Business Content in SAP Datasphere – Best practices for rapid progress
- SAP Datasphere
- 5 min reading time
Franziskus Heep
This article discusses the Business Content in SAP Datasphere and how predefined data models and analyses help companies efficiently meet industry-specific requirements. It explains how content is provided by SAP and third-party providers, what flexibility it offers for individual adjustments, and how it differs from Data Products. It also provides insights into the use and integration of the content, as well as its benefits as best practices and accelerators for DSP modeling.
Table of contents
1. Business Content in SAPDatasphere
Best practices for rapid progress
Similar to SAP BW (BW content) or SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Datasphere offers predefined business content. This includes data models and analysis content that are specifically tailored to the typical requirements of various industries and business areas.
An example of predefined, elementary objects in BW Content (SAP BW) are the so-called 0-InfoObjects, such as the InfoObject 0CUSTOMER. This object is designed to centrally map customer master data, including attributes such as name, address, customer group, and sales data. Once activated, these properties are already included without the customer having to define them themselves, which can simplify the modeling of standard scenarios.
Although the business content in SAP Datasphere is designed so that individual objects of a scenario can be selected during import, it is primarily designed to provide a complete analysis scenario.
The pre-built models make it easier for companies to get started with SAP Datasphere, as they can significantly reduce the (time) effort required to develop their own data models and analyses.
They can also serve as best practices to help meet standard requirements, such as compliance with industry-specific rules and regulations.
The Business Content is designed to be flexible, allowing it to be adapted to individual requirements.
The Business Content–packages are not exclusively, but mostly industry-specific or designed for specific business areas. The Business Content is available in the DSP navigation in the "Semantic Integration" area.
There, the DSP user, as marked in the screenshot with (1) and (2), can navigate both in the SAP Business Content and in the third-party Business Content.
The Business Content (1) refers to data models and best practices that are provided by SAP itself. The third-party Business Content (2) shows a collection of Business Content models that are provided by external SAP partner companies in the Datasphere.
2. SAP Business Content
Under Business Content you will find an overview of all available SAP Business Content models. As can be seen in the following screenshot, the "Import Status" column indicates whether the business content has already been imported by the user and in which version this has happened. A comprehensive overview of the regular version updates of a Business Content package can be found in the SAP Help Portal under: Business Content Updates. To ensure seamless integration and use of the Business Content, the release status of the Business Content should be compatible with the source systems.
SAP provides further helpful information about business content via the Help Portal under – SAP Datasphere Business Content – Lines of Business (LoB).
The business content Sales and Distribution: Sales Analysis for SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud is used as an example in Figures 3 and 4 to show the information available in the SAP Help Portal.
Under the heading "Architecture and Abstract", the high-level architecture of the SAP Sales Analysis package for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud offers a comprehensive representation of the layer architecture. In addition, the technical names of the objects within the architecture can be viewed here. This information is shown in the graphic in Figure 4
3. Third-party business content
In contrast to SAP Business Content, the third-party business content, which is shown in Figure 1 under the second marker, includes a collection of models provided by external SAP partner companies.
Typically, a Business Content model provides a detailed overview of its business context. For example, the third-party Business Content "Financial Reporting for SAP Business One" from s-peers AG, highlighted in Figures 5 and 6, is specifically aimed at companies using the finance module of SAP Business One who want to gain deeper insights into their financial data.
In addition, the packages of the Business Content under the Import Options tab provide a detailed overview of the included DSP artifacts.
These artifacts include DSP objects such as Spaces, connections, local tables, views, analytical models and stories, all of which can be selected individually.
After importing into your own DSP space, the model can then be viewed, customized, or expanded in the Data Builder.
4. Comparison to Data Products
In contrast to the creation and import of Data Products, which are immediately ready for use and primarily offer read access to shared data via views, the import of Business Content serves more as a template or starting point for the individual adaptation and further development of (standard) data models and analyses. While Data Products are usually exchanged within a company between departments or via different DSP tenants, Business Content is usually made available by SAP or SAP partners as best practice of industry solutions to other companies that use Datasphere.
Data Products can be offered both free of charge and for a fee, especially if they are made available to external companies via the Public Data Marketplace. In contrast, Business Content is an integral, free component of SAP Datasphere.
5. conclusion
In summary, Business Content in SAP Datasphere provides companies with a valuable foundation in the form of predefined templates and best practices. These enable the efficient implementation of industry-specific scenarios and standard requirements, while at the same time maintaining sufficient flexibility for individual adjustments to customer- and requirement-specific needs.
With expandable (standard) data models, Business Content acts as a kind of accelerator that supports rapid progress in DSP modeling.
However, due to the still early stage of development of SAP Datasphere, the scope of Business Content is currently not comparable with that of already established solutions such as SAP BW.
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