April 2008 - Posts

• SAP-BO Planning and Performance Management Roadmap

  When SAP purchased Business Objects (BO) and released the new joint roadmap of the way forward (More details at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/businessobjects) one of the thing I noticed that was conspicuously missing was a clear message about which direction the planning and performance management products were heading.  You could easily make an educated guess with it's purchase of Outlooksoft but did the BO purchase change anything? After all they only purchased Cartesis themselves in mid-2007. Business Planning and Simulation (BPS) was the original tool of choice but that's been on it's way out  since 2005 when it entered maintenance mode, Integrated Planning (IP) was a leap ahead from BPS when launched but still somewhat complex.  It does however have a large pool of experienced consultants and is supported until 2013 so anyone who has implemented that or is planning to is covered for a while but one assumes that further development of the product will not continue beyond 2008.  SAP themselves are now recommending Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC, ex-Outlooksoft) however current version 5.0 is only available right now on the Microsoft platform, so new SAP based projects would have to use it with a view to a future migration to the planned NetWeaver based next version.  BPC 7.0 is due to start ramp-up around June and will be released on both Microsoft and NetWeaver platforms and looks like the strategic tool of choice in the longer term. Of the Business Objects tools available XI release 2 planning was superceded by BO Planning (ex-Cartesis Planning) and also looks like is heading out in favour of BPC however both products have mainstream support through to 2011.  The other major product was Cartesis Finance, and that looks like it will be the tool of choice for financial  consolidations now coined BO Enterprise Performance Management. So whilst the way ahead is far from clear it is starting to take shape, it is inevitable that some products must be dropped to make way so a more streamlined joint offering hopefully leading SAP to a Best of Breed Business Intelligence product set, changing the traditional view that SAP BI is often chosen simply as it is the corporate strategic tool of choice. Posted Apr 29 2008, 08:05 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: SAP, BI, Performance Management, IP, BPC, Planning, Business Objects Share |

• SAP BI - Embrace now or wait for full Business Objects integration?

  When SAP purchased Business Objects back in January the SAP user community breathed a sigh of relief, good times ahead we all thought, and no doubt they will be but what do existing SAP customers do now when it comes to decision making on an effective BI strategy? SAP's current product roadmap lists a number of the new merged product set as being released in 2009 but does that mean December 31st 2009!  What if the release is delayed? and even then who will jump on-board a new product on day one? - Given that the Business Explorer current patch number is up around number 17, not me.  It takes time for issues to be fixed and real stability to be found.  Ok, enough pessimism, what are the real options on the table for SAP customers?  Well, for one, don't believe anyone that says there is no point rolling out a SAP BI 7.0 solution as it's going to be discontinued.  Mainstream support for BI 7.0 products is scheduled until 2016, new features are scheduled with the release of NetWeaver 7.1 later in the year and even if they do stop new development on the existing products at the end of 2008 look on the bright side - at least we should have stability!  By year end BEx is likely to be on patch 20 and should be very robust. It's a proven toolset with a good pool of knowledge so projects will be more predictable, more successful and implemented more quickly.  In addition once you have your solution up and running then you would assume that SAP are going to map out a fairly painless upgrade path to the new premium Business Object products so you can take advantage of any new features, in this way you are able to think of it as a phased implementation with less risk than going straight to the new product set. The other downside to delaying any SAP BI project is the cost to the business, now more than ever companies need clear visibility of the plethora of data they generate.  In today's climate people are asking more and more; how much did we spend? and how? rather than the traditional focus of where revenue was earned.  An improved approach to cost control can easily save a company many times the cost of the initial BI project itself. This is a huge topic with so many key points that I haven't even mentioned but my key message is to think hard before delaying or cancelling  a BI project 'to save money' as it may be a false economy.  For more information on SAP and Business Objects visit: www.sap.com/businessobjects Posted Apr 28 2008, 02:36 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: BI 7.0, SAP, BExAnalyzer Share |

• SAP BI vs. R/3 Reporting

  Many companies that use core SAP ERP modules never implement a SAP BI solution choosing instead to use R/3 based reporting.  Since R/3 is by nature a transactional OLTP system and was never designed for analytics and reporting and the importance of a unified view of a companies data it is somewhat surprising that more businesses haven't found, and leveraged the power of, SAP Business Intelligence. Comparisons R/3 Reporting R/3 is an OLTP transactional system used for real-time operational data.  Reporting is only available from a single system and is transaction based.  R/3 reports are more likely to be broken as the system is highly changeable based on the needs of the business and will require ongoing maintenance and support costs.  Only limited web reporting is available and most reports are simple and list based.  Many users querying significant data volumes will slow down the system and disrupt the experience of the average user. SAP BI Reporting BW is an OLAP reporting system mainly used for summarized data rather, although drill down to line items is possible.  It houses historical data from multiple systems (including non SAP third party sources) and even data that no longer exists in the source systems.  SAP BI offers a wide range of data analysis tools including Excel and web based analysis, scorecards, dashboards  and pixel perfect static printed style reporting capabilities.  Most reports are not real-time but are a day or more old, for small data volumes near-time (<5 minute) reporting is possible.  Users querying the dedicated BI system will not slow down the source system and as the data is stored in a more optimal way the reports are available to the user much quicker.  In addition to the reporting options it also provides ETL functions, better security, the option to 'broadcast' reports to users in a number of different ways and formats and allows planning based on historical data.   So in summary if you are faced with this decision consider these advantages that BI reporting has over R/3: By offloading ad-hoc and long running queries from production R/3 system to BI system, overall system performance should improve on R/3. SAP BI is specifically designed for query processing, not data updating and OLTP. Within BI, the data structures are designed differently and are much better suited for reporting than R/3 data structures. Better front-end reporting within BI. Although the BI Excel front-end has it's problems, it provides more flexibility and analysis capability than the R/3 reporting screens. BI has ability to pull data from other SAP or non-SAP sources into a consolidated cube   For up to the minute operational reporting you should use R/3 but for more historical strategic reporting a dedicated BI solution provides faster performing, fully featured reports with stronger data analysis capabilities.  Posted Apr 25 2008, 03:03 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: BI 7.0, SAP, R/3, BI, ECC, Reporting Share |

• Upgrading SAP GUI 7.10 breaks BEx formulas created in SAP GUI 6.40

  This week I experienced an issue in BEx enabled workbook that used formulas after upgrading our SAP GUI from 6.40 to 7.10. In 6.40 the BEx add-in file resides in the following directory: C:\Program Files\SAP\FrontEnd\Bw\BExAnalyzer.xla however in 7.10 they have moved it to here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\SAP Shared\BW\BExAnalyzer.xla Consequently when you open a workbook created with 6.40 in 7.10 you get the Excel #NAME error wherever formulas have been used.  The reason for this error is that Excel (in my case Excel 2003) stores VBA function references with their complete path and it can no longer find the file in the location it is expecting. To solve it you have to click 'Edit', then select 'Links' and finally click 'Change Source' search for correct location. This is a solution that you would have to repeat for each workbook and is not an 'enterprise solution', to run this fix en-masse an automated VBA solution would be required.  For my client who has hundreds of workbooks to consider I created a VBA toolbar that could fix the bug with a single click. The key lesson to be learned here to ensure that you carry out extensive testing before considering an upgrade. Posted Apr 25 2008, 02:38 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: BI 7.0, SAP, SAP GUI, BExAnalyzer, Excel, BEx Share |

• Characteristic Z{NAME} is blocked by conversion

  Just a quick post - I experienced the following message whilst trying to activate an InfoObject today "Characteristic Z{NAME} is blocked by conversion" whilst trying to activate it.  I was making some comprehensive changes to the InfoObject, removing attributes whilst also changing the compounded InfoObject - I should of known SAP would have issues. As I couldn't proceed I thought I would try and reverse my changes but I couldn't as it was locked by conversion and in order to unlock it I have to activate it and in order to activate it I would have to change the attribute settings back... a catch 22 situation! I tried to repair the InfoObject within RSD1 but that didn't help and SM50 showed all pending jobs had finished so I thought I would delete the InfoObject (this was in a development situation)  but I couldn't even do that - as it was locked! After tearing my hair out a bit more I found the solution and thought I would share it for the benefit of others in my situation.  Within RSA1 I went to Extras and there I clicked on 'Remove Conversion Lock', that removed the lock and I was able to edit the InfoObject again, then I changed it's configuration back to the same as the active version and made my changes sequentially rather than all at once and hey presto, all was right in my world. Posted Apr 17 2008, 08:11 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: SAP Share |

• Planning in Excel with SAP BI 7.0

  My colleague Matt Quinn recently posted an excellent blog on the dangers of using Excel as a "corporate database" (Only 16% of firms budget accurately - are the rest in Excel-Hell?) and also briefly mentioned that SAP offers a solution so I thought it my duty to elaborate a little. With SAP BI 7.0 you can quickly and easily setup centralised and controlled yet flexible budgeting, forecasting and planning solutions that utilise the power of the users favourite, good old Excel.  The main planning tools on offer are Business Explorer (BEx) and Integrated Planning (IP) are part of the SAP NetWeaver suite of products.  BExAnalyzer is a SAP enabled Excel add-in that can enable workbooks to save back user entered data to a data warehouse in addition to supporting fully featured Excel based reporting.  IP facilitates data manipulation with both powerful built in and complex custom functions to automate common planning scenarios or to move data around the planning landscape.  The NetWeaver suite allows you to perform all of your Enterprise Data Warehousing and planning requirements with one integrated toolset. A simple excel based planning application. Excel based reports. A simple example of where these tools can be used is when there is a requirement to update the plan for the current and following years using the previous years actual financial results as reference data.  Using BEx a planning workbook would be constructed to compare the previous and current year to date actuals (with optional extrapolation to forecast the full current year) while also showing variance between the two.  A simple IP planning function could then copy the previous year actuals data to next year as a starting point for the budgeting exercise (with an optional revaluation based on a given percentage).  Using Excel the planner could then link cells to other workbooks before saving the data back to the data warehouse for department/company wide consolidation and consistent reporting or 'one version of the truth'.   All planning or reporting queries created within SAP can be either used in Excel or on the web (zero installation footprint) and built in features protect reference data and users from overwriting each others data.  A common scenario is for businesses to plan in Excel with all it's great features and report via the web, this allows reporting from anywhere and reduces the number of client software installations required. I have implemented SAP BI to replace many Excel based planning solutions and some of the benefits I have witnessed include:  Replacing a number of different planning software applications with just two (SAP & Excel) Reduced planning cycle timescale's leading to the option of an increasing their frequency More comprehensive reporting to all levels of the organisation More time available to analyse the data rather than just performing the planning Increased accuracy of plans with the comparison to actuals and the ability to identify trends over time I hope this sheds some light on the possibilities when planning with SAP and Excel. Posted Apr 17 2008, 07:46 PM by GlenChambers with no comments Filed under: BI 7.0, SAP Share |