In the Part I of this blog I have explained the high level information regarding Customer Engagement Intelligence (CEI) application, business benefits and how one can load data into that HANA powered analytical application. I wanted to present the deep dive of loading legacy data (not just any data…but real good data) into this high powered application as more often customers have following challenges.
Business Challenges:
- Extracting, mapping and loading your legacy SAP CRM and non-SAP CRM data into SAP HANA to use with SAP Customer Value Intelligence?
- Mapping and loading the data structure of your customer satisfaction survey and the results of these surveys into SAP HANA?
- Extending your accounts address with geocode data so that it can visualize in Account Intelligence iPad app?
As described in Part 1 of the blog, we have a rapid deployment solution (https://service.sap.com/rds-dlh) that meets these very business needs.
Why Rapid Data Load?
So, the commonly asked question is “Why should one use Rapid Data Load”?
- I can think of several reasons in addition to the fact that solution name consists of “rapid” :smile:
- This solution provides predefined content to load specific data sources for the SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence solution into SAP HANA platform.
- CRM marketing and sales data sources from legacy SAP, non-SAP CRM
- third-party data
- satisfaction survey
- account Geocode data
- This solution provides predefined content to load specific data sources for the SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence solution into SAP HANA platform.
- It includes all requirements, components and load jobs aka pre-defined content ready to be used
- Go live in as little as 8 weeks for objects that are scoped in the solution already (well defined scope equals to piece of mind which is priceless :wink: )
- Step by Step guides that provide valuable content from project initiation till go-live
I am sure you might be wondering what about a situation where you required load an object that is not listed above. In those cases, the additional effort will be identified early in the process through the requirement checklist. The good news is, methodology, content, and service approach from this solution can be used and can greatly benefit the data load effort.
How Rapid Data Load to HANA works?
All the predefined content, load jobs for SAP Data Services software, as well as reports and mappings of specific objects to load into SAP HANA based on well-known data migration methodology (best explained in the blog by Frank http://scn.sap.com/people/frank.densborn/blog/2012/05/25/a-better-way-to-migrate-your-sap-data-with-...
Following is a good example of how to load legacy CRM data into CEI application powered by HANA
Example In action: Load Legacy CRM data into CEI
Once you deploy the RDS content, it provides you with various repositories that support you load data from various legacy sources(listed above).
Repository name | SAP CRM | Non-SAP CRM | Satisfaction Survey | Geocode |
DATA_LOAD_HANA_REPO_01 | X | |||
DATA_LOAD_HANA_REPO_02 | X | |||
DATA_LOAD_HANA_REPO_03 | X | |||
DATA_LOAD_HANA_REPO_04 | X |
We will consider loading legacy CRM data in the below example. So, we have logged into DATA_LOAD_HANA_REPO_02 repository. Here you see all data services jobs that will enable to successfully load legacy data.
In the first step of the first, initial load of non-SAP CRM data to SAP HANA, you have to create some tables which are necessary for the data replication.
This will be done by executing the job Data_Load_into_HANA_Step_1_Create_Data_Model_CRM. This job will create some intermediate tables which are needed to replicate fields of data type BINARY like GUID fields from the non-SAP CRM to SAP HANA in a correct way. You only have to run this job once before the initial load.
Global variables provide control on the behavior of job execution and provides great flexibility.
Once the initial setup is done, now you can execute the rest of jobs to actually load the legacy data. For example, sales opportunities can loaded by executing the following job.
Data validation out-of-the-box content includes specific business rules for validating source data against SAP target system. Content includes extraction of check tables from the SAP target system for the value mapping
Once again, pre-defined global variables provide default that match target system in this it is CEI powered by SAP HANA (eg: data formats, object specific information).
The pre-defined content (data services jobs, validation rules, templates...etc) greatly accelerate the project life cycle (In an RDS survey, it is estimated approx 40% cost savings achieved when compared with traditional implementations). Please note that all these pre-defined content is available free-of-charge to SAP customers so feel free to check them out @ https://service.sap.com/rds-dlh.
Software Requirements: (don't forget to start with these)
SOFTWARE
Pre-requisite: SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence 1.0
Pre-requisite: SAP HANA Platform edition 1.0 SPS5
SAP Data Services 4.1
OPERATING SYSTEM (for SAP Data Services)
Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 x64, SUSE LINUX 11 x64
DATABASE (for SAP Data Services)
MS SQL 2008 R2, Oracle 11g