First I am borrowing this line from an SAP slide:
Source: SAP
Second, credit for hard work, determination and sharing the knowledge goes to Raf Boudewijns who wrote Building your own Embedded Analytics application - part 3.
Following his blogs, we can use "operational data providers" and standard BI content inside your SAP ERP system ("no HANA required here")
There is no replication
There is no BW modeling
Yes there are BEx queries but those are all pre-built with the enhancement packages.
First, after following Raf's blogs, you can activate the enhancement packages and the BI content. Then launch Analysis Office (my version is 1.4 SP9) and Insert Data Source
See example below:
So you can see all the sample content already activated when you activate the packages.
In this example, I select the Assets not posted (also a standard ECC report)
The result is in an Excel format, something many finance users and accountants want.
To me this is a great way to use "real-time" data from your ERP system with an easy tool to use like Analysis Office.