The upcoming Q2 release of SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is poised to bring significant enhancements, particularly for finance teams looking to streamline their workflows, gain deeper insights, and leverage their existing data investments more effectively. Let's take a closer look at how these innovations can empower finance professionals.
1. Enhanced Multi Actions with SAP PaPM Integration
SAP Analytics Cloud's Multi Actions feature already provides a powerful way to automate and orchestrate complex planning and analysis processes. In the SAC Q2 2025 release, this capability is being significantly amplified with the introduction of a dedicated profitability and performance management (PaPM) step type within multi actions.
For finance teams, this integration unlocks a new level of efficiency and control over crucial profitability and allocation calculations. Imagine the possibilities: directly embedding sophisticated PaPM actions within your planning sequences in SAC. This means you can seamlessly trigger detailed profitability analysis, cost allocations, or performance management calculations as part of a broader multi-step process, all within the familiar SAC environment.
2. Live Data Connectivity to Google BigQuery
Another exciting addition in the Q2 2025 release is the introduction of a live data connection to Google BigQuery (GBQ). In today's data-rich environment, finance teams often work with data residing in various cloud platforms. This new live connection capability significantly expands SAC's connectivity options, allowing seamless access to data stored in Google's powerful data warehouse.
Important Note: It's crucial to highlight that this live data connection to Google BigQuery is initially restricted to customers on SAP HANA Cloud.
3. Smart Insights
Smart Insights, previously a feature of classic SAC stories, was unavailable in the optimized story experience after its introduction. However, the Q2 2025 release integrates Smart Insights into the optimized design, providing users of the latest story framework with this powerful analytical tool. This ensures a consistent and modern experience, allowing finance teams to utilize Smart Insights within newly designed dashboards and reports.
Additionally, Smart Insights now extends to SAP Datasphere models. This integration with SAP Datasphere's unified data layer enables finance users to uncover hidden relationships and contributing factors across their entire data landscape, regardless of the source systems. This holistic view of financial performance is crucial for identifying key drivers that may not be immediately apparent. By enabling Smart Insights on these models, finance users can now uncover hidden relationships and contributing factors across their entire data landscape, regardless of the underlying source systems.
4. Analytical Insights in Joule
Finance teams are poised to gain significant advantages in the second quarter with the upcoming enhancements to SAP Analytics Cloud, particularly the integration of analytical insights within Joule. This development promises to streamline workflows and deepen understanding of financial data through intuitive, conversational interactions.
Imagine a finance analyst being able to simply ask Joule for "revenue trends by region for the last quarter" and receiving an immediate, insightful visualization or summary. This eliminates the need to manually navigate through reports and build analyses, freeing up valuable time for strategic thinking and decision-making.
The "just ask" NLQ functionality is also receiving notable upgrades. Users will gain the ability to specify the data model when multiple models could potentially answer their analytical question. This ensures greater precision and relevance in the insights generated, especially in complex data landscapes common in finance.
5. Enhanced Data Analysis
Currently, finance professionals leverage Data Analyzer to explore and dissect financial data, uncovering trends and anomalies. The upcoming Q2 2025 release introduces a significant improvement: the ability for story viewers to save and pin insights directly to story visualization.
This seemingly simple addition holds considerable potential for finance teams. Imagine a scenario where a financial analyst identifies a crucial variance in the budget during their analysis in Data Analyzer. Instead of taking screenshots or manually noting down the details, they can now pin this specific insight directly within the relevant story.
In summary, the Q2 updates to SAP Analytics Cloud represent a significant step forward for finance teams. The ability to ask natural language questions, refine analysis iteratively, and access a broader range of data models will foster greater efficiency, deeper insights, and ultimately, more informed financial decision-making. Finance professionals can look forward to a more intuitive and powerful analytical experience in the coming months.