The concept of a software roadmap is simple: A vendor lays out the strategic direction for its applications and customers plan accordingly. However, knowing where you need to go and how to get there are two entirely different animals. Regardless of your intentions, hidden obstacles can always stand in the way of getting from point A to point B.

insiderRESEARCH recently surveyed more than 300 SAP managers and practitioners to find the hidden obstacles along SAP’s roadmap for business intelligence (BI) applications. We then interviewed a panel of nine of the top SAP BI experts to offer concrete advice for moving forward. Based on that research, here are the top five lessons to help SAP project managers keep their BI initiatives on track:

#1: Prepare for the technical challenges

If your company is intent on following the SAP BI roadmap, at some point you’ll need to integrate applications from the SAP BusinessObjects suite with back-end SAP data and applications. Our survey respondents indicated clearly that technical integration challenges are the top obstacle to success on such projects, ranking ahead of budget woes, staffing concerns, and companies’ ability to understand the SAP BusinessObjects product suite.

There may be eight or nine unique ways to feed SAP data into SAP Crystal Reports, for example, and each will have its own limitations and drawbacks. Choosing the best option requires sufficient expertise in both SAP data and SAP BusinessObjects, and a significant amount of time to configure those connections. These challenges will affect your project timeline, staffing needs, and budget.

#2: Be realistic about self-service

One of the key selling points of advanced BI applications is the ability of line-of-business managers and executives to craft and tweak their own BI reports, dashboards, and other applications. While this is a compelling case, project managers should resist the temptation to oversell the self-service capabilities of any new BI initiative.

Why? Because regardless of the capabilities of any application (and SAP BusinessObjects offers plenty), true self-service requires technical skills most business side users are unlikely to master. Our report found that 63 percent of SAP customers say their end users do not have the skills necessary to get the most out of SAP BusinessObjects applications. When we filtered the responses to only include those who had already begun or completed an SAP BusinessObjects BI project, the percentage stayed the same.

A better option is to offer an environment of co-creation, in which the IT team is responsible for building the report, dashboard, or application and populating it with the right data in the right format, while giving business users the flexibility to sort, drill-down, and change views to meet their immediate needs. The end result isn’t pure self-service, but it’s as close as many companies will ever get.

#3: Be agile

Almost half of SAP customers say the effort required to gather requirements for a BI project can be described as “difficult” or “extremely difficult.” The key reason for this is a communication gap between business and IT: the business doesn’t know what it wants without seeing it first, and IT can’t build it first without knowing what the business wants.

BI projects are very different from transactional system implementations because the business needs around BI change so frequently. Rather than follow a traditional SAP project methodology, project managers are better off adhering to one of the rapid-development methodologies such as SCRUM or Agile. These methodologies are designed to accommodate requirements changes quickly and reduce the risk that your project team will lose months of work if the business changes its approach. Establishing this type of project framework will also help the business continually adapt to changing environments and needs. Or as one expert told me, “BI projects aren’t about go-live. They’re about go-live, go-live, go-live.”

#4: Measure, measure, measure

You can’t manage what you can’t measure, according to the old business saying. So we were surprised to learn that only 15 percent of companies track the ROI of their BI initiatives. Some companies struggle to identify metrics to track, while others give up due to constantly changing requirements. And of course there is a certain institutional reluctance to be held accountable for the success of a project without obvious metrics (such as headcount reduction) to track.

However, it is possible to track ROI on BI projects. Chris Dinkel of Business and Decision has developed a method for measuring ROI by determining the net present value of each identifiable savings or gain and adding them separately. Read the full methodology on the Insider Learning Network at https://bit.ly/ffhbnr.

Project managers should also choose a mix of broad and narrow metrics to track throughout their BI initiatives. For example, one broad key metric is user adoption, while specific metrics may include tracking revenue increases in a particular segment after rolling out a sales-based BI application.

#5: Know what you need

When it comes to the SAP roadmap, many project managers may find themselves focusing intently on the different technologies included in the full suite of SAP BusinessObjects BI applications. Due to name changes and rapid innovations in that product set, many SAP customers (43 percent) told us they did not have the information they needed to follow the roadmap.

However, when we quizzed them about the products in the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite, a large majority was able to correctly identify the primary function of each application. What does this mean? For one thing, it means SAP customers are less confused about SAP’s offerings than they are about how those offerings can drive decisions for their specific business needs.

When it comes to the SAP BI roadmap, the companies with the best chance of reaping success are those with a clear vision of their BI strategy, from the enterprise level down. Arriving at this clear vision requires a deep alignment of business and IT, who often speak a slightly different language when discussing data and BI. Bridging that particular gap requires executive support as well as at least one project leader capable of leading discussions that will drive this alignment.

Davin Wilfrid

Davin Wilfrid was a writer and editor for SAPinsider and SAP Experts. He contributed case studies and research projects aimed at helping the SAP ecosystem get the most out of their existing technology investments.

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