reports in next-to real time. Your workforce can therefore base both strategic and operational decision-making on up-to-the-minute insights, rather than relying on reports based on older data with limited relevance. 

This means that you can respond near instantaneously to take advantage of opportunities or anticipate challenges, staying one step ahead of the pack. 

3. Choose From a Full Range of Deployment Options

As more vendors phase out traditional licensing models, it’s often difficult for on-premise organizations to access innovative BI and analytics tools without spending a huge amount of money on a large-scale data migration. 

SAP HANA offers cutting-edge BI technology on the deployment method that works best for you. As well as offering an entirely separate cloud version (SAP HANA Cloud), SAP HANA has been optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for deployments on-prem, or on multi or hybrid cloud environments. 

As a result, you can take advantage of the top-of-the-range performance benefits SAP HANA offers regardless of where you are in the general shift towards cloud. If you need an on-premise solution with flexibility across hybrid environments and functionality that exceeds most of its nearest cloud-based rivals, SAP HANA should be at the top of your list of potential DBMSs. 

About the Author

Renee Briggs is a senior BI systems administrator for LaunchWorks.com, a Stone Door Group Company. Stone Door Group specializes in DevOps based digital transformation of the enterprise.

About Stone Door Group

Stone Door Group is an SAP and Red Hat partner that specializes in delivering cloud native BI solutions via their LaunchBI software platform. To learn more about how we can help cloud enable your analytics, drop us a line - letsdothis@stonedoorgroup.com.