Choosing the right tools and incremental change the secret to BI implementation success with SAP
Lyall recently presented at the Eventful ‘Mastering Business Intelligence with SAP’ conference staged in Brisbane, where he outlined best practice BI implementation strategies and highlighted key tips organisations should consider when creating an SAP BI infrastructure.
“The presentation provided a summary of the functionality of the different SAP BI delivery tools currently available to an organisation, and offered some guidance about balancing user demand for functionality against the cost and training investment needed to meet that demand.”
Lyall says there are many SAP BI presentation development and delivery tools to choose from, including SAP Portals, Web Analyzer, BEx Workbooks and Analyzer, BEx Query Designer, BEx Report Designer, SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer, Duet and BEx Portfolio.
“The most important decision is selecting the right mix of tools,” says Lyall. “For 80% of business people, accessing a reliable report is all they need. SAP BI has a powerful data presentation format that allows them to check progress to date, validate concepts and prepare for meetings.”
BI implementation should be undertaken incrementally, Lyall says, and establishing simple reporting functionality is a sensible first deployment step.
“Reporting is typically aimed at an organisation’s information consumers who tend to be the most active BI users. The data they need is often actionable, so it needs to be specific and timely. SAP’s DUET application is an appropriate tool for this group.”
DUET is a composite application that combines operational components from the SAP business suite (or other applications) with BI components. DUET allows information workers to access authorised analytics and reports in an easy, convenient and cost-efficient way to enable intelligent decision making.
Our experience has shown that executives and knowledge workers within an organisation tend to need slightly higher analytical functionality and flexibility from their BI tools, Lyall says, and are better serviced by SAP OLAP Analysis and power reporting tools.
“This group needs high level, summary and personalised data with the option for in-depth analysis. Their usage can be active but is not necessarily daily. They need data that can be converted into information and which is accessible in predefined analysis paths via an intuitive user interface.”
These users would typically feel well served by BEx Analyzer – a reporting tool that can model and interact with BI data by fully leveraging Microsoft Excel’s capabilities, and Web Analyzer – which lets users analyse, configure and personalise ad hoc queries on various data sources, he says.
The group that requires the most investment costs and desires a high level of analytical flexibility is authors and analysts. These are the people an organisation relies on for insight into its strategic commercial direction for example Chief Financial Officers and CEOs.
“Authors and analysts create reports and use information actively and need advanced analysis functionality and ad hoc reporting capabilities. BEx Web Analyzer and BEx Workbooks are appropriate tools. BEx Web Application Designer – a design tool for creating pure play BI and planning applications, and SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer should both also be considered.”
SAP Visual Composer is a web-based visual modeling tool that enables business analysts to quickly create and adapt BI content without coding. Visual Composer minimises the effort and time required to create an application resulting in fast go-live decision-making.
User buy-in and other key tips
Lyall says one key consideration when implementing BI is to not underestimate the change management involved when moving towards a web-based reporting solution.
“Analysts love MS Excel and while SAP offers both web-based and Excel-based environments, both having the same functionality, each has different internal support issues.”
Other key tips and tricks to consider include:
- A successful centralised reporting environment is only achieved with a mindset shift across the organisation. Users benefit from encouragement to focus their efforts towards on-screen analysis and move away from paper based reporting. User confidence will increase if they believe the numbers they are seeing are accurate and can be accessed online at any time.
- Obtain the appropriate level of executive sponsorship to drive change management and business transformation of roles.
- When trying to convert users to a new tool, make sure the benefits of switching are made clear to them. Practical exercises emphasising the benefits and functionality of the new tools are highly effective.
- Most importantly, don’t go “Big Bang”- unless an organisation’s implementation team is very experienced. We recommend running a pilot with a single scenario with a small group of users, then implement others, opening it up to more users when some wins are on the board.
Oxygen Business Solutions was a premier sponsor of the ‘Mastering Business Intelligence with SAP’ conference.
Oxygen specalises in helping organisations convert data into information - allowing them to leverage solutions, technologies and skills in making business decisions. In short, we get the right information to the right people at the right time - making the end user reporting the best it can be.
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