SAP offers a broad variety of BI tools as part of the overall SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio. However, there is no one single product that fulfills all requirements. Instead, you have to match your requirements against the capabilities of the set of BI clients and find the right mix of BI clients to implement to meet your needs.

In the first article of this two-part series, I reviewed the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio and how each of the BI tools maps to a different set of personas for creating and consuming the BI content. In addition, I reviewed the planned simplification of the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio announced by SAP. In this article, I review and compare the more technical capabilities the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio.

Important End-User Functionality

In this section, I look at some important end-user functionality that a lot of your business users will ask for. In addition, I compare the availability of these features across the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio.

Table 1 is a comparison of some important features, such as the ability to drill down and the option to create calculations in the BI tools directly. The option to merge data in the BI client directly and the ability to create calculations in the BI tools are two especially important criteria to keep in mind when selecting the right BI tool. This is because these two capabilities are only supported by SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, SAP Lumira, SAP Predictive Analysis, and Web Intelligence (also known as WEBI or WebI).

Table 1

End-user features (part 1)

Table 2 shows another very important set of BI portfolio functionalities: the ability to use content on a mobile device as well as the offline support functionality, and the ability to schedule and broadcast BI content. (Offline refers to the ability to have a report or dashboard on your device and still be able to navigate in the data without having to refresh the actual report against the underlying data source.) Notice that, for SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP (online analytical processing), there is no direct mobile support, but you can mobilize the content from both BI clients using SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.

Table 2

End-user features (part 2)

If you’re looking for offline support, the choices are limited, as illustrated in Table 2, as well as the ability to schedule or broadcast a report. Scheduling and broadcasting is another often-requested functionality that currently in the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio (December 2015) quickly differentiates among each of the BI tools. Scheduling refers to the functionality that allows single users to set up a scheduling process themselves, whereas broadcasting refers to the functionality for an administrator to set up a process that generates reports for several users. In Table 2 notice that the features offered by the classic reporting tools, such as Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence, really stand out.

Supported Data Visualizations

In the next set of tables (Tables 3 through 6) I compare the different chart-type options and show their availability in the different BI client tools.

Table 3

Chart types (part 1)

Table 4

Chart types (part 2)

Table 5

Chart types (part 3)

Table 6

Chart types (part 4)

Notice that the standard charts are available in all the BI tools. However, when you need a specific chart type based on your requirement (for example, a box plot chart, bullet chart, or a gauge), the list of BI clients that support such visualizations becomes much shorter.

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW)-Specific Functionality

In my previous article, I discussed the different data connectivity options for SAP BW and SAP HANA. In Table 7 you can see a set of SAP BW-specific functionalities and how those are supported across the different BI tools.

Table 7

SAP NetWeaver BW-specific functionalities (part 1)

Table 7 shows some important SAP BW-specific functionalities and how they are supported across the different BI tools. In brief:

• Conditions are only fully supported by SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis Office, SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis OLAP, and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. SAP Lumira supports conditions only in the rows and not in the columns.
• Zero suppression is only fully supported by SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis Microsoft Office, SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis OLAP, and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. SAP Lumira does support zero suppression for rows of data sources.
• Cell-editor definitions are only supported in a limited way by SAP Dashboards, Crystal Reports, and Web Intelligence. All three of these BI clients convert a cell-editor definition into a string value.
• Local calculations configured in the BEx query are only supported by SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis Microsoft Office, SAP BusinessObjects, edition for Analysis OLAP, and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.

Table 8 shows the support for some important functionality in regards to BEx variables. BEx variables act as inputs/prompts in the report itself and allow the user to filter the overall data set based on his or her requirements.

• Crystal Reports, SAP Dashboards, and Web Intelligence only support the Selection Option variable type as a range variable and do not support all the additional functionality, such as multiple-value ranges and the option to include or exclude values.
• The option to manually type in values without having to receive a list of values from the underlying source is supported by only some of the BI clients (shown in the Manual entry for variables column in Table 8).
• Variable variants is only supported by SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP, and Web Intelligence (starting with SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 Support Package 06).
• Variable personalization is not supported by any of the BI clients.

Table 8

BEx variables’ support (part 2)

Table 9 shows two other important aspects of the integration of SAP BusinessObjects BI with SAP NetWeaver BW: the support for the report-report interface and the support for the OpenDocument application. In brief:

• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, editions for Microsoft Office and OLAP, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, SAP Dashboards, and SAP Crystal Reports are able to support the report-report interface as a valid sender, but, as you can see, none of the BI tools is able to support the report-report interface as a valid receiver.
• Most of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Tools are able to support the OpenDocument application, including the ability to hand over context in the form of additional parameters.

Table 9

SAP NetWeaver BW specifics (part 3)

Because the tools are able to support the report-report interface as a valid sender but not as a valid receiver, you are able to, for example, navigate from an SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio dashboard to a BEx query or to an SAP ERP transaction and hand over the context from the dashboard. However, you are not able to send the user from an SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio dashboard to a Web Intelligence report using the report-report interface as Web Intelligence is not a valid receiver.

Hierarchy Support

One very important criterion when it comes to choosing the right SAP BusinessObjects BI tool is the ability to leverage hierarchies from the underlying source as part of your analytical workflows.

Table 10 shows the support for all the different hierarchy types from SAP BW. As you can see, the strongest support is delivered with SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP, and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.

Table 10

Hierarchy support (types of hierarchies)

Table 11 shows the first set of hierarchical features and how they are supported across the different BI clients.

• Hierarchical member selection refers to the capability to select nodes or members of a hierarchy based on how the hierarchy has been defined in SAP NetWeaver BW.
• Level-based selection refers to the option to select which levels (instead of selecting specific members) you would like to see from the hierarchy.
• The ability to select specific hierarchy levels, including the option to even skip levels, is best explained with an example. Let’s say you have a cost center hierarchy with a maximum depth of 15 levels, but your user would like to see only specific levels—in this case,  levels 3, 5, 8, and 12, and not any of the other nine levels. With this functionality, the user has the ability to select specific levels and even skip levels in between.
• The option to show only the leaf members refers to the capability in the BI tool to show a hierarchical report, but, in this case, to simply show only the lowest members of the hierarchy.

Table 11

Hierarchy support (supported features — part 1)

Table 12 shows the final set of hierarchical features along the products.

• When using a hierarchy as part of your analysis, the data can be ranked along the hierarchy. This means you can rank data inside of each hierarchy node against each other and then rank the hierarchy nodes of a particular level against each other.
• A very typical workflow with hierarchies is the ability to switch hierarchies within a report. For example, a Cost Center report that allows the user to select one of the five available Cost Center hierarchies.
• The expand-to-level functionality gives the option to the user to expand the complete hierarchy up to a specific level instead of having to open each hierarchical node one by one.
• In cases of hierarchical reports, the user can decide if the subtotals should be placed above or below the nodes—for example, a hierarchical balance sheet showing the totals at the bottom of the page.

Table 12

Hierarchy support (supported features — part 2)

Requirements Gathering

So far, I have reviewed a large set of functionality and how each of the different BI tools is able to support some of your metadata from SAP BW and what type of visualizations are possible in each of the BI tools. But, the question remains: What is the best approach for gathering the right requirements and ensuring that you fully understand the needs of your business users?

Remember that your role is to gather the requirements—in other words your role is simply to listen to your business users and carefully interpret their requests/wants into actual requirements.

To achieve this goal, here are some simple rules to follow:

• First of all, make sure that you are talking to the actual users of the report or analysis. You always want to talk directly to the actual business user to make sure you get the requirements and the business background from the source.
• Remember, your role is to listen to the business user and not to make suggestions on how to solve their problems. Listen first, solve later.
• Ask the business user to describe the problem without focusing on any of the SAP BusinessObjects BI tools. You need to realize that your business user is most likely already familiar with the SAP BusinessObjects BI toolset as well as with other BI tools. You want to avoid a situation in which business users are just asking for a dashboard in SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio that they think they need, without articulating the real requirement. Ask the business user to describe the requirements using a form, a use case example, or even just a story, without using any product names from the available SAP BusinessObjects BI products.
• Ask a lot of questions for clarification. For example, if your business user is asking for a data-export option to generate a Microsoft Excel file, ask why the export is needed and what your business user is planning to do with the exported data. You want to make sure that you fully understand each aspect of the workflow and the best way to do so is by asking many questions.
• If you are not 100-percent clear on a requirement, consider shadowing your business users for a day. Walk in their shoes by simply observing them during their workday, even going as far as taking pictures or recording a video of them using the data to see how they use it and how they work in the current system.
• Ask your users about existing reports and analysis and ask them what they like and don’t like about them.
• Keep in mind the strategic direction of where SAP is going with the overall SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio and make sure you are staying up-to-date on it by following the roadmap on a regular basis.

And, last but not least, if you’re not sure which of the BI tools you should be using, create a quick prototype in the two closest BI tools using the tables I’ve provided and simply share these prototypes with your business users. These guides will quickly show which BI tool best meets their requirements and why.

Ingo Hilgefort

Ingo Hilgefort started his career in 1999 with Seagate Software/Crystal Decisions as a trainer and consultant. He moved to Walldorf for Crystal Decisions at the end of 2000, and worked with the SAP NetWeaver BW development team integrating Crystal Reports with SAP NetWeaver BW. He then relocated to Vancouver in 2004, and worked as a product manager/program manager (in engineering) on the integration of BusinessObjects products with SAP products. Ingo's focus is now on the integration of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite with  SAP landscapes, such as SAP BW and SAP BW on SAP HANA, focusing on end-to-end integration scenarios. In addition to his experience as a product manager and in his engineering roles, Ingo has been involved in architecting and delivering deployments of SAP BusinessObjects software in combination with SAP software for a number of global customers, and has been recognized by the SAP Community as an SAP Mentor for SAP BusinessObjects- and SAP integration-related topics. Currently, Ingo is the Vice President of Product Management and Product Strategy at Visual BI Solutions, working on extensions to SAP’s product offering such as SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and SAP Lumira. You may follow him on Twitter at @ihilgefort.

You may contact the author at Ingo@visualbi.com.

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