For several years, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) has been the BI portfolio for the SAP customer base. However, some companies are still confused when it comes to selecting the best BI tool for their requirements and overall landscape. Companies are used to a single tool—SAP Business Explorer (BEx)—and are now faced with a wide variety of BI tools to select from when it comes to making this decision, and also a variety of deployment options, such as on premise versus cloud.

An Overview of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Portfolio

Overall, the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio can be broken down into several areas, focusing on different aspects of your requirements and your main target audience.

Figure 1 shows the first part of the overall portfolio—Agile Visualization—sometimes also referred to as Data Discovery. In this group of products you find SAP Lumira, BEx, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis (all editions), and SAP Predictive Analysis. All these products have one key common criterion: They are all designed for a self-service scenario with the business user as the main audience. Your business user should be able to use these products without having to rely on the IT department to create a new report. The one exception in this group of products is SAP Predictive Analysis. SAP Predictive Analysis is not your typical BI client for analytical reporting, but instead allows the user to create a predictive model and create the predictive algorithm. It therefore does require a different skillset.

Figure 1

Agile visualization

Figure 2 shows the second area of the SAP BI portfolio, which is the dashboarding and application category. SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio and SAP Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius) are the two products in this category. It is important to understand that SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio is seen as a successor to SAP Dashboards, as SAP announced in 2012. SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio now (as of January 2016), with some exceptions, is able to cover all the scenarios of dashboarding that were originally covered by SAP Dashboards. Some of the exceptions are missing components for visualization, such as a slider or embedded standard maps, but those gaps often can be bridged by extensions provided by SAP Partners.

Figure 2

BusinessObjects dashboards and applications

Figure 3 shows the two classic reporting tools, Web Intelligence (also known as WEBI or WebI) and Crystal Reports. The main difference is that Web Intelligence is designed to work in a self-service scenario, with the business user creating or editing reports, and Crystal Reports is a product that requires the help of the IT department to create or edit reports.

Figure 3

Reporting

With these three main areas in the BI portfolio (Agile Visualization/Data Discovery, Dashboards and Applications, and Reporting) companies have a wide variety of choices for meeting their own BI strategy needs.

SAP realized this and presented its simplification plans for the overall BI portfolio in early 2015. Figure 4 illustrates this strategy on the left, with a list of some of the existing BI clients. The middle part of the figure shows the BI tools that are seen as the most strategic BI tools moving forward.

Figure 4

SAP BI portfolio consolidation

Here are the key messages you should take away from the simplification of the BI portfolio:

• SAP Lumira, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio are the key products moving forward.
• Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence are seen as mature products for the reporting category, meaning that these products offer a large set of functionalities already and you should not expect a huge investment from SAP into these products in the upcoming releases.
• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, is poised to become the leading product for the integration into the Microsoft Office environment.
• The SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio applications, as well as SAP Lumira, are seen as the best choices for the data discovery area.

It is important to consider all this information when deciding your company’s BI strategy as it is clear that the products shown in the middle part of Figure 4 are viewed by SAP as the future towards which its overall BI portfolio is moving.

Recently (Q4 2015) SAP also announced a new product, SAP Cloud for Analytics. It is important to understand that this is a new addition to the overall SAP BI portfolio and does not replace any of the other existing products. As Figure 5 shows, the key differentiator between the existing BI portfolio and SAP Cloud for Analytics is the type of deployment. SAP Cloud for Analytics is a pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, running on the public cloud, and the existing SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio is a classic on-premise offering.

Figure 5

Strategy for SAP Cloud for Analytics [graphic used with permission from SAP]

User/Personas

In the previous section I clarified the overall SAP BI portfolio and SAP’s future strategy for it. Before I get into the details for concrete recommendations about which BI tools to use for different scenarios, you need to understand the main users for each of the different tools. Each BI tool has been designed with a specific user in mind. Knowing more about these users helps you make the right decision when choosing tools based on your requirements.

In this article, I identify five different user types:

1. Decision makers: When referring to the decision maker, think of your senior management level or C-level manager, such as your CEO or CFO. This user is looking to quickly visualize key metrics on a corporate level and needs to be able to access those metrics either in the office or when on the road (via a mobile device). The decision maker requires the information to be highly visual in nature. Functionalities such as alerts and notifications are key for focusing them on the most important information first.
2. Analysts: The analyst, sometimes referred to as the power user, is a go-to person. Meaning that when a standard report or dashboard does not provide answers that decision makers are looking for, the analyst is the one who finds out the details for the decision maker and provides the BI content that is required.
3. Consumers: The consumer, sometimes called the information worker, is the person who needs the BI content, such as reports and dashboards, to do day-to-day tasks. Often the consumer is accessing pre-built and pre-configured BI content and only requires limited creation and editing capabilities.
4. Designers: The designer is the person (typically in an IT department) who creates the BI-related content for those scenarios when a pure self-service scenario is not the requirement or is not possible.
5. Administrators: The administrator is the person who oversees the SAP BusinessObjects BI deployment from an overall system administration point of view, as well as administrating the source data systems and the related metadata.

Creating Content Versus Consuming Content

After reviewing the main personas as part of the overall BI strategy, you can now match the different user types to the BI portfolio. This includes outlining what products are mapped for creating content, and which ones are mapped to what persona for the consumption of content. Figure 6 outlines how the different tools can be mapped from the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio to the different personas.

Figure 6

Content consumption

In this case I am looking at the consumption of BI content; therefore, the areas for the Designer and Administrator are empty for now. As shown in the figure:

• The decision maker persona mainly consumes BI content created using SAP Lumira, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, and SAP Dashboards. (I mention SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP Dashboards in case you have not yet moved to SAP Lumira or SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.) As you can see, the tools are focused on data visualization and on providing the decision maker with visual-driven content.
• The analyst should have access to all of the BI tools as there will be situations in which analysts require a tool such as SAP Lumira for more visual-driven content, and situations in which they require a tool such as SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for a more multi-dimensional and hierarchical-driven navigation.
• The consumer requires access to the classic reporting tools, such as Crystal Reports and Web Intelligence, for the pre-built content that is just consumed by the user. In addition, the consumer uses SAP BusinessObjects Analysis as well as SAP Lumira. In this case, SAP Lumira is used for the more visual content and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office, is used more for the typical slice-and-dice navigation and for situations in which it is important to provide access to the data as part of the Microsoft Office environment.

As you can see in Figure 6, each of the personas uses different BI tools. However, keep in mind that this does not automatically mean that you have to implement all the BI tools as part of your overall BI strategy. Implementing the complete BI portfolio would result in a large effort to install, configure, update, and deploy all the BI tools. Instead, you want to focus on understanding the requirements and then finding the right BI tools to meet those requirements.

Figure 7 shows the mapping of the BI products for the BI content creation process, as follows:

• In a situation in which the decision makers need to create new content or edit existing content, they would need access to SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Office, SAP Lumira, or to a SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio application that is focused on a self-service environment. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is mentioned in case you have not yet moved to SAP Lumira or SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio.
• The analyst requires access to all the different BI clients because they need to be able to create and share content with a large variety of users. As you can see in Figure 7, Web Intelligence is also required by the analyst to use, for example, when the BI content has to be shared with the consumer.
• The consumer needs access to SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Office, SAP Lumira, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, or SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio applications – depending on the requirements. SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Office is generally preferred over SAP BusinessObjects Analysis OLAP because most of the consumer types of users are usually working in the Microsoft Office environment.
• The designer and administrator personas do not require access to all the different BI client tools for the purpose of content consumptions as their focus is on the creation of the BI content, which is why none of the BI tools are listed for these two personas in Figure 7.

Figure 7

Content creation tools

Notice that, in Figure 7, in addition to the SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio product, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio applications are also listed as products to be used by decision makers as well as by consumers. In this situation the user is not accessing SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio as a product but instead is using it as an SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio application that provides a self-service environment to the user, which allows the user to consume and even create new BI content.

Figure 8 provides a slightly different point of view of the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio and differentiates the products based on their main purpose: self-service or professionally authored. Self-service in this case means that users are able use BI content (even creating and editing content) without having to rely on the IT department, in this case, the designer persona, for help. This means that users are able to view, edit, and share the BI content on their own. Professionally authored refers to situations in which users who have been fully trained in the product create BI content for another user to consume. For example, a report that is created in Crystal Reports requires a user with the necessary Crystal Reports products skillset to create a report that can then be consumed by the user.

Figure 8

Self-service versus professionally-authored BI content

Looking at the differences between self-service and professionally authored as shown in the figure, notice that three BI tools from the overall BI portfolio—SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, SAP Lumira, and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Office—are capable of covering most of the overall scenarios. Note that the only reason for the blank in the Data Discovery/Professionally Authored category (in Figure 8) is simply that professionally-authored content in this context doesn’t fit the data discovery workflow because the goal of a data discovery workflow is to offer the business user a self-service environment.

Data Connectivity

Another important aspect to keep in mind when choosing the right BI tool is how it connects to your corporate data.

Figure 9 shows an overview of the data access for SAP BW and SAP ERP. As you can see, with the exception of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP Predictive Analysis, all the BI tools provide access to SAP BW using BEx query, and also provide access to the SAP ERP system directly using Transient Providers in the SAP ERP system.

Figure 9

Data connectivity to SAP BW and SAP ERP

Figure 10 shows an overview of the data access for SAP HANA. Notice that all the BI tools can access SAP HANA directly, with two exceptions: SAP Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, which require a universe to access SAP HANA. SAP plans, as part of the 4.2 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI platform (expected in January 2016), to provide direct access for SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to SAP HANA.

Figure 10

Data connectivity to SAP HANA

You can see that there are key differences in data access for SAP BW and SAP HANA across the BI tools that will influence your decision on which are the right BI tools for your company.

Recommendations

Figure 11 shows an overview of my recommendations, based on my own experience, for how you should approach the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio and what steps you should take to help you make your final determinations. Remember that these recommendations are focused on using SAP BW as the main data source for the SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio.

Figure 11

SAP BI tool recommendation matrix

As shown in Figure 11, start with SAP BusinessObjects Analysis as this is the most logical choice to replace your previous SAP BEx Analyzer use cases. As the next step, consider adding SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio to your BI toolset, which allows you to mobilize your existing content and also to provide your users with dashboards. Finally, you should look at all the use cases that are not covered by these two tools and consider adding SAP Lumira or classic reporting tools, such as Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports, to your portfolio.

As a final reminder, remember you do not need to implement all the available SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio tools; however, you do need to implement more than one in order to be successful.

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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