An Overview of SAP GTS Reporting with SAP BW/4HANA

Category: SAP GTS Posted:Aug 05, 2020 By: Alvera Anto

An-Overview-of-SAP-GTS-Reporting-with-SAP-BW4HANA

SAP Business Warehouse for SAP HANA (SAP BW/4HANA) is the successor of SAP BW on SAP HANA. In comparison to SAP BW on SAP HANA, developments have begun with a different codebase.

As it functions as the analytical, reporting, and data warehousing system, SAP BW/4HANA brings substantial strength and advantages to boost standard SAP GTS reporting.

Like a data warehouse, the main task of SAP BW/4HANA is to balance and structure data from numerous resources and systems into data models. It can handle data from SAP and non-SAP feeder systems in both persistent and nonpersistent methods, meaning that not all information that SAP BW/4HANA can benefit from needs to be saved in the database. After the data is ready for intake, SAP BW/4HANA enables quick and dynamic reporting using the underlying data.

Data Models

The basic architecture of data models is based on the Layered and Scalable Architecture ++ (LSA++) from SAP. This architecture prescribes a standard way of working that includes mandatory and optional layers. The goal is to have an adaptable style that is scalable and reusable to keep the total cost of ownership (TCO) to a minimum.

Data model

The Virtualization layer is the only required layer, and as the name states, it does not store any type of data in the database. It also permits access to all the layers below it. The reason behind this is to maintain a flexible method. All the data that is required for analytical reporting is consumed through the Virtualization layer.

If anything would happen to the underlying data model or any one of the other layers would certainly disappear, thus the reports built on top of the Virtualization layer would not be affected and would not need to be reworked to manage these modifications.

All other layers in the LSA++ architecture are optional. It is very important to keep in mind that optionally doesn’t mean unnecessary; it implies that any one of these layers have their use and benefits in a data model, however, that you have the flexibility on how to tackle each data model that needs to be created.

To use SAP GTS data for analytical reporting, you need to incorporate SAP GTS with SAP BW/4HANA first. Presuming that a few requirements are met, the integration between SAP GTS  and SAP BW/4HANA is standard.

First, you need to set up a Remote Function Call (RFC) connection between SAP BW/4HANA and SAP GTS. After that, you will enable the data transfer from SAP GTS to SAP BW/4HANA using customizing by activating the data transfer to SAP BW/4HANA on the FTO, document type, and item category level.

The following number shows the combination of SAP GTS and SAP BW/4HANA. As previously discussed, SAP BW/4HANA can leverage data from both SAP and also non-SAP systems.

sap and non sap systems

Data Objects

The objects that allow data to be available for use in SAP BW/4HANA are called data resources. Data sources can use various technologies to extract data or virtualize it to SAP BW/4HANA. The following are the most common methods

  • Data extraction via views or functional components that have been created in the source SAP system and where the data will be maintained in SAP BW/4HANA
  • SAP HANA views (i.e., all views from SAP HANA Live for SAP GTS).
  • CDS views.

Our major focus is related to the first method: from SAP GTS to SAP BW/4HANA. To put it simply, you’ll learn more regarding the extraction of the SAP GTS environment into SAP BW/4HANA. The reason for this focus is that presently, this is one of the most reliable ways to take advantage of data maintained in SAP GTS.

Note: The other methods (i.e., SAP HANA views and CDS views) can also play an essential role, but as the imp[roved content for SAP GTS doesn’t suit all circumstances, data extraction to the data warehouse is highly recommended. One benefit to bear in mind is that any type of SAP HANA views or CDS views (i.e., that you would use or build for operational reporting) can also be used to create a data source for your data warehouse.

Data Extraction Technique

Before going into detail about this method (i.e., data extraction from SAP GTS to SAP BW/4HANA), we’ll summarise the approach. Initially, in this approach, the SAP BW/4HANA system fetches the altered (delta) info from the data sources regularly and combines the data from multiple SAP GTS tables to change them into a specific format.

As numerous SAP GTS tables contain Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) as unique keys, it’s suggested to ensure that the extractors do not forward this information to your SAP BW/4HANA system to keep complexity and storage costs to a minimum.

After the data extraction is finalized and available in SAP BW/4HANA, the data can be transformed and enhanced based on the requirements of analytics reporting. After this is finished, master data and transactional data is accessible in SAP BW/4HANA and enables multidimensional evaluations from numerous business perspectives. For instance, you can access consolidated data from different modules(i.e., SAP GTS, SAP S/4HANA, and so on) using a single report.

The following sections cover even more information on the extraction of data from SAP GTS.

SAP Global Trade Solutions Data Sources

When you’re setting up SAP BW/4HANA for integration with SAP GTS, three standard InfoSources with corresponding extractors are supplied. The first InfoSource covers the custom document data (i.e., which additionally includes Risk Management Data), the 2nd covers customs documents for Legal Control, and the 3rd is for customs procedures with economic impact (e.g., BWH).

InfoSources include numerous key figures. These vital figures are numeric values or quantities (e.g., net price or quantity) used in the output reports as objects for analysis. Each of the 3 basic InfoSources includes numerous standard questions. Questions related to actual records and specify which data is leveraged.

Customs Document Data

The first standard InfoSource (0SLL_CD_1) connects to customs documents and contains data from documents created in SAP GTS. Custom documents should be interpreted here in a broad sense, consisting of import and export statements along with records for transit or various other procedures.

The standard records run for this functional area relate to the following key figures:

  • Calculated duties (e.g., antidumping and also third nation).
  • Customs value
  • Total duties 
  • Net price
  • Net weight
  • Number of items
  • Quantity
  • Statistical value

In this customs area, three types of common queries are available:

  • Customs import/export analysis
  • Customs import/export per product
  • Customs import/export per country

The first question runs an evaluation of the overall number of imported/exported objects (e.g., by customs value, net price) per FTO, legal unit, customs procedure, or tariff code. The second question results in the same report per object number, and the third query provides the report per departure/destination country.

The 2nd InfoSource (0SLL_CD_02) connects to the Legal Control facets of the import and export flows. It consists of Legal Control data concerning the import and export records produced in SAP GTS.

The Legal Control Info Source key figures include the following:

  • Net price
  • Net weight
  • Gross weight
  • Number of items
  • Quantity

Similar to the customs document InfoSource, import/export queries exist for Legal Control purposes.

Analogous to standard SAP GTS reporting queries launch a selection screen that you can use as a filtering device. Below shows the selection screen for running the Export Analysis per Nation question.

Select Variable Values

For this example, we made use of the BEx Analyzer to visualize the report. The BEx Analyzer is an analysis and reporting tool of SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx), which can be embedded in Excel.

The next figure shows a sample outcome of running the query. The report details the export analysis per Country of Departure. You can evaluate key figures such as the net price, gross weight, and net weight per country of departure, per consignee, and so on.

Exports Per Country

Exports Per Nation

The strength of SAP BW/4HANA reports lies in its customizable and functional nature. Analysts can continually alter the report by adding or removing variables, inserting KPI metrics, and so on to help analyze large sets of data to make valid conclusions and support business decisions (e.g., functional and management reporting).

You can apply SAP BW/4HANA content in three ways:

  • Without modifications: This option covers the fundamental reporting requirements.
  • With modifications: You change delivered business intelligence (BI) content by customizing the installed objects.
  • Using BI content as the template to build further customized reporting: This is the method used in most instances

Customs Procedures with Economic Impact

The third InfoSource (0SLL_CD_3) associates with data concerning closing sections for the handling of customs procedures with economic effects (e.g., BWH). We won’t elaborate further on this as in the previously supplied InfoSources applies.

Conclusion

To sum up, how SAP BW/4HANA functions with SAP GTS reporting, here are some benefits:

To make reports fit our business needs better, customized reporting can be continually adapted by adding and removing variables, inserting filters, and so forth. Thus, valuable data may be filtered and extracted from large sets of transactional data.

Data visualization through various frontend reporting tools (e.g., SAP Evaluation for Microsoft Office, SAP Lumira, and SAP Analytics Cloud) can aid companies to develop informative dashboards presenting substantial KPI metrics tailored to different users.

SAP BW/4HANA content has a variety of objects that simplify the implementation of the SAP BW/4HANA system and quicken the building of an effective reporting system.

Since you use SAP BW/4HANA, you can combine data from various systems (i.e., SAP or non-SAP) into a single report. For instance, this makes data extraction from multiple systems to a spreadsheet for further analysis redundant because data from SAP and non-SAP systems might be imported in SAP BW/4HANA.

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