A New Era for SAP BI Customers

Both SAP and Business Objects refer to SAP's acquisition of Business Objects as a "match made in heaven". The products and services offered by the two vendors are indeed very complementary.

In the past, SAP BI was often implemented as a reporting solution for SAP?s transaction systems (ECC, CRM, APO etc). And this normally worked well. The turnaround times were fast and the return on investment was good compared to third party products. But this was where the benefits stopped. When it came to the delivery of reports based on non- SAP data, SAP failed to impress.

SAP BI as an enterprise data warehouse

Many CIOs face a situation at some point in time where they have to select a product for an enterprise data warehouse, an ultimate reporting solution where all critical reporting data is stored in one place with one frontend solution and a consistent look and feel.

The CIO cannot present a strong enough business case to decommission SAP BI in favor of a stronger product, but at the same time cannot present a strong enough business case to select SAP BI as the enterprise data warehouse, due to the obvious weaknesses of the product.

This is all changing now. CIOs who have already implemented SAP BI can now rest assured that it was a clever investment after all, and their SAP BI system is now positioned perfectly well to become the obvious choice for an enterprise data warehouse. The other good news is that much of the work that SAP customers have put into their SAP BI solutions will not be lost. For example, the introduction of Business Objects into an SAP environment will have little effect on the data models and the data warehouse activities, and the data extractions from SAP transaction systems will stay intact.

So how long will it take for SAP and Business Objects to integrate the products? The odds are good that it will be quick. Business Objects are experts in making their software work with other products, and now they?re getting full cooperation from the other party. Business Objects already run on SAP. We have tested it thoroughly, and the results are surprisingly impressive. The tools will obviously become more impressive as they are integrated more natively.

Some good news: in Sept 2008 SAP released its very first enhancement pack for NetWeaver 7.0. This enhancement pack is jam-packed with Business Objects integration improvements. We haven?t had a chance to test this yet, but it?s looking promising.

So what are the changes that SAP customers should expect? SAP has clearly communicated in their roadmap that the front-end tools will change. SAP customers will start considering new ways of reporting data. Generally speaking, the attitudes about user adoption are likely to change. Users should be happier, and more BI teams should consider user adoption as a key objective. Also, the way that data is extracted, transformed and loaded (ETL) from external (non-SAP) systems will change.

The future of SAP planning

Business Objects has a decent planning tool called SRC. However, SAP has selected Outlooksoft (and not SRC) as the planning tool of the future, to exceed both SRC and SAP Integrated Planning. SAP has acquired Outlooksoft and renamed it BPC (Business Planning and Consolidations). BPC is SAP?s answer to Hyperion and Cognos. This is the promised land for planning. It is currently a stand-alone solution, not integrated with SAP BI. However, SAP has just released the highly anticipated ramp-up version of BPC NetWeaver that is fully integrated with SAP BI. So what are the SAP customers currently doing about their new planning requirements? Some are powering ahead with their Integrated Planning projects, some are implementing the standalone version of BPC, some have signed up for the BPC NetWeaver ramp-up and some are putting their planning projects on hold until the dust has settled. The success of the ramp-up will be a key factor in regaining momentum on SAP planning projects, especially for those customers who demand an integrated solution.

A different way of thinking

Many SAP users are still considering their SAP BI system as merely a reporting solution for SAP. An SAP BI system has the potential of becoming a true enterprise data warehouse that enables better decision-making in all divisions and all levels of the organizations.

This often means that the BI manager needs to develop a BI strategy and a roadmap that works for the executive team and other decision-makers in the organization. The BI manager inevitably has to reach out to different groups of people inside and outside of the organization who have control over important data, such as non-SAP transaction data, external planning data, survey results, industry benchmarks and competitor information.

Source: Inside SAP