BW on HANA - Southern California Edison

Southern California Edison (SCE), a Rosemead, California-based regulated electric utility

serving nearly 14 million people in its service territory, has seen significant improvement

in the companys reporting performance and data loading using SAP NetWeaver Business

Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) powered by SAP HANA specifically, speeds approxi-

mately five times faster. Additionally, using the standalone version of SAP HANA, reporting

is completed roughly 50 times faster than before. SCEs successful implementation of SAP

NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA was placed into production in October 2012, with standalone

SAP HANA applications following in the second quarter of 2013.

Queries & Batch Runs at the Speed of LightSouthern California Edison Improves Reporting, Data Loading, and Computational Analytics with SAP HANA

by Lauren Bonneau, Managing Editor

This article appeared in the OCT NOV DEC 2013 issue of insiderPROFILES (insiderPROFILESonline.com) and appears here with permission from WIS PUBLISHING.

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A report on the SAP ERP Financials system that

previously took 53 minutes to generate completed on

standalone SAP HANA in one minute and 20 seconds.

Likewise, SAP Customer Relationship Management

(SAP CRM) reports, previously averaging 35 seconds,

completed in 0.7 seconds. Standalone SAP HANA

loaded data at least 15 times faster, says Ron Grabyan,

Manager of Data Warehousing Services at SCE. This

project was a ramp-up project with SAP. Like many

early adoption projects, there were startup challenges

with SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA. SAP provided

effective support, working diligently with SCE to reach a

stabilized platform.

According to Grabyan, the project team learned from

numerous takeaways from a comprehensive pilot and

several test migrations. Included in the project was a

requirement to upgrade to SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3

and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) 4.0

before running the data warehouse on top of SAP

HANA. We knew it wouldnt be a minor effort, says

Grabyan. We had to upgrade several types of software

and systems to properly move into production.

Before Moving to In-Memory SystemsSCE began looking into SAP solutions in 2005. In an

effort to standardize its landscape and create an envi-

ronment with one version of the truth, SCE began a

migration project in 2008 to bring the majority of its

back-end business data into SAP software, including

transactional systems such as SAP ERP, SAP CRM, and

SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM).

The business also brought many of its existing data

warehousing components into SAP NetWeaver BW,

including many non-SAP sources.

The first phase of SCEs SAP journey was to go live

with SAP finance and HR functionality. The next phase

included adding work management and additional op-

eration support functionality in other areas of the com-

pany. More recently, SCE added SAP CRM in December

2011. With each rollout, the data was brought live in the

business warehouse.

With the data migration complete and the SAP soft-

ware up and running, the information in the data ware-

house was available for business processes and queries,

and was updated with a delta load each night. In SCEs

pre-SAP HANA environment, the nightly batch loading

into the data warehouse took roughly 15 hours, starting at

5PM and sometimes not finishing until after the service-

level agreement (SLA) of 8AM the next morning. The

business intelligence team would have to identify and

resolve data problems that occurred during batch load-

ing, meaning that a problem in the middle of the night

could remain unresolved for a period of time, potentially

impacting the SLA by causing delays.

Additionally, queries were previously taking a long

time to run, which made it difficult for people to analyze

their data in the most effective manner and deliver the

data in the appropriate time frame, says Grabyan.

Employees shouldnt have to wait for data they rely

on whether it be purchase order, invoice, or expense

information to complete their business processes or

for queries to run time-sensitive analysis. The speed that

SAP HANA can bring to the business through its in-

memory computing capabilities solves this problem and

brings a variety of other benefits.

Goal: Reduce the time it takes to run nightly batch loads into the data warehouse and speed query response time

Strategy: Implemented SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA

Outcome: Faster analytics and reporting, reduced labor maintenance and development, and increased productivity

At a Glance


It was favorable to use SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP

HANA over the way we were operating with our previ-

ous SAP data warehouse, Grabyan says. Once the data

warehousing staff was up to speed on SAP HANA, with-

in a year, there would be a reduction in maintenance

and development costs. For example, if developers no

longer needed to spend time writing cubes, this would

remove a layer of complexity.

Also, standalone SAP HANA offers very fast analytical

computing capabilities. SCE has applications in production

that combine the best of both worlds by using the standalone

SAP HANA modeling functions on SAP HANA objects from

both SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA and standalone

SAP HANA. This is known as a mixed-mode approach.

Data Loading and Reporting ImprovementsSAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA production has

shown specific improvements in data loading. SCE has

reduced the 15-hour nightly delta load of all integrat-

ed database objects to five hours, which is three times

faster than in the previous environment. According to

Grabyan, the results are even faster for full loads of

specific objects for example, loading financial data of a

certain type and for a certain time period has proven to be

five times faster than the delta loads.

Now, our data loads finish every night, without

encroaching past eight in the morning, Grabyan says.

When we have data load problems, we find them much

earlier, leaving more time to resolve those issues.

According to Grabyan, Reporting on the data that

resides in the data warehouse has also seen dramatic

improvements since moving from the legacy environment.

Introducing the SAP HANA appliance into the mix made

the reporting more than five times faster. He adds, In our

performance testing prior to going live, we took 170 users

running 300 queries in a one-hour period, which represents a

typical daytime load for us. We ran a test with this configura-

tion resulting in an average ratio of improvement that was

6.1 times faster, and individual queries could vary from 1.6

to 20 times faster.

While some individual queries initially showed no

extreme improvements, upon review, the team found

they were designed for the previous system. With the

new architecture of SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA,

we can change the way those queries are written and

optimize the performance even further, Grabyan says.


The architectural advances included with the lat-

est version of the SAP BusinessObjects BI toolset have

improved the self-service capabilities for users as well.

Users will be able to get in and look at their data a lot

faster with more viewing options, he says. User self-

service is a goal for SCE, and SAP HANA helps us to

optimize user experience and alleviate setup time. SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer, a user-oriented analytical tool,

was enabled through the speed of SAP HANA.

Getting Up to SpeedPreparing the companys 3,000 BI users for the upgrades

to SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BusinessObjects BI to

support the SAP HANA implementation proved to be

a relatively straightforward task. The user base is split

roughly down the middle, with half of the users working

with the SAP BusinessObjects BI toolset and the other

half using SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx).

The SAP BEx users, including many folks in the finance

department, were accustomed to using an older BEx tool

and wanted to continue using it for its integration with

Microsoft Excel. For these users, little training was re-

quired. The BEx tool is there, and its virtually the same.

It just runs faster, Grabyan says. We have recently im-

plemented the latest versions of additional tools, such

as SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, SAP BusinessObjects

Analysis, SAP Lumira, and SAP Predictive Analysis,

giving the users more flexibility in analyzing data.

For those who were already using version 3.1 of the

SAP BusinessObjects BI toolset, the move to version 4.0

was easy. The upgraded version included some added

bells and whistles such as security enhancements and

a few new features like improvements in exploration

and view creation but nothing that required heavy

user training. We put a user guide together to show em-

ployees who were programming and creating their own

queries what the changes were. But there wasnt much

they needed to know, he says. For a typical report run-

ner, there were just a couple of very minor things for

them to learn.

Exploring New Opportunities: Mobility and Improved AnalyticsWhile today the typical report runner is calling up

reports on an office computer, this will change over

time as users expect to be able to conduct their work on

mobile devices. SCE recently put a mobility pilot project

into production that ties into the SAP HANA environ-

ment, enabling the use of iPads, iPhones, Androids, and

BlackBerry devices to access the SAP BusinessObjects

solutions and SAP HANA data accordingly, using Wi-Fi,

3G, and 4G.

Vice presidents, directors, and managers can quickly

get the business data they need on their mobile devices

to make decisions, Grabyan says. In finance, you want

to know your closing numbers the minute they are done.

In work management, if you have $2 billion of mainte-

nance, you want to know if youre behind or ahead of

schedule each week. If youre in a specific area of spend,

you want to know how much was spent in your area in

the last couple of months. You want to know what the

trends are and how you are performing as soon as the

information becomes available.

Users will be able to see key performance indica-

tors in each business area on their mobile devices with

graphs they can move around, even on a window as

small as an iPhone or Android screen. Its almost like

having a PC with you, he says. Thats the kind of

Now, our data loads finish every night, without encroaching past eight in the morning. When we have data load problems, we find them much earlier, leaving more time to resolve those issues. Rob Grabyan, Manager of Data Warehousing

Services, Southern California Edison


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capability that enables not only the mobile technology,

but the SAP HANA technology. Both technologies ac-

tually synergize each other. SCE will use mobility, SAP

BusinessObjects tools, SAP BEx, and SAP HANA to

build a business case for wider adoption.

In addition to exploring strategies for taking

SAP HANA data mobile, SCE is exploring potential

opportunities to improve the companys business ana-

lytics by integrating other applications with the SAP

HANA platform to take advantage of its computational

capabilities. Storm Tracker, related to outage manage-

ment, was recently put in production on standalone

SAP HANA to manage aspects of outage events related

to storms.

Early next year, the business is considering rolling

out applications in two general areas:

Customer Analytics to improve customer energy efficiency and campaign effectiveness, and better

understand consumption behavior

Predictive Analysis to forecast outages, usage pat-terns, and costs, model customer segmentation, and

rapidly analyze advanced statistical models

Five Final IlluminationsGrabyan calls SAP HANA a game-changer in that it

brings significant business value through much faster

analytics and reporting, real-time solutions for busi-

ness problems, potential for new business oppor-

tunities, and increased productivity. He shares five

pieces of advice for anyone who is considering an SAP

NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA project:

Understand your business data. You need to know

how much data you have and how its structured on your

current system, which will determine the size of the SAP

HANA system you will need, he says. Youll begin to

understand what the capabilities are so you can deter-

mine what you need to move forward.

Be your own general contractor. We brought in a

few critical resources that had done this before and

understood the software, but we didnt turn the project

over to a systems integrator. We decided to be our own

general contractor, he says. Not only did SCE learn

how to put this system into place, we developed a very

nice partnership between our own SCE staff and the

various consultants that we used.

Take advantage of connections. Anytime youre

dealing with new software, you want to get the pro-

viders in this case, SAPs technical experts in-

volved on site. If needed, they can call their own sup-

port team and make the connection to the products

developers more easily than we can as the client,

he says.

Do your analysis fairly early. With this being a new

technology, and different from anything youve dealt

with in the past, I recommend getting your companys

computing services staff involved early on, he says.

Its important the architects realize what the next

steps are running SAP HANA on the data warehouse

is just the beginning. There is SAP ERP, SAP CRM,

additional standalone SAP HANA, and lots of other

opportunities.

Align business objectives with SAPs strategy. As

you start to line up your corporate goals with SAPs

strategic direction for SAP HANA, you will realize you

can move beyond where you are today, he says. As

part of this analysis, you need to take into account if

you can better integrate your business goals with SAPs

strategies. This will allow you to take advantage of

other capabilities and to bring further business value.

Company SnapshotSouthern California EdisonHeadquarters: Rosemead, CaliforniaIndustry: Electric power utilityEmployees: 15,500+Company details: Generates, buys, transmits, and distributes

power throughout 50,000 square miles across central, coastal, and southern California

Service territory includes more than 180 cities (excluding the city of Los Angeles and certain other cities)

Serves approximately 14 million people Has been serving the region for more than

125 years

SAP solutions: SAP ERP SAP CRM SAP SRM SAP HANA SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 SAP Landscape Transformation replication server


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BW on HANA - Southern California Edison