In today’s data-driven business landscape, organizations often need to analyze data coming from a variety of sources—on-premise systems, cloud applications, third-party platforms, and more. The ability to combine these disparate datasets into a single, unified view is crucial for comprehensive business insights. This process is known as data blending, and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) offers powerful capabilities to seamlessly blend data from multiple sources, empowering users with integrated analytics.
Data blending is the process of merging data from different sources that are related by common dimensions or keys. Unlike traditional data warehousing, where data is physically consolidated, blending in analytics tools often happens virtually—allowing users to create combined datasets on the fly for richer analysis.
In SAC, data blending lets business users combine data from various systems without complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, enabling faster and more flexible insights.
Organizations today rely on multiple data repositories: SAP ERP systems like S/4HANA, SAP BW, cloud platforms such as SuccessFactors or Salesforce, and external databases. SAC’s data blending capabilities provide several benefits:
SAC supports data blending through its Modeling environment where you can combine multiple data models or datasets. The key steps include:
SAC connects natively to a variety of data sources, including:
You can create models directly in SAC using imported data or connect live to existing on-premise or cloud models.
Data blending relies on establishing common dimensions—such as customer IDs, product codes, or time periods—to join datasets. SAC allows you to define these relationships through linked dimensions and composite models.
Composite models are SAC’s way of combining multiple models into a single analytical layer without physically merging the data. They enable:
Once blended, users can create stories, dashboards, and visualizations that pull from the combined dataset, unlocking insights that were previously siloed.
While SAC data blending is powerful, users should be aware of some challenges:
Data blending in SAP Analytics Cloud is a vital capability for modern enterprises striving to break down data silos and unlock richer insights. By combining multiple datasets—whether from SAP systems or third-party applications—SAC enables users to create integrated, actionable analytics faster and with greater flexibility. As businesses continue to embrace hybrid and multi-cloud environments, mastering data blending in SAC will be essential for driving data-driven decision-making across the enterprise.