This article appeared in the OCT NOV DEC 2013 issue

of insiderPROFILES (insiderPROFILESonline.com)
and appears here with permission from WIS PUBLISHING.

Queries & Batch Runs

at the Speed of Light
Southern California Edison Improves Reporting,
Data Loading, and Computational Analytics with SAP HANA
by Lauren Bonneau, Managing Editor

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 approximately 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.

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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 Systems

At a Glance
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

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

SCE began looking into SAP solutions in 2005. In an

effort to standardize its landscape and create an environment 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 operation support functionality in other areas of the company. 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 software up and running, the information in the data warehouse 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 servicelevel agreement (SLA) of 8AM the next morning. The
business intelligence team would have to identify and
resolve data problems that occurred during batch loading, 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 inmemory computing capabilities solves this problem and
brings a variety of other benefits.

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 It was favorable to use SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP

HANA over the way we were operating with our previous SAP data warehouse, Grabyan says. Once the data
warehousing staff was up to speed on SAP HANA, within 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 Improvements

SAP NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA production has
shown specific improvements in data loading. SCE has
reduced the 15-hour nightly delta load of all integrated 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 configuration 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.

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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

The architectural advances included with the latest 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 selfservice 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 Speed
Preparing 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 required. The BEx tool is there, and its virtually the same.
It just runs faster, Grabyan says. We have recently implemented 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 employees 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 runner, there were just a couple of very minor things for
them to learn.

Exploring New Opportunities: Mobility and

Improved Analytics
While 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 environment, 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 maintenance, 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 indicators 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

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Company Snapshot
Southern California Edison
Headquarters: Rosemead, California
Industry: Electric power utility
Employees: 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

capability that enables not only the mobile technology,

but the SAP HANA technology. Both technologies actually 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 analytics by integrating other applications with the SAP
HANA platform to take advantage of its computational
capabilities. Storm Tracker, related to outage management, 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 patterns, and costs, model customer segmentation, and
rapidly analyze advanced statistical models

Five Final Illuminations

Grabyan calls SAP HANA a game-changer in that it
brings significant business value through much faster
analytics and reporting, real-time solutions for business problems, potential for new business opportunities, and increased productivity. He shares five
pieces of advice for anyone who is considering an SAP
NetWeaver BW on SAP HANA project:
 nderstand your business data. You need to know
U
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 determine what you need to move forward.

1
2
3
4
5

 e your own general contractor. We brought in a

B
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.
 ake advantage of connections. Anytime youre
T
dealing with new software, you want to get the providers in this case, SAPs technical experts involved on site. If needed, they can call their own support 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.

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