SAP BI Tools

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

The end-to-end process of BI involves analyzing the data generated by businesses, transforming the data into insights, and leveraging those insights to make optimal decisions. BI tools primarily leverage “descriptive analytics,” because these tools traditionally focus on analyzing the current and historical performance based on data generated by the enterprise.

SAP BI Tools

SAP BusinessObjects is a centralized BI tool that provides organizations with the ability to perform reporting, create visualizations, and generate near-real-time BI. SAP BusinessObjects is the on-premises BI layer for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). It is currently among the most widely used BI tools in the SAP technology ecosystem, according to SAPinsider research The Future of Business Intelligence. Key capabilities of this tool are:

What is Business Intelligence (BI)?

The end-to-end process of BI involves analyzing the data generated by businesses, transforming the data into insights, and leveraging those insights to make optimal decisions. BI tools primarily leverage “descriptive analytics,” because these tools traditionally focus on analyzing the current and historical performance based on data generated by the enterprise.

SAP BI Tools

SAP BusinessObjects is a centralized BI tool that provides organizations with the ability to perform reporting, create visualizations, and generate near-real-time BI. SAP BusinessObjects is the on-premises BI layer for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). It is currently among the most widely used BI tools in the SAP technology ecosystem, according to SAPinsider research The Future of Business Intelligence. Key capabilities of this tool are:

• Near-real-time BI
• Increased user autonomy
• On-premise deployment
• Integration with SAP technologies

SAP Analytics Cloud is an evolution of SAP’s initial business intelligence (BI) offering as an extension of its all-inclusive SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) product. But this evolution in the form of SAP Analytics Cloud also aligns with three top trends in today’s rapidly evolving data and analytics solutions landscape, as identified in SAPinsider research report Enterprise Data and Analytics State of The Market.

Key Considerations

• Build a foundational analytics culture: While SAP sees the future of analytics in the cloud, primarily in the form of SAP Analytics Cloud, BI tools like SAP BusinessObjects provide an opportunity to fine-tune the “data-driven culture” aspect of your organization. Success with analytics tools is about the capability to assimilate, absorb, and leverage the tool in day-to-day decision making (SAPinsider research Analytics in The Cloud).
• Democratize BI: Modern BI tools like SAP BusinessObjects have functionalities like drag-and-drop features to build reports, intuitive interfaces, and dashboards that allow business users to leverage these tools without needing any technical or coding skills. Ensure that you put these tools in the hands of more business users.
• Document BI tools in action: A powerful way to capture the value BI tools is to document use cases generated by business users and share these across the organization to promote a data-driven business culture. You can find examples of BusinessObjects use cases on SAPinsider.
• Understand the transition to a cloud roadmap: There is no doubt that SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise has amassed an immense user base. However, as the need for business intelligence evolved, SAP created a new Software as a Service (SaaS) product in SAP Analytics Cloud. SAP has made it clear that the ultimate go-forward solution for SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise users is SAP Analytics Cloud. Many SAP BusinessObjects customers have yet to move to SAP Analytics Cloud, and it is therefore imperative that they start planning this transition strategy. Read more about what product leaders at SAP have to say about this journey to the cloud.