SAP Business Intelligence

I’m sure you have heard the expression, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” For this reason alone, SAP Business Intelligence and specifically SAP’s Business Warehouse need to be on your radar screen. SAP BI lets you measure your business results, making it possible to then manage your business intelligently. If you’re implementing NetWeaver, there’s even more reason to deploy SAP BI—it serves as one of the core underlying components, providing a business intelligence platform for data warehousing, along with a suite of business intelligence tools. Use BW to combine data from SAP as well as external data sources; transform your data, consolidate it, and take care of all your reporting needs from this single repository underpinning NetWeaver and more.

Integration with Other SAP Components

Use SAP BW’s BEx Information Broadcasting service to publish precalculated documents (or links to them) in SAP Enterprise Portal. And integrate content from SAP BW using tools like the BEx (pronounced “bex”) Broadcaster, the BEx Web Application Designer, the BEx Query Designer, KM Content, the SAP Role Upload, and the Portal Content Studio. In this way, SAP users can actually use the data sitting across their NetWeaver enterprise, and make better decisions.

SAP Business Warehouse also has hooks into the SAP Knowledge Warehouse. Use it to manage your documentation, training materials, and other knowledge-management materials. Integrate SAP BW documents into SAP EP and KW using the repository manager. And use SAP XI to send data from SAP and non-SAP sources, including data marts built on any number of RDBMS platforms, to SAP BW. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Subareas of SAP BI

At a basic level, SAP BI consists of the BI platform and a Data Warehousing solution. The BI platform provides the technical infrastructure necessary to complete online analytical processing (OLAP) services, create planning applications, and conduct data mining. This includes

• Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), used to process and make sense of reams of operational as well as historical data. SAP’s OLAP engine lets you slice and dice this data (SAP calls this multidimensional analysis) based on your particular organization’s needs.

• SAP’s Metadata Repository lets you access and use and report against the metadata (data about the data) associated with your BW data and its objects.

• BW’s Business Planning and Simulation (BW-BPS, formerly found within SAP Strategic Enterprise Management, or SEM) is a generic planning module that lets you create planning applications that span an entire enterprise, complete with a web front-end to facilitate reporting.

• Analysis Process Designer (APD) can combine data from different sources and then help you “mine” it, essentially discovering new information in the form of trends, new developments, and so on.

• An easy-to-use Reporting Agent lets you schedule exception reports that run in the background; you can subscribe/unsubscribe to these reports, issue them based on alerts, forward them to delegates, and print them only when warranted (again, on an exception basis).

The second subarea of SAP BW, Data Warehousing, provides visibility to your data and then enables you to convert that data into useful information. You can segregate data by business units or other organizational entities, or aggregate it (combine it) across an entire enterprise—or both! SAP Data Warehousing supports real-time and historical SAP and non-SAP data sources, which can then in turn be

• Retrieved from source system(s)
  
  
• Transformed
  
  
• Consolidated
  
  
• Cleaned
  
  
• Stored
  
  
• Retrieved as needed for reporting and analysis
  
  

Use SAP BW’s Administrator Workbench to manage this process (see Figure 12.1).

Implementing BI

After you have determined the specific NetWeaver business scenarios you want to deploy, implementing SAP BI is straightforward:

• Prepare your SAP source systems (such as SAP R/3, R/3 Enterprise, or ECC).
  
  
• Install SAP WebAS ABAP, and then BW, and finally the BW content add-ons.
  
  
• Optionally, install SAP BW Java components (like the SAP BI Universal Data Integration or SAP BI Meta Model Repository options).
  
  
• Optionally, install SAP’s Search and Classification add-on called TREX (necessary only if you want to be able to house and search for documents within BW, rather than data and data objects).
  
  
• Optionally, install SAP’s BW Precalculation Service (required for SAP BW Reporting using the Business Explorer Analyzer).
  
  
• Install the SAP GUI with the SAP BW add-on on each desktop, laptop, or other host from which you want to connect to SAP BW.
  
  
• Optionally, install Internet Explorer 5.5 (or higher) or Netscape 7.01 (or higher) on each desktop, laptop, or other host from which you want to display SAP BW web applications.
  
  
• Optionally, install Crystal Enterprise SAP Edition Version 10 and Crystal Reports (useful for providing additional formatting in reports).
  
  
• Set up any remaining non-SAP data sources.
  
  

Legacy and Other Challenges

For companies that have already deployed a Data Warehousing or Business Intelligence platform for their enterprise, SAP BW might appear redundant. Truth be told, though, the capabilities that BW brings to the table sets it apart from other solutions you have already implemented. As one of SAP’s most mature product offerings, it bears a closer look. In particular, BW’s capability to proactively publish reports and provide access to BI through the Enterprise Portal makes it easy to use. Its capability to act as both a central warehousing repository and as a mechanism for consolidating information across SAP and non-SAP systems alike also makes it a valuable component for any company adopting NetWeaver.

Most arguments against deploying SAP Business Warehouse in favor of another data warehousing or business intelligence platform hold little water. For example, BW is highly scalable. It’s very mature. It leverages SAP’s standard WebAS (and previously Basis) layer, making it easy to initially install and support. It provides a wealth of technology options spanning all major operating systems and RDBMS platforms. Finally, it is highly capable. Compared to other solutions, with all these matters essentially a wash or decidedly in SAP’s favor, combined with the SAP nametag, no other solution makes good business sense or IT sense like SAP BI.