Time series data — data points collected or recorded at successive points in time — is foundational for analyzing trends, seasonality, and forecasting in business intelligence. In the SAP ecosystem, SAP Lumira stands out as an intuitive, self-service visualization tool that enables users to explore and visualize time series data effectively. Whether it’s sales over months, stock prices over days, or website traffic over hours, visualizing time series data in SAP Lumira helps uncover actionable insights and supports better decision-making.
This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to visualize time series data in SAP Lumira, highlighting key features and best practices.
¶ Understanding Time Series Data
Time series data is characterized by its chronological ordering. Each data point in a time series corresponds to a specific time period—such as year, quarter, month, week, day, or even hour and minute.
Key attributes of time series data include:
- Trend: Long-term increase or decrease in data.
- Seasonality: Regular repeating patterns within fixed periods.
- Noise: Random variation or anomalies.
- Cycles: Longer-term fluctuations not tied to seasonality.
Proper visualization can help detect these components and inform forecasting or business strategy.
Before visualization, ensure your dataset includes a time-related dimension (e.g., date, time, year) formatted appropriately:
- Use date/time formats recognized by SAP Lumira.
- Organize data in a long format, where each row represents a timestamp and related measures.
- Use the “Prepare” tab in SAP Lumira to cleanse, format, and enrich your time dimension (e.g., extract Year, Month, Quarter).
SAP Lumira offers several visualization types suitable for time series analysis:
The most common and effective way to represent time series data.
- Displays data points connected by lines, emphasizing trends over time.
- Supports multiple measures or categories for comparative analysis.
- Allows zooming and panning on time axes for detailed exploration.
Similar to line charts but fill the area below the line.
- Useful to highlight volume or cumulative data over time.
- Effective for showing contributions of multiple categories stacked over time.
¶ 3. Bar/Column Charts
Helpful when you want to compare discrete time intervals, such as sales per month.
- Use vertical bars for monthly/quarterly comparisons.
- Use horizontal bars for better readability with long labels.
¶ 4. Heat Maps and Calendar Visualizations
- Color-coded views can reveal seasonal patterns or periodic anomalies.
- Highlight days, weeks, or months with high or low activity.
- Load your dataset with a valid time dimension.
- Go to the Visualize tab.
- Select a chart type appropriate for time series (line, area, bar).
- Drag the time dimension (e.g., Date, Year-Month) to the X-axis.
- Drag the measure (e.g., sales, profit) to the Y-axis.
- Optionally, add color or category breakdowns for multi-series visualization.
- Use filters or controls to focus on specific periods or compare different time ranges.
- Grouping by time intervals: Aggregate data by Year, Quarter, Month, Week, or Day to analyze trends at different granularities.
- Sorting: Ensure the time axis is sorted chronologically to maintain natural flow.
- Calculated measures: Create moving averages or growth rates within SAP Lumira’s formula editor to smooth noise or highlight changes.
- Forecasting: While SAP Lumira doesn’t have built-in forecasting, exported data can be analyzed in SAP Predictive Analytics for advanced time series forecasting.
- Use clear time granularity: Avoid mixing time granularities (e.g., days and months) in one chart.
- Label axes clearly: Include date formats or labels that users understand intuitively.
- Keep visuals simple: Avoid clutter to let trends and patterns emerge clearly.
- Use color to emphasize: Highlight key periods like peaks, drops, or seasons.
- Enable interactivity: Use filters or drill-down features for exploratory analysis.
Visualizing time series data in SAP Lumira unlocks critical insights into business dynamics over time. With its user-friendly interface and versatile visualization options, SAP Lumira empowers business users and analysts to monitor trends, detect seasonal patterns, and make data-driven decisions confidently.
Mastering time series visualization techniques in SAP Lumira ensures that your temporal data storytelling is both powerful and accessible, driving strategic growth and operational efficiency.
Keywords: SAP Lumira, time series data, time-based visualization, line charts, business intelligence, SAP analytics