SAP Business Objects BI

Blog

Orane’s blog posts keeping you up to speed with what’s hot in the world of business.

5 Questions Business Leaders have about SAP Business Objects BI

Introduction:

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) comprises all the SAP BusinessObjects front-end products for data reporting, visualization, and sharing. It is the centralized suite offered by SAP for intelligent reporting and analysis. The platform has a flexible architecture and offers real-time business intelligence, on-premise deployment, and customized information handling.

Data is the fundamental unit for business applications and operations in the current times. SAP BusinessObjects BI offers comprehensive BI tools to transform the huge chunks of business data into useful information. The platform has an intuitive user interface and comes with a wide range of self-service tools to assist users in managing their data sets. Limited customer support, platform heterogeneity, and expensive licensing are some of the issues highlighted by the user community with regards to SAP BusinessObjects BI.

SAP BusinessObjects BI offers enormous benefits and capabilities that can easily overcome a few issues spotted with the platform. However, the business leaders need to be sure of the same before investing in the application. The five primary questions along with their answers are compiled to assist the business leaders in making a more informed decision.

What are the various analytics solutions offered under SAP BusinessObjects BI?

SAP BusinessObjects BI offers a large number of analytics solutions to the end-users.

SAP Analytics Cloud is one such product delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud solution. It is a common interface for all the BI-related SAP products and provides integrated access to several database solutions.
A predictive analytics tool is offered as part of the centralized suite to help with predictive analysis on large volumes of data. The tool comes with pre-built predictive algorithms designed using Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Machine Learning concepts.
SAP BusinessObjects BI suite gives the end-users real-time access to the right information. The self-service system offers capabilities on ad-hoc reporting, data visualization using advanced analytics, interactive dashboards, and a lot more.
Data visualizations are an integral part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite. The visualization tool is another product offered to the end-users enabling them to carry out large-scale data analysis and visualization. The outputs can be easily shared within or outside of the organization.

What reporting capabilities are offered by the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite?

BI reporting is offered by SAP BusinessObjects BI comprising many capabilities for the end-users. The enterprise reporting system comes integrated with the suite allowing the users to streamline the overall reporting functions on one platform.

Through its Ad-hoc reporting capability, it provides instant answers to real-time business queries and questions. It is combined with rich data visualizations to keep the stakeholders informed and engaged about the business operations.

What are the integration capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects BI?

SAP BusinessObjects UI comes with several options for training, maintenance, and support for the end-users to provide ease of access and understanding. SAP Learning Hub provides unlimited cloud-based access to the digital learning content on the application. Access to the live versions of the product can also be obtained for the purpose of practical training. There are free online courses available on openSAP to gather knowledge and understanding of the features and functioning of the application.

SAP Enterprise Support, Support Portal, and Help Portal ensure proactive support to the clients and the end-users on the products offered.

Can the product be extended to include additional features after initial implementation?

SAP offers the ease of extending the product to avail the technical features and benefits of the application. SAP BusinessObjects BI Semantic Layer Java SDK provides an option to develop authoring applications. It offers an API that can be used as a framework to build the functionalities using the information design tool. The API provides the option to work with secure connections to one or multiple data sources. There is large-scale customization possible using the RESTful web service application programming interface.

The functionality extension can also be performed through Software Development Kit (SDK) for SAP promotion management. With an option to extend and expand the functionalities, organizations always have the capability to customize the application as per their requirements.

To ensure that you get the maximum returns from your SAP BusinessObjects BI investments, it is advisable that you work with an experienced SAP implementation partner who can help you through all the phases of implementation, support, integration, and customizations.