Exploring Analytics in SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Capabilities, Integration, and Business Value

Abstract

With the accelerated adoption of modern cloud- based enterprise resource management (ERP) systems, organizations recognize the importance of integrated analytics capabilities to drive data driven business insights and gain a competitive edge. This study explores the real-time analytics architecture of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, a leading cloud ERP system, and its potential to improve decision-making and enhance operational excellence. Existing research has primarily focused on analytics in the conventional S/4HANA system. Thus, technical documentation, industry blogs, and implementation expertise are used to provide an overview of SAP S/4HANA Cloud’s analytics capabilities, including architecture, data modeling, extensibility, business value, and external integrations. Research shows that the SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides applications for monitoring KPIs, generating reports, visualizing data using embedded SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), and seamless OData integration. Technology leaders will gain valuable perspectives on how modern cloud ERPs like S/4HANA Cloud, with their unified analytics capabilities drive faster response times to market changes and optimize costs through insights influencing the evolution of intelligent enterprise systems. Key Words: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, embedded analytics, embedded SAC, Cloud ERP, SAP HANA, S/4HANA Cloud analytics