Dmitry is a solo-preneur in the SAP Business Intelligence area in a broad sense. He has a long track-record implementing Data Warehouses, regional Data Marts and operational reporting systems, based on Business Warehouse, HANA-native DWH and S/4 HANA Embedded Analytics technologies.
He has accumulated the knowledge in the BI area by completing most of the projects as hands on modeler, therefore any Architectural and Way-of-Working advice comes from practical observations. Dmitry speaks English, Dutch, Russian and Lithuanian; He loves kite-surfing and snow-kiting depending on the season.
What's It Like to Start a Career as a SAP HANA and BI Professional?
Q1. Hi Dmitry, thanks for taking the time out to talk to us today. You have 11+ years’ experience in SAP BI implementations with 4 years of which have been focused on SAP HANA and S/4HANA Analytics. What were the defining reasons behind choosing SAP and Business Intelligence career journey?
How to Build a Business Intelligence Career
Q5. What was thinking behind ‘the three flavours of BI on SAP S/4HANA’ idiom?
1. Customers may choose to do Analytics in Fiori-based tools that SAP delivers with S/4HANA, namely KPI Modeler, default DesignStudio template, WebDynpro-based multi-dimensional modeler. They do have their limitations, but certainly it is a lot you get without a need for any additional software license investment.
2. For those clients that cannot, really, get satisfied with what Fiori has to offer, integration with Business Objects is very good. It is, certainly, easy to hook up and you have all the tools available in BO suite.
3. The third and most complicated landscape is a combination of S/4HANA Analytics, plus BO, plus Business Warehouse. Again, I (and my clients) am mostly concerned with integration of the three. Judging from what I have seen, a lot of effort has been spent by SAP making it all work together. I am positively surprised to see how well it goes.
Q6. In addition to delivery as an SAP consultant, you also provide blogs and insight to the SAP community, speak at SAP conferences and provide SAP Education. Which is the most rewarding to you, and why?
Well, I like the combination. Project work helps me build in-depth knowledge of a particular sub-area. For example, I have spent past 12 months on building CDS-views based Analytics models in S/4HANA. On the other hand, teaching for SAP Education demands broader subject knowledge. Even though my favourite courses on Embedded Analytics are quite brief yet, my students often come well-prepared with lots of questions on and around the main subject.
So, hands-on work and teaching certainly do complement each other and give me a good push to grow. Conference speaking is just pure fun!
Myths and Realities of an IT Career Path
Q7. Tell us something most people don’t know about SAP S/4HANA?
Many SAP customers do not think of 2025 (end of support for traditional ERP systems) yet. But I think this will change soon. If they choose to stay with SAP, we will see a lot of S/4HANA migration/implementation projects coming in the 7 years ahead.
Q8. What do you think are the stand out characteristics and skills of a successful BI focused consultant?
My personal observation is that those BI consultants that are eager to have a broad BW/BO/HANA knowledge combined with tolerance for scripting/coding have a solid position on the job market. If you have an ability to travel from a user-requirement down to source tables and draw a draft of entity diagram in 10 minutes, it’s a good start already.
Q9. What do you think is going to be the next key evolution of SAP S/4HANA, and where do you think its impact will be felt the most?
To my mind, small bits and pieces of Machine Learning weaved into Embedded Analytics on S/4HANA will be very much appreciated by the customers. As I have previously mentioned, SAP is working on this framework and aims at major release in 2018. I am very hopeful to have my hands on it ASAP.
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