Leveraging SAP BW with SAS for creating business value at Electrabel

Copyright © 2002, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved. 

Leveraging SAP BW with SAS 

for creating business value at 

Electrabel 

Paul Bruynseels, 

Project Manager, Electrabel 

Patrick Xhonneux, 

Head of Bus. Development, SAS Belgium & Luxembourg


Agenda 

! Why and how accessing SAP BW with SAS 

! SAP BW business coverage 

! Technology that works 

! Main benefits 

! Electrabel‘s experience 

! Q&A 

! An answer to clearly identified business needs 

! A global architecture with proven results 

! Project “do‘s and don‘t„ 

2


The New Role of SAP BW 

mySAP.com Business Applications 

SAP Customer Relationship 

Management Initiative 

SAP Sales 

SAP Marketing 

Mobile Sales 

SAP Service R/3 

Mobile Service 

Knowledge 

Warehouse Business-to-Business 

SAP SAP 

SAP 

Strategic 

Procurement 

To Business 

Business 

Strategic 

Enterprise Info Business Warehouse 

Management Initiative 

Management 

SAP Supply Chain 

Enterprise 

Management Information 

WarehouseSAP Logistics 

SAP Business 

SAP 

Logistics 

Execution 

Intelligence Initiative 

Knowledge Advanced Execution System 

System 

Management Planner& 

Management 

Optimizer Advanced 

Cockpit Corporate Planner & Optimizer 

Finance 

Management 

© SAP AG 1999 

3


Why would you need to implement SAP 

BW 

! Because… BW is now recommended by SAP as 

THE tool for reporting on operational data 

contained in SAP R/3 

! Because… BW is more and more often 

positionned (by SAP) as THE « necessary » 

interface to true information delivery 

! Because… You’ve been told you should first use 

what’s available in house 

! Because… You *must* implement SAP BW 

SAS can help as well ! 

4


Why do we offer access to SAP BW 

! Leverage your SAP data with SAS solutions for 

real business advantage (CRM, Strategic 

Performance Management, Risk Dimensions,…) 

! Include BW data in a specialized SAS data mart 

! Merge BW data with non-SAP data sources 

! SAS OLAP tools 

! SAS Enterprise Miner 

! Analytical tools, like SAS/ETS, SAS/OR, etc. 

5


How to access BW 

With a specialized engine ! 

! Uses SAS/ACCESS to R/3 technology underneath 

! Accesses Infocubes, ODS and InfoAreas, not 

QueryCubes 

! Works on non-Windows platforms 

! High performance -> good for mass extraction 

! Wizard to load BW metadata into SAS 

! Wizard to read BW InfoCubes into SAS 

! Wizard to export OLAP metadata to SAS/EIS 

6


Structure of InfoCube in SAP BW 

! BW stores InfoCubes in 

T 

M 

! Snowflake Schema: 

S 

! 1Fact table 

! n Dimension tables 

! n SID tables 

! n Text tables 

! n Master tables 

M 

T 

S 

D 

D 

F 

D 

D 

S 

S 

T 

M 

T 

M 

S 

S 

T 

M 

T 

M 

7


Extraction of InfoCube 

Snowflake to Star Schema 

SAS Views to BW 

Snowflake Schema Tables 

T 

S 

M 

SAS Data Sets 

Star Schema Tables 

D 

M 

T 

S 

D 

D 

F 

D 

D 

S T 

M 

S T 

M 

D 

F 

D 

D 

S 

T M 

S 

T M 

SAS Formats 

8

9 

Copyright © 2002, SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.


Benefits 

! Builds on previously made investment 

! Harnesses the power of SAS 

! Complements BW functionality 

! Metadata driven extraction without programming 

! Offloads analytical processing to specially tuned 

analytical SAS data mart 

! Only product on the market to surface InfoCube data 

! Not limited to Windows platforms -> scalable 

! Prerequisite for data mining 

10


Head-Quarter in 

Brussels 

(Belgium) : 

daugther of 

TRACTEBEL & 

SUEZ 

physical and 

financial 

transactions in 

electricity and 

natural gas 

active on all 

European energy 

exchanges 

11 

Revenue (2001) : 

12.7 billion €


Who’s Electrabel 

! we generate electricity, 

! we build, manage and service networks used for the 

transmission of electricity and the distribution of electricity 

and natural gas, 

! we sell electricity, natural gas and derived energy products 

and services that meet customer needs, 

! in Belgium and in Europe. 

! To support this core business we also develop other major 

activities: cable TV, distribution of water and steam, 

cogeneration (combined heat and power)... 

12

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Business background 

! Electrabel’s trading and risk management 

department (« Middle Office ») needs to better 

and more timely follow-up its expanding trading 

activities. 

! Electrabel selected SAS Risk Dimensions to fulfill 

Middle Office department’s business need 

14


Technical background 

! Electrabel has chosen SAP R/3 as operational 

system to support all its business processes. 

! SAP BW is therefore the de facto software for 

storing data and reporting. 

! Data to be taken into account for Risk 

Management and Analysis comes from multiple 

data source, to be stored in SAP BW in order to 

feed Risk Dimensions 

15


Functional Architecture 

Foreign 

Offices 

Reports 

Sales 

Trading 

B.O. 

Generation 

Image 

MO (Risk Control & Analysis) 

Trading 

ET db 

MSR 

MSI 

Procurement 

16 

IS-U / CCS 

Credit Management 

Contract Management 

PRIBILLIC 

Credit Management 

Contract Management


Technical Architecture 

Non-RISK 

Corporate 

Data 

Work 

Station 

P 

RISK 

Data 

D 

UNIX 

BW 

Server 

BP1 

NT 

SAS/Access 

To BW 

Server 

SAS 

RISK 

Server 

Production 

UNIX 


RISK 

Server 

Developm. 

UNIX 

RISK 

Work 

17 

Station


Detailed Architecture 

Reports 


Risk 

Management 

Tool 

Accessing 

SAP BW 

Foreign 

Offices 

SAP BW 

B.O. 

Trading 

Generation 

Procurement 

MSR 

MSI 

18


Project characteristics 

! Quick Decision and implementation 

! Proof of concept started November 2001, decision 

was taken December 2001 

! First report produced for end of May 2002 

! Resources 

! IT Project leader → ½ time (implementation study, 

process definition, coordination,…) 

! Business Project Leader 

! 3 SAS consultants (Inflow and Risk Analysis) 

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Project Characteristics (II) 

! ++ Accessing SAP BW was successful from the 

first attempt 

! ++ Project architecture integrates in Electrabel ’s 

vision of IT infrastructure 

! -- Time pressure 

! - Little business definitions exist 

! - Pre-study wasn’t really extensive 

! - Limited knowledge of data/subject available 

20


Current status of the project 

! Infrastructure is complete 

! Inflow of data is organized and automated 

(Trading, Back Office and Pricing data) 

! Pricing methodology is being tested 

! Reports are being developed 

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Leveraging SAP BW with SAS for creating business value at Electrabel

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