The real motorist of any exertion is a decision. In terms of business, any company can be allowed as a decision plant. While a product director makes big opinions every week, other workers might make lower, but more rapid-fire bones . Deciding on a thing requires some knowledge. And, the more you know, the better the decision. In the business sphere, a certain area of technology helps people make the right opinions by supporting them with the right data. This field is called business intelligence or BI.
Business intelligence consists of multiple tackle and software units that serve the same idea. Take data and show it to the right people. While BI wo n’t tell you if it’s time to walk the canine, or make a marriage offer, it can be fairly effective for business opinions. The fashionability of BI made it a need- to- have thing, which caused growth of the BI results request.
There are a lot of BI merchandisers, and you might stick with recognizable names such as QuickSight, or Power BI by Microsoft, if the request is a dark timber for you. But for a moment we ’ll speak about lower celebrated seller SAP BI. This composition will give general information about the SAP BI platform and each separate result. We ’ll also dissect the product as a whole to find its pros and cons and give you some points to take into account.
What’s SAP Business Intelligence?
Let’s launch by introducing the seller. SAP( Systems, Applications, and Products) is a transnational IT company that develops software for enterprises. Its product canon is emotional, but we ’re interested in its BI results. Without stating the factual names, SAP’s BI results can be broken down into two broad orders: database/ data operation and logical results.
Database and data operation results
Business intelligence consists of a stoner- facing part, where the end stoner( data critic or business stoner) interacts with the data and data- channel technologies. The ultimate performs three main functions that make data accessible and consumable through the end- stoner interface
- Rooting raw data from its sources,
- Transforming data and storing it in the storehouse, and
- Giving access to the data for certain groups of people via the end- stoner interface.
So, in terms of storing and managing data, SAP offers its database and data operation products. This set includes 4 products
SAP HANA and Database is a managed database or database operation tools.
Data Warehousing is a warehousing service to collect and manage all commercial data from a single storehouse.
Enterprise information operation is a general tool for data, data quality, and metadata operation.
Cybersecurity Governance, Risk, and Compliance are tone- explicatory. These are tools that support data security, fraud protection, and threat operation.
SAP HANA and Data Warehousing are both storehouse results that can be combined with each other. Each result can be stationed on premise in the pall or hybridly, combining the benefits of both former variants. These features come hand- in- hand with the logical platform and its instruments.
Analytics results
In terms of SAP BI, database and data operation results concern data storing, metamorphosis, and operation functions. The analytics result is a set of tools that give access to your data and ameliorate logical capabilities. In simple terms, logical results are the front- end of a BI system, which provides reports, visualisations, dashboards, or data discovery tools for judges.
The analytics results platform includes the following different products for business intelligence and data analysis
SAP Analytics Cloud is a Software- as-a-Service( SaaS) business intelligence result, that provides access to all the commercial analytics from one place. Consider Analytics Cloud as the interface for allBI-related SAP products. Analytics pall provides access to all the database results and combines different logical instruments in one place.
Cooperative Enterprise Planning performs the part of a commercial diary, where each department can arrange its conduct with others grounded on data- driven opinions. So this is a Google timetable on steroids for enterprises that plan strategic and fiscal opinions.
Prophetic Analytics is a tool that allows you to apply machine literacy algorithms to prognosticate unborn trends grounded on your data. Prophetic analytics comes with pre-built algorithms and machine literacy model operation tools.
SAP Business Intelligence. This product focuses specifically on the tools that concern business analysis, reporting, and visualisations of the given data.
SAP business intelligence is a core product that includes several data access instruments. The instruments within SAP BI can be divided by end- stoner groups. The first group is business druggies( or data consumers) a stoner group that queries data, while not dealing with the inner structure of the database. The alternate group is data judges( or the IT department) These drugs operate within a database to add meta, explore data, and support queries.
From the end- stoner perspective, let’s break down the instruments included in the SAP BI offer
SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite is an on- premise BI platform that provides real- time data access. Business druggies can operate with the data without too important involvement by the IT department, as it’s a tone- service BI system. BusinessObjects offers colourful capabilities similar to reporting, ad hoc( moment) reports, interactive dashboards, and data visualisation.
Like utmost BI tools, BusinessObjects has in- erected instruments for business druggies that allows for creating visualisations via a drag- and- drop interface. It can be integrated with numerous other products with the help of APIs. Integrations include fresh logical instruments, data sources, or separate operations similar to ERP.
SAP Lumira is a tool for creating data visualisations dashboards. Lumira is a part of BusinessObjects that helps business druggies and data specialists to work on data analysis. Another important point is that the results of visualisations can be participated across the association and in Microsoft Office documents.
SAP Demitasse results is a BI suite for small to mean businesses packed with different reporting tools and participating features. The difference between BusinessObjects and Crystal results is in performance figures. Still, stoner reviews ontrustradius.com show that Crystal results are used by enterprises not lower than small andmid-sized businesses.
As in the case with database results, logical instruments can also be stationed on premise or in the pall. Depending on the armature you choose, there’s a certain degree of inflexibility in choosing the product and deployment options. Having a full picture of SAP’s BI products and how they interact with each other, we ’ll move to agitating the platform as a whole.
The Pros of SAP Business Intelligence
According toBizVibe.com BI request share statistics 2018, SAP occupies over 16 percent of the global request. While the canon of its BI results is wide and includes products for different size businesses,g2.com reviews show that for the utmost part SAP is popular among> 1000 workers companies.
BusinessObjects Reviews
The number of SAP BI reviews is inviting among enterprises
So, grounded on the big picture, then are the advantages of using SAP Business Intelligence products.
Full range of business intelligence- related products
While not surprising for an old, established company like SAP, it has to be considered a pro. SAP offers all needed technological units to influence a data platform and reporting tools at your company. There are a couple of options for each product, so depending on your requirements you may emplace on a factual garçon or use the pall. pall, on premise, and mongrel deployment options are valid for nearly the entire product line both in Analytics results and Database results.
Analytics pall, in turn, is a good way to polarise your BI related instruments in one place. From this place, you may give authorization- grounded data access, so that each stoner will use an interface touching only the data needed for them to do their job.
flawless graphical stoner interface
Business intelligence tools Frequently look like delve delineations substantially because business druggies and tone- service tools are n’t the main focus of the seller. This results in a big interface aimed at professed programmers or data judges.
SAP Business Intelligence provides a bunch of good instruments with an intuitive stoner interface. While it may bear some time and skill to learn how to use it( enough like any BI tool), SAP stoner interface happens to be easy to understand. On top of that, with penetrating all the instruments from a single web- grounded interface, it’s much easier to conduct onboarding for your business drugs
.
Participating functions and Microsoft Office comity
Having access to data isn’t enough. The real value of reports and perceptivity you get from using business intelligence comes with participating in this knowledge. So, there are two cool effects about it
Nearly all the reporting or dashboarding instruments on SAP Analytics results are armed with participating functions. This guarantees your workers or directors can fluently partake precious perceptivity with each other. When we speak about reporting, these can be reports in the textual format, visual liar, or participated access to the constructed dashboards.
It’s also possible to upload the data into Excel or Spreadsheets documents and share across associations the “ traditional ” way.
But if your primary concern is data security, you can give rules and authorization either via database SQL warrants or data operation tools.
tone- service tools vacuity for wider stoner followership
Working with data requires a lot of data-specific knowledge and engineering chops. While the main function of BI tools is to automate the process of dragging data from a large storehouse and introducing it to a stoner, occasionally they need the support of a mortal agent. This job is frequently done by BI inventors, ETL inventors, or a devoted IT department.
SAP BI offers a number of tone- service instruments( BusinessObjects, Lumira) that give a toolset for casual druggies to manage with data. It does n’t mean that your BI druggies wo n’t need any help, but it’ll surely reduce conservation costs and time spent on reporting- related tasks.
SAP HANA real- time database and performance
Considering all the aspects of SAP BI products, we should mention the HANA database. The database provides real- time data access, which guarantees quick processing of large quantities of data and small response time. The HANA database is also compatible with different database operation systems. That makes data integration a lot easier within the whole association.
Data Source Integrations
We ’ve mentioned the wide integration list with external sources, but it deserves to be a separate point. SAP offers integration with two of its own data warehouses( SAP HANA and Data storehouse). But it also covers external services similar to Apache Hadoop, Hive, and Hbase. This can be especially salutary when working with big data and using a BI interface as a data disquisition tool.
Like utmost BI tools, BusinessObjects has in- erected instruments for business druggies that allows for creating visualisations via a drag- and- drop interface. It can be integrated with numerous other products with the help of APIs. Integrations include fresh logical instruments, data sources, or separate operations similar to ERP.
SAP Lumira is a tool for creating data visualisations dashboards. Lumira is a part of BusinessObjects that helps business druggies and data specialists to work on data analysis. Another important point is that the results of visualisations can be participated across the association and in Microsoft Office documents.
SAP Demitasse results is a BI suite for small to mean businesses packed with different reporting tools and participating features. The difference between BusinessObjects and Crystal results is in performance figures. Still, stoner reviews ontrustradius.com show that Crystal results are used by enterprises not lower than small andmid-sized businesses.
Inflexibility
the utmost of SAP’s BI products are pall- grounded, which are easy to integrate with and use. still, SAP also offers options in deployment type for nearly each of their products. Depending on your preferences, it allows you to get a bit of inflexibility in terms of deployment, tackle conservation, and system operation.
While the list of pros looks solid enough, there are no unicorns. So we ’ll pivot to cons now.
The cons of SAP business intelligence
precious licensing and overall pricing
While cost depends on the factual use case, SAP BI’s software licences are known to be precious. For illustration, look atcapterra.com 2019 figures on the SAP BI price, which starts at$,000 a time for using BusinessObjects. With further offers included in your package, the price can reach$,000 before any conservation costs. Much more painful is the absence of a free trial for BusinessObjects, but you can use the Analytics Cloud free trial to test what it offers.
Poor client support and platform administration
Lots of druggies ontrustradius.com report unreliable client support and administration of the platform. SAP is taking a way to ameliorate its support platoon. One of these advancements came in the form of an enhanced client success platoon that supported druggies using Lumira and BusinessObjects. But, that’s not the case with platform administration.
Platform Diversity
SAP is known to acquire a lot of companies. In fact, nearly all the BI products are the result of accessions of lower request players, like BusinessObjects in 2007. As is too frequently the case, the integration between the new products may appear lower than smooth.
Reporting performance and quality
While some druggies claim SAP BusinessObjects to be performant, there’s a contrary opinion that we’ve to address. According tobrightworkresearch.com case description on testing SAP’s BI and warehousing results, the results feel to push “ performative status ” down. To be more specific, there’s an issue with report detainments or indeed exposure. The same narrative can be set up ontrustradius.com andfinanceonline.com client reviews, that claim reports come slow or noway appear after a query was made.
Garçon shut down due to heavy loads
This issue is also reported multiple times in stoner reviews across TrustRadius. The main issue is described as waiters shutting down, when a certain degree of complexity is applied to reports. The same goes for SAP HANA waiters that feel to witness shutdowns as the query volume grows. While it might be an issue with any garçon, we had to address this bone as it looks sufficiently savage in discrepancy with SAP BI pricing and licensing.
What’s the stylish fit for SAP business intelligence?
So, who should look at a SAP BI offer in the first place? Grounded on the mentioned features, benefits, and problems, there are a many cases
Good fit for the enterprise. SAP is substantially used by big companies for a number of reasons. The primary focus of the product line is to serve enterprise requirements. BusinessObjects and Analytics Cloud are good for distributing content for a large number of consumer groups. The Enterprise Planner and overall list of integrations( videlicet with SAP’s ERP) suggest a good option for pots with a large quantum of data and mortal coffers to supply data with. Add then costs, and a complete service range for creating a BI result, and you ’ll get an optimal result for the enterprise.
Integration with multiple data sources. SAP offers some good options on integrating with colourful data sources, substantially because of SAP HANA source dogmas . The overall list of integrations is massive enough. The last- but- not- least point is integration with MS Office products, the most used data storehouse format.