APOS Publisher: Progressive Enterprise Publishing Solutions

for SAP BusinessObjects Tom Woodhead,

APOS Systems

Copyright ©2012, APOS Systems 100 Conestoga College Blvd., Suite 1118

Kitchener ON N2P 2N6, Canada

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Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1

Managing Risk, Increasing Shareholder Value ............................................................................ 1

Strategic BI .................................................................................................................................. 1

Operational BI ............................................................................................................................. 1

SAP BusinessObjects Publishing .................................................................................................. 2

APOS Publisher - Tightly Controlled Document Production, Publishing, Distribution .............. 2

Business Challenges, Business Intelligence .................................................................................... 2

Complex Enterprise Document Publishing Requirements ......................................................... 3

Migration of Legacy Systems ...................................................................................................... 3

Data Governance ........................................................................................................................ 4

SAP BusinessObjects and APOS Publisher ...................................................................................... 5

Advanced Bursting Engine .......................................................................................................... 6

Automated Document Production ............................................................................................. 6

Workflow Monitoring, Alerts, Auditing ...................................................................................... 7

Interactive Process Control ......................................................................................................... 7

Assured Delivery ......................................................................................................................... 8

Enhanced Distribution ................................................................................................................ 8

Conclusion: Achieving Progressive BI with APOS Publisher ........................................................... 9

Appendix A: The Regulatory Environment ................................................................................... 10

Insurance - Dodd-Frank and the FIO ......................................................................................... 10

Financial Services -Dodd-Frank and Basel III ............................................................................ 11

The Volcker Rule ....................................................................................................................... 11

About APOS Systems ..................................................................................................................... 13

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Introduction BI publishing answers a very complex question that many organizations in the insurance and financial services industries are currently facing. The question is this: how can an enterprise cope with an exponential growth in data, data types, and data sources, meet expanding regulatory requirements, cater to increased stakeholder communications needs, and manage security, privacy and other risks - all while reducing costs and increasing shareholder value? These usually conservative industries are facing a new imperative: modernize or be left behind.

Managing Risk, Increasing Shareholder Value Of course, insurance and financial services understand risk management: it's core to their product. But the kind of risk we are concerned with in this context is primarily internal risk. The internal risks and rewards in these industries are tied intimately to the modernization of IT infrastructure, the resulting displacement of legacy systems, and the impact of both on security, privacy and regulatory compliance. Investment in infrastructure is continuous, expensive and tricky. To achieve the rewards and mitigate the risks, CFOs, CIOs and BI platform managers have to understand market, technology, and regulatory trends, and to know when to invest in a given technology. The objective is to maximize ROI, competitive advantage and shareholder value, while minimizing risk.

Strategic BI The information-intensive nature of these industries, along with the complexity of the regulatory landscape, make the collection, generation and distribution of enterprise information critical. The right information has to get to the right recipients at the right time and in the right format. The failure to adhere to any of these criteria could be disastrous.

The introduction of business intelligence (BI) systems was initially a response to the growing volume, variety and complexity of enterprise information. BI systems such as SAP BusinessObjects provide an enterprise-wide, consistent view of this information and the analytic tools to make sense of it. As such, BI has quickly grown to become a strategic and mission critical platform within the enterprise.

"BI is no longer just a strategic tool.

It is now an operational tool

as well."

Operational BI Aging IT infrastructure, the emergence of new and more complex enterprise needs, and a dynamic regulatory environment have combined to create an unprecedented opportunity for companies in these industries to leverage their BI investment for precision information management, greater ROI, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). BI is no longer just a strategic analytics solution. It is now an operational platform as well.

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SAP BusinessObjects Publishing As business intelligence has moved to the strategic center of the enterprise, countless organizations have begun to realize and act on the knowledge that their BI infrastructure is more than a strategy and analytics vehicle. Because your BI system can open connections with virtually every data source within your enterprise, and because it is a flexible means of building highly customizable content for distribution, it is the natural choice for new line-of-business communications requirements, and for the migration of legacy communications functions.

SAP BusinessObjects' publishing capabilities are central to its role as an operational information system. We use the BI system to gather intelligence and generate documents. We use the BI system's publishing capabilities to deliver documents to the appropriate recipients. As BI takes on more and more legacy functions within an enterprise, the administration of the BI system's publishing functions becomes more labor-intensive, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to ensure that all documents are delivered securely and in a timely manner.

That's where APOS Publisher comes in. It complements, extends, and enhances the publishing capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects, allowing you to build and automate complex publishing workflows, and giving you complete control over information delivery.

APOS Publisher - Tightly Controlled Document Production, Publishing, Distribution The APOS Publisher solution helps enterprises using SAP BusinessObjects in complex publishing scenarios to execute tightly controlled document production, publishing and distribution workflows. Using Publisher's advanced bursting, automation, workflow monitoring, interactive process control, assured delivery, and enhanced distribution, encryption, and integration capabilities, enterprises can reduce risks, increase the ROI on their BI system, and build shareholder value.

Business Challenges, Business Intelligence Fortunately, as new challenges arise, business intelligence systems and their practitioners are also growing more adaptable and agile. The term "business intelligence" has been around since the late 1950s,1

• Growing volume, variety and complexity of enterprise document publishing requirements

but the concept has evolved considerably in the intervening years, and it is only in the past couple of decades that BI has moved to the strategic center of the enterprise. It has done so in response to new and growing set of challenges businesses are facing, including:

• Migration of legacy system functions to the BI system

1 Reportedly coined by Hans Peter Luhn in his 1958 paper, "A Business Intelligence System." he defined BI as "the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal."

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• Need for flexibility and agility to address new line-of-business and data governance requirements

Because SAP BusinessObjects and its practitioners have been growing with these challenges, they are well placed to serve enterprise needs as requirements ramp up.

Complex Enterprise Document Publishing Requirements A well managed BI system creates opportunities through agility and flexibility. It helps you automate administrative processes and implement proactive best practices to liberate your BI technicians from repetitive and error-prone activities, and it positions you and your BI system to handle a growing volume, variety and complexity of enterprise document publishing requirements.

Your ability to monitor mission-critical processes closely, to manage them proactively, and to deliver information in a timely and secure manner makes you and your BI system attractive to line-of-business management looking for new communications channels.

Migration of Legacy Systems For more than twenty years, technology pundits have been predicting the demise of the mainframe computer. It doesn't look like that will happen any time soon. IBM is not only continuing to develop and promote mainframes, they are also expanding their capabilities. For example, they announced in 2011 that the zEnterprise line of mainframes would soon support servers running Microsoft Windows.

In his 2005 white paper: The Future of the Mainframe, Gary Barnett noted some erosion of viability at the low end of the mainframe market, but fair gains in TCO at the mid- to large-sized end:

Migration away from the mainframe will be an excellent opportunity for a significant number of small mainframe users. But it won't be the 'cure-all' approach that some migration enthusiasts claim. Migration needs to be considered as part of an overall approach to legacy modernisation and renewal – many large companies will do a range of things, migrating some applications, replacing some, and leaving others where they are. The goal is to ensure that you deliver the functionality that the business needs today, are capable of delivering the changes that the business will ask for tomorrow, and are able to do so while keeping cost and risk at bay.

If we take IBM's record as a dancing elephant into account, we can be sure that the mainframe will remain with us for some time to come, especially in large enterprises, but that's not to say it will not be retasked. In fact, many of the legacy functions that require flexibility and agility are being migrated away from mainframes.

Celent, a research and consulting firm focused on the application of information technology in the global financial services industry, sums up the major issues with legacy migration in a white paper, "Legacy and Mainframe Migration: An Insurance Perspective" (PDF):

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• Legacy systems are "too inflexible to meet the more demanding technology needs of today."

• Legacy hardware platforms are "expensive and/or inflexible." • The code base of legacy software (Fortran, COBOL) is "expensive to maintain or

enhance."

Your BI system has all the data touchpoints that your legacy systems have, and more. Using your BI system injects flexibility into legacy processes and increases the ROI on your BI system itself.

Data Governance One consulting firm that works in both the insurance and financial services industries, Thomson Reuters Accelus, noted that companies in these verticals

...are pressed to effectively manage their compliance and risk obligations while simultaneously maintaining their current offerings and pursuing new business. From a compliance and audit perspective, these challenges require firms to constantly adapt to change - often amplified by a process that is short on time and high on pressure. When combined with the need to streamline workflow processes and mitigate risk, insurance firms are left with a sizable mountain to climb. Facing such a seemingly insurmountable challenge, proactive organizations are now looking to technology solutions that streamline their processes and workflow while connecting those disparate silos to form a complete governance, risk and compliance strategy that ensures they are able to grow and thrive even in the toughest business environments. [Emphasis added.]

Business intelligence solutions are often used as an integral part of such strategic and operational solutions, because they provide:

• A strategic, unified view of the enterprise, rather than a silo-oriented view that may show bias and inconsistencies;

• A means of delivering critical information to enterprise workflows in a timely and secure manner; and

• An integrated, auditable approach to information management.

The Thomson Reuters Accelus site confirms the need for this integrative approach in highly regulated industries in general:

Governance, risk, and compliance activities are, by their very nature, interconnected and therefore should rely on common sets of information, methodology, processes and technology. By establishing an integrated discipline encompassing regulation, policies, risks, controls, and issues, leading organizations are demonstrating that they can better leverage business intelligence, gain operating efficiency, and provide greater transparency into overall business risk.

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The regulatory environment will remain a source of uncertainty for the foreseeable future, thanks in part to the Dodd-Frank Act. Title 5, Subtitles A and B of this act describe new responsibilities for the insurance industry. Wikipedia's description of Title 5 is typical of the language used to describe the act:

In general, the Insurance Office may require any insurer company to submit such data as may be reasonably required in carrying out the functions of the Office. [Emphasis added.]

The future is low on certainty, and companies that maintain an agile and flexible BI infrastructure will be best suited to meet that future.

For more on the implications of the Dodd-Frank Act and other compliance issues, see Appendix A: The Regulatory Environment at the end of this white paper.

SAP BusinessObjects and APOS Publisher The publishing process in SAP BusinessObjects is critical to effective and pervasive business intelligence. You may have high-quality information within your BI system, but it's all for naught if that information doesn't reach the decision makers in your organization in a timely and secure manner.

At its best, the publishing process is invisible to your information consumers, but if you're a C-level executive, a line-of-business manager, or a platform manager, it is critical that you understand the importance of that publishing process in the generation of the appropriate information and its distribution to the appropriate recipients both internal and external to your organization.

APOS Publisher is an essential solution for organizations that have complex enterprise publishing and distribution requirements with multiple report format and destination types. For such organizations, APOS Publisher is a complete publishing solution, including robust bursting management, post-processing distribution service, report package management, and assured delivery to extend SAP BusinessObjects' capabilities.

Publisher not only automates a large part of your publishing process, but also provides the flexibility to manage the process of generating tailored documents and delivering them to stakeholders throughout the enterprise, and beyond.

APOS Publisher achieves advanced SAP BusinessObjects publishing through:

• An advanced bursting engine • Automated document production • Workflow monitoring, alerts and auditing • Interactive process control • Assured delivery, auto recovery, & partial burst reruns • Enhanced distribution, encryption & integration

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Advanced Bursting Engine APOS Publisher bursting achieves a high degree of automation through bursting definitions that are tied directly to your SAP BusinessObjects system. The bursting process adjusts automatically to user changes in your BI system. The APOS Publisher solution features single-pass, multi-pass, and advanced bursting methodologies that let you create all types of document workflows from the simplest to the most complex.

Publisher's bursting engine lets you:

• Slice information using parameters/prompts, filters, or selection formulas • Burst highly flexible and customizable documents using the key SAP BusinessObjects

content types, including Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence, Xcelsius, report packages and any combination of these

• Handle all types of report formats • Load dynamic lists of parameters and values

Complex bursting is designed to handle complex document generation and delivery, with secure access and assured delivery. Publisher's advanced bursting methodology is ideal when the publishing process requires multiple report instances, multiple batches and queues running in parallel and/or according to dependencies, a wide variety of data sources, absolute control over delivery protocols, and comprehensive monitoring functionality that monitors and logs the process, and alerts you to the status of the process. Complex bursting lets you:

• Burst in queues or batches • Work with a variety of reports within each bursting queue • Operate multiple bursting queues in parallel within your SAP BusinessObjects

environment • Create a hierarchical structure of record requests within batches, collections, and

projects to structure and control bursting jobs • Log all bursting activities for a comprehensive audit trail of your publishing

Figure 1 depicts a common complex bursting scenario.

Automated Document Production APOS Publisher makes SAP BusinessObjects your centralized solution for document generation and delivery by accepting requests to generate reports from any application or data source within your enterprise solution stack. You can use complex bursting to control the order of execution according to multiple dependencies for finely managed workflows. APOS Publisher even integrates easily with legacy hardware solutions such as AFP printers, so you can manage change incrementally and modernize at your preferred pace.

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Workflow Monitoring, Alerts, Auditing In the complex bursting scenario, Publisher's monitoring service monitors requests within batches, collections, and projects. Publisher issues alerts whenever errors occur, and when batches, collections, and projects are closed. The end of the bursting process automatically triggers reports to list the full status of batches, collections, and projects.

Interactive Process Control Publisher gives you complete awareness of the bursting process, and control over document production workflows within SAP BusinessObjects. Publisher's management console lets you configure all burst settings, and gives visibility to queues, collections, batches, projects and requests as they are executed. The console also allows the administrator to configure all burst settings.

Figure 1: Advanced Bursting

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Assured Delivery Every organization's report delivery needs are unique, and they are also frequently complex. Format, security, delivery location - all of these factors are key to satisfying the needs of business process workflows, and the needs of all business units and the information consumers within them.

Publisher has auto-recovery and partial-burst rerun capabilities, email notifications, and a comprehensive assured delivery system for tracking email messages and documents as they are generated, and printed or sent to email destinations. You can create reports to notify stakeholders on the status and results of the document delivery process.

All bursting activity is recorded to a separate data source where it can be analysed and audited for compliance purposes.

Enhanced Distribution The APOS Publisher solution's distribution capabilities provide additional post-processing, such as encryption and other special export options and destinations. Publisher uses regular SAP BusinessObjects scheduling functionality, but adds settings and custom properties to achieve more distribution flexibility. With Publisher, you can distribute your reports to multiple destinations simultaneously, including:

• Printer (multiple simultaneously) • Network file location • Email as attachment • Email as content • FTP • SSL FTP • Secure Shell FTP

Publisher's distribution functionality is also the key to integration with numerous enterprise content management systems (including Open Text and Microsoft SharePoint) for even wider accessibility. Attach your SAP BusinessObjects reports to your content management workflows to create complete intelligence packages. Attached reports include metadata such as source, parameters, ownership, and other lineage information to document information provenance.

Publisher also provides several levels of security:

• Standard: password protected Zip files, PDF files (128-bit encryption), Excel spreadsheets, Word documents

• Enhanced: APIs for custom encryption • Advanced: SSL Certificate based security

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Conclusion: Achieving Progressive BI with APOS Publisher The reasons for leveraging your SAP BusinessObjects' publishing capabilities for line-of-business and legacy functions are compelling. You already have an investment in SAP BusinessObjects, and SAP BusinessObjects is connected to all of your mission critical data sources.

SAP BusinessObjects presents clean, consistent, trusted data - the organization's single version of the truth, and is the one engine capable of delivering this information in a large variety of formats and to a large variety of locations.

APOS Publisher places a layer on top of the SAP BusinessObjects infrastructure to ensure that your publishing needs are satisfied by your SAP BusinessObjects BI infrastructure.

In publishing processes such as statement generation, control is all important. You need to know that every statement you intend to produce is in fact produced and delivered to the appropriate location, and if there is any problem during the generation/distribution process, then you need to be able fix the problem quickly and efficiently. APOS Publisher provides these capabilities, and in many cases automates them.

Publisher achieves data personalization using database driven lists of recipients. Because the master list derived from the database is automatically updated, you can burst the right slice of information to the right user at the right time - every time.

SAP BusinessObjects platform managers and technicians value the flexibility and agility that Publisher's custom properties, flags and settings add to their scheduling, bursting and distribution efforts, giving them the ability to deliver timely, secure documents.

Use Publisher, other APOS well managed BI solutions, and SAP BusinessObjects to achieve progressive business intelligence, greater ROI, lower TCO, greater competitive advantage, and greater shareholder value.

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Appendix A: The Regulatory Environment Whether you believe the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) goes too far, or not far enough in its regulatory provisions, there's no way to ignore its actual and potential impact on reporting requirements for the insurance and financial services industries. The Act begins a process designed to achieve regulatory objectives, but what those objectives will look like in reality is far from certain. Insurance and financial services companies must develop the agility to meet these challenges head on.

Insurance - Dodd-Frank and the FIO Traditionally, the US insurance industry has been regulated at the State level, but the new Federal Insurance Office (FIO, PDF), established by Dodd-Frank, creates oversight at the Federal level:

The Federal Insurance Office has the authority to identify issues or gaps in the regulation of insurance that could contribute to a systemic crisis in the insurance industry or the broader US financial system; and to make recommendations to the Financial Stability Oversight Council as to whether an insurer, including affiliates of an insurer, should be an entity subject to supervision by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The Office will also play a role in the resolution of certain troubled insurance companies.

Although the FIO is not, strictly speaking, a regulatory body, its status as a part of the Treasury Department's Office of Domestic Finance lends some clout to its consultative role.

Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) describes the impact of the FIO provision of the Dodd-Frank on insurance companies (PDF):

The specific activities of the Federal Insurance Office, while not defined in the Act, will likely be focused on the collection and analysis of information related to the insurance industry, for the purposes of evaluating potential systemic risk of insurers on the US insurance market and at a global level. The FIO will also enter into information-sharing agreements with other regulatory bodies, so insurance companies may expect to see increased coordination of regulatory examinations.

The FIO will monitor the way markets are served, monitor whether State-level regulatory provisions have been preempted, and make recommendations to the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Through this monitoring, an insurance company may be designated a systemically important financial institution (SIFI). A SIFI is any financial institution that has been deemed by the FIO as "too big to fail," in the sense that its failure would likely cause a global financial crisis. Such an institution will be subject to greater scrutiny and reporting responsibilities, including registration with the Federal Reserve Board, and enhanced standards concerning leverage and risk-based capital.

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The establishment of the FIO, and the ongoing activities of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), are likely to increase the regulatory reporting requirements of the insurance industry over the coming months and years.

Financial Services -Dodd-Frank and Basel III While the Federal regulatory framework is more established in the financial services industry, it is in flux because of the ongoing implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, and because of various unintended consequences sure to be lurking in that process. As EU Commissioner Michele Bernier has said (in a classic understatement), for financial services regulation, "technical details matter." The consequences of Dodd-Frank will be playing out for many years to come, and financial services companies will need to become more agile in the way they adapt to continuous changes in regulatory reporting requirements.

To put Dodd-Frank into perspective, the statute attempts to do what no financial regulatory legislation has ever done before: to reform simultaneously the various US models of regulation and supervision that historically have been applied to a wide range of different financial institutions and products... Combine all of this with an equally ambitious and simultaneous effort to reform the financial regulatory systems of the G-20 and the multiplicity of fundamental changes demanded over a short period of time begins to stretch the ability of individuals and institutions to adapt. (PwC)

As legislators and financial institutions wrestle with the implications of Dodd-Frank, they must also ensure compliance with the bank capital adequacy standard imposed by the Basel III international framework for banks. The importance of this compliance was underscored by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner:

Secretary Geithner stated that the United States must ensure it provides a much stronger set of protections to ensure a level playing field in the application of the new Basel III requirements. (PwC)

For those who manage information within insurance and financial services during this ongoing transition, agility and adaptability will become the most important qualities for information solutions.

The Volcker Rule Scheduled for implementation on July 21, 2012, the Volcker Rule is designed primarily to ban banks from engaging in proprietary trading (i.e., trading with their own money as opposed to that of their clients). Public input on the legislation was solicited and allowed until February 13, 2012, and the number of objections and reservation submitted by the financial, securities and insurance industries has reportedly been unprecedented:

The scope of the Wall Street pushback reflects the complexity of the rule. The draft rule that regulators unveiled last October spans about 300 pages and poses some 1,300 questions for the public to address.

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It is unclear how the final wording of the Volcker Rule will affect the insurance industry, but representatives of that the industry have been concerned enough to lobby for an exemption. In any case, the volume of feedback has made it likely that regulators will not meet the deadline for implementing this legislation, and the uncertainty will continue well into the future.

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About APOS Systems Since its beginning in 1992, APOS Systems has evolved from a custom business application development shop to a global provider of solutions promoting well managed business intelligence. APOS solutions improve your return on your BI investment through:

• BI Platform Management -- automating and simplifying the administration, auditing and monitoring of your BI platform, providing robust document instance and object archive and restore capabilities, extending your ability to publish the right information to the right people at the right time, and enabling agile BI practices; and

• Location Intelligence -- full bi-directional integration between business intelligence and geospatial data, improving comprehension and communication, and enhancing decision-making workflows through advanced data visualization.

APOS solutions simplify, automate, complement, enhance and extend BI practices, and focus BI processes for greater agility in your organization's decision-making capabilities.