Answering the “Where,” “What,” and “How” Questions with CMaps Plugin

by Bill Rojas, SAP Digital 

CMaps Plugin is one of my favorite new offerings on SAPStore.com. Yes, it’s true: they’re all great. But to me, as a highly visual person, I love the way CMaps Plugin aggregates a massive amount of geospatial data and gives it life – and how it presents not just locational data, but real-time weather, as well. Brilliant. 

What Ryan Goodman and his team from CMaps Analytics have created is a solution with broad cross-industry application and appeal. As part of my series of blogs on partner offerings on the store, I talked with him to get more insight into how customers are using CMaps Plugin, and what business challenges it solves. 

Ryan explained that, during his tenure working in analytics with BusinessObjects and then SAP, he found that customers were constantly asking “where” questions that couldn’t easily be answered. Where are customers coming from? Where is the highest concentration of risk in the supply chain? Where are our salespeople in relation to customers, destinations, other key locators? Basically, where do business opportunities exist? 

Ryan launched his company in 2007 with the clear mission of filling that gap in existing business intelligence and analytics software. The data was all there, he explained, but without the geographical context. “So we built the ultimate geographical mapping component. We enable you to look at the data through a different lens.” 

Since that time, he and his team have experienced strong uptake across multiple industries – automotive, insurance, manufacturing, and energy, to name a few – and lines of business, from operations, sales, and HR to the executive suite. The use cases are just as diverse, but here’s a good example. For one customer, looking at shipping data using CMaps Plugin revealed something that simply wasn’t apparent before: product was being routed from the U.S. to the Middle East to South America. Not exactly the shortest distance between two points. “It just jumps out at you on a map,” Ryan said. 

CMaps Plugin integrates with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards software, using powerful analytics and geomapping to enable business users to visualize any locale in the world with assets, regions, and KPIs all shown together. And the users are primarily businesspeople, Ryan noted, not analysts but front-line employees, salespeople, executives – those who need an easy way to associate business information with a geographical context. 

You really should see it in action. You can actually use a pointer to isolate an area on the dashboard, then filter to show, for instance, shipments scheduled for delivery within the next two days. Then add the weather. Now, you can see that a Nor’easter is on its way to Boston, and reroute the shipment to avoid the coastal storm. You can see which customers are affected, and even how it might impact revenue ... all to the street level. The map captures the indicators you identify and integrates it with a report. The key here is interactivity; these days, it’s easy enough to create a map, but with CMaps Plugin, you can actually click and draw on it to work with the data as you wish. 

Say you’re traveling to an unfamiliar area and planning to call on several customers during the trip. You can draw a circle on the dashboard and zoom in to see driving distances between them, plus whatever else you need – the airport, hotels, and the old college roommate you hope to visit. Seriously, that’s another terrific feature of CMaps Plugin. It even enables you to draw in data from other sources besides the BI software – open source data such as demographics, or premium enriched data like foot traffic from geo-advertising using, for example, SAP Digital Consumer Insight. 

Have I convinced you yet? How about the fact that you can purchase CMaps Plugin with a quick and easy click-through process on SAP Store, and begin using it almost immediately? It’s a simple plug-and-play component for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, with no coding or server software required, at the very reasonable price of US$349 per user per month.  But the opportunities do not end there. CMaps Plugin is also available for SAP BusinessObjects Lumira, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, and APIs for SAPUI5/SAP Fiori (hint, hint to my SAP BusinessObjects Lumira friends). 

While I’m on that subject, let me share what Ryan told me about why he and his team decided to list CMaps Plugin on SAP Store. First, he noted that his experience with BusinessObjects enabled him to build the application just as the SAP team would have, with tight integrations. And for customers and prospects, he said, its presence on SAP Store showcases that strong collaboration with SAP, giving them confidence in the product – and an easy, affordable, and frictionless way to take advantage of it. Needless to say, we’re glad to have it on our store.