© 2012 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved. SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Solution...

© 2012 Wellesley Information Services. All rights reserved.

SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Solution Portfolio: Picking the right tool for the job

Dr. Bjarne BergComerit Inc.

In This Session …

• We will look at all major SAP BusinessObjects front-end tools

• You will see several demos and we will discuss strength and weaknesses of all the tools

• At the end of this session you will have a good understanding of each tool’s capabilities and be able to compare and contrast each of them

• This session will also make you well prepared to decide what tools you want to pursue

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What We’ll Cover …

• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards• The BI 4.0 Launchpad and Demo• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis (OLAP tool)• SAP BusinessObjects WebIntelligence (Ad-Hoc Querying)• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (Data exploration tool)• Crystal Reports (Formatted reporting tool)• BI Workspaces and Modules - a Demo• Wrap-up

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards

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Dashboards can be built using the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards tool (formerly known as Xcelsius) SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards was launched in March 2010, and is the flagship product for data visualization and dashboards

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards Example — Flexibility

• Graphs can be displayed many ways• Navigation can be done and saved as

‘scenarios’• This dashboard also has on-line help

This dashboard is based only on a SAP BW query and BICS connector;

the cube is in SAP HANA and the dashboard therefore loads in less

than 8 seconds.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards – Mobile Example

• Dashboards are most useful when compared to something

• This dashboard is relative to a business plan

• Notice that all graphs can be displayed many ways and that color coding is consistent across dashboards

Make sure layout, buttons, and colors are consistently used and that the location of the

objects aligns perfectly with each other.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard — Display and Colors

• This dashboard groups six different categories and over 30 lines into an easily readable table using a few lines and mostly colors

• Too many lines and incorrect use of “bold” makes dashboards very hard to read

Don't cram too much into single dashboards. Plan on multiple dashboards for each business area.

Formatted Number based Dashboard Example

• Dashboards can also be highly formatted and static with little user interactive

• In this dashboard we included some KPIs and only the balance sheet for an organization, instead of using Crystal reports for this sort of work.

Not all dashboards have a high degree of navigation and imaged. For finance dashboards, presenting the numbers

in a meaningful way may be more important.

Operational Dashboards

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• Dashboards can be operational

• This dashboard focus on billing disputes and is used to monitor closing of cases

• The users of this dashboard are clerks in the billing office, not executives.

Some dashboards are operational in nature and gives a summary of the key metrics and new cases as they occur. Such

dashboards works best when data is refreshed often or real-time

Linked to Web Services

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• Dashboards are most useful when shared with others

• Power users can create great departmental dashboards that can be shared inside smaller organizational units

In this dashboard, the data is merged with Google maps and external news feeds. This makes the dashboard much more interactive and interesting.

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BI Self Service — A New Concept Enabled by BI 4.0

A new perspective is the idea that users can do much of their own “development” workThe Launch Pad is intended to make this easier. Users can: Use multiple tabs to work on several

documents at the same time Search for what they are looking for

and filter results

The idea is to have a single launch item for all reports and analysis. Many call this a "report center."

SAP BI 4.0 Demo and Launchpad and Dashboards

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SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Excel Interface

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The SAP BusinessObjects Analysis tool exists in both:• MS Office edition • OLAP edition

(web)

The MS Office edition supports both Excel and PowerPoint Source SAP AG,2011

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — PowerPoint Interface

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The tool has a query panel and can embed “live” BI analysis in the Microsoft Office applications Excel and PowerPoint

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Web Edition

• The edition for OLAP (Web edition) is great for analysts who want to interact with the data and also add their own calculations, formatting, charts, and filtering

• The output from this analysis can be shared with others within a department or logical grouping of employees who need to see the information

17This is not a basic reporting tool, but an analysis tool

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis OLAP — Navigating the Basics

• You can have up to four analysis items open on the same page

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Analysis is not a basic reporting tool, but an analysis tool with a very high degree of flexibility to conduct

PowerUser analysis and OLAP reporting

You can use the task toolbar to toggle between:DataPropertiesOutline

You can have many analysis sheets open at the same time (three is the default)

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis — Navigation

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Most power users will find this intuitive and easy to

learn…

The tool bars are consistently used in the whole Web application

Through tabs and simple selection screens, the users can easily access, select, and navigate the data

Users can also add their own formulas and calculations in the Web interface and store the definitions

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SAP BusinessObjects WebIntelligence (ad-hoc reporting)

WebIntelligence is an on-line web based tool to access the data in an ad-hoc fashion. It can be deployed as a PowerUser tool, or as an end user tool (if the report is simplified and navigation is limited).

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When deploying WebI reports that

are linked to a dashboards you

should pre-run as many as possible

due to the increase in performance

(HANA and BWA also helps)

SAP BusinessObjects WebIntelligence Catalog of reports

• WebI is also great for building an inventory of reports that are published in a public folder on the BI 4.x Launchpad.

• This creates a catalog of available reports that users can search and execute based on security privileges

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Security has to be build on who can publish into the public folders, we commonly refer to those users as ‘authors’ and not PowerUsers

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer — Exploration Tool

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a tool that is intended for rapid interactive analysis of large volumes of data

• Think of it as a BI search engine

• The tool works by indexing large volume of data on dedicated server blades using the SAP HANA or BWA Technology

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is accessed through pre-built Information Spaces. These define what fields are available in the exploration and what users can navigate on.

The core benefit of Explorer (accelerated version): IT IS REALLY FAST!

A Step-By-Step Demo: Searching

1. Load the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Web interface into a browser

2. Search for “sales”

3. Get the searchresults and a list of “information spaces”

The search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” scoreThe search result list is sorted based on an internal “relevancy” score

A Step-by-Step Demo: The Initial View

4. The system looks at the data and formats it based on implied hierarchies (i.e., time, geography, customer) as well as measures Users may navigate and change measures, graphs, and tables

Searching in a Result Set and Measures

5. Again, we are interested in sales around Texas, and can search the initial result set

6. By changing the Measure from “margin”to “sales revenue” all graphs and tables change

Changing Charts and Drill Down

7. We can change the chart by selecting from the left menu options

8. While the first display was based on the“best guess,” we cannow drill down to thedifferent product lines

The best graphingoptions, based on ourdata, is highlighted by a star:

More Graphing Options

9. There are many graphingoptions and some are more useful than others

“Proportional” view is best when you are looking for size relations, i.e., what are the largest contributors to sales?

Try several graphing options before deciding on “your” viewTry several graphing options before deciding on “your” view

Most of the time, the reccomended graphs works best for the data set, but not always

Explore More — Filtering

10. By clicking on “Explore more” you are promted to filter on the characteristic you selected

Filtering data makes the images more meaningful. It is harder to analyze 50 states and scroll through the data.

Filtering data makes the images more meaningful. It is harder to analyze 50 states and scroll through the data.

Since we clicked “Explore more” in the state box, we can now select only the states we are interested in

Filter Results

We now see only the (product) lines sold in three states

Always see if any items have been removed in a filter before you look at the data, i.e., 15,061,789 is not the sales

revenue for the firm, only the revenue for three states

Always see if any items have been removed in a filter before you look at the data, i.e., 15,061,789 is not the sales

revenue for the firm, only the revenue for three states

Filter values are displayed

here:

The Visualization Panel

11. You can also zoom in on the data by only showing the visualization panel

In the Visualization Panel, you can view all the fields and measures as a complete table

Notice: The table only contains data from the three states we filtered on

Other Display Options

12. You can view the data in relative size by using a comparison graph

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Line graphs are usually preferred if you have 3-20 data points

Areas on the graphs can be highlighted by clicking on one or more data points

Sorting and New Calculations

13. Any data panel can be sorted in many ways

Measures used on any graph can be calculated “on-the-fly”Measures used on any graph can be calculated “on-the-fly”

15. We can also add our own measures

In our example we are adding the measure “Margin Per Unit” as total margin divided by “quantity sold”

Downloading a Data Set

14. Any result set displayed in SAP BusinessObjects Explorer may be saved to a PC as a comma-delimited file

You can select to save the data set filtered by the navigations or only the data from the visualization panel

Data saved this way can be opened in Excel or imported directly into Access and other databases

Data saved this way can be opened in Excel or imported directly into Access and other databases

Configuring Measures

15. Measures in the data set can also be configured to be “filter columns” for user navigation

Other optionsinclude: • Max• Min• Sum• Average

This is how you determine how data will be accessed and how measures will be displayed

This is how you determine how data will be accessed and how measures will be displayed

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer — Big Picture

Web Application Server (BOBJEnterprise Web App.)

BO Explorer Servers

BO Enterprise Servers

SAP Business Objects Explorer Client

SAP Business Objects Explorer Web Application

Explorer Servers Explorer Servers Explorer Servers Explorer Servers

Report Server(WIRS)

Central Mgmt. System (CMS)

Enterprise Repository

Master Service

Indexing Service

Exploration Service

Search Service

Database usinga Universe

BWAAccelerator

SAP BW7.x

BWA DriverCentral Mgmt. System (CMS)

Lucene Driver

Lucene Indexes

Source: Dr. Berg, Comerit Inc.

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SAP Crystal Reports Is a Pixel Controlled Reporting Tool

Crystal Reports was one of the leading vendors that became part of Business Objects and later SAP.

Crystal, with its two versions, is great tool for batch reporting of “pixel controlled” formatted reports

There are some capabilities to do interactive analysis, but it is primarily a tool for structured information access

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Today there are two versions:• SAP Crystal Reports 2011 (upgrade from 2008)• SAP Crystal Reports Enterprise.

This is a version with tight integration to SAP BW via BICS, a new interface, language support and integration to BI platform alerting framework

SAP Crystal Reports Is Available as a Free Trial Version

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You can download a 30-day fully functional trial version of SAP Crystal Reports and see if this product is interesting for your organization at:• https://www.sap.com/campaign/

2011_CURR_SAP_Crystal_Reports_2011/index.epx

SAP Crystal Reports has been embedded with SAP BW since version 3.0B in 2002

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BI Workspaces and Modules

BI Workspaces allows you to link many SAP BI tools in the same area, without the need to jump between them. In this workspace, we have 3 Dashboards, 1 WebI report, 1 Analysis report and 1 Crystal report running at the same time.

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BI Workspaces and Modules

We can also link the objects in a workspace together and pass variables and navigation between some of them

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This alleviates some of the task of opening and running the workspace every day.

Modules

We can also use Modules to make the objects more interesting by adding comments to them.There are two types of Modules• Text modules • Compound modules

You can access Modules from the ‘my application area.

The Text Module

Using the Text Module we can add our comments and update them whenever we like.

There are two options:• Regular text• HTML

(this allows you to use HTML tags to format you text

The Compound Module with a Text Module

Using the Compound Module we display many modules together, this include text, dashboards, WebI reports, Crystal reports, and Analysis for OLAP.

Creating a compound modules are so simple, that anyone with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint skills can learn it in less than 5 minutes!!

BI Workspaces Demo

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Who Gets to Do What?

• The major decision for an SAP BI driven enterprise is to determine who gets access to each tool

• There is often a temptation for the IT community of wanting to keep the tools under their domain – That is a mistake

• The IT community should actively work with the power and casual users to improve human capabilities and thereby teach them to become more productive employees

49Chinese Proverb

What Tool to Select

• All SAP tools have strength and weaknesses This is a subjective summary of each of the major tools

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End User

Power User

Execu-tives

End User

Power User Author

IT Developer Graphing Navigation

External data

External web

services Simplicity OLAPAd-Hoc

querying

Web Application Designer

- - - - - -

Dashboard Designer (Xcelsius)

- - - -

Visual Composer - -

Interactive Analysis ad-hoc (WebI)

- - -

Analysis Edition for OLAP (web)

- -

Analysis MS edition

- -

Crystal Reports - - -

BO Explorer - - - - -

- Limited Support Some Support Good Support

Capabilities

ToolLong-term

Strategy

DevelopmentTarget User

Resources

• SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 Cookbook, by David Lai and Xavier Hacking, Packt Publishing (book)

• SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide (2nd Ed), SAP Press (700 pages, Oct, 2012) Brogden, Sinkwitz, Holden, Marks, & Orthous.

• Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects (2nd Ed) by Li and Delodder, SAP Press, (650 pages, April 2012)

• SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP BusinessObjects: The Comprehensive Guide by Heillig, Kessler, Knotzele, John and Thaler-Mieslinger, SAP Press (782 pages, Dec, 2011)

• SAP HANA an Introduction, by Bjarne Berg and Penny Silvia, SAP Press, (430 pages, Oct. 2012)

• SAP BusinessObjects System Administration, by Myers and Vallo, SAP Press (530 pages, Nov. 2012)

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7 Key Points to Take Home

• Pick the right tools based on what you want to accomplish “Everything in the world is a nail, when you only have a hammer”

• The BW tool set has evolved substantially over the last two years — Have you?

• Today’s presentation developer is much more than a query developer. More than one skill set is needed

• Work hard on empowering your end users. You are not doing your organization any “favors” by keeping BI in the IT organization

• Consider integrating more than one tool for you analytical needs• You may want to consider splitting your backend BI operations

and creating a new reporting group focusing on the front-end• Budget “real money” to get your organization proficient in the

new tools. This is not done overnight, nor cheaply

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Your Turn!

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How to contact me:Dr. Bjarne Berg

[email protected]

Disclaimer

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, SAP NetWeaver®, Duet™®, PartnerEdge, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP.

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