With SAP BusinessObjects applications, you can layer analytical and dashboarding BI tools such as SAP BusinessObjects Voyager and Xcelsius on top of your SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application to enhance your metric management capabilities.

SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management 7.5 helps your organization communicate business goals, prioritize strategic initiatives, and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), as shown in Figure 1. By cascading strategy across the enterprise, SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management users on all organizational levels can benefit from the application’s user interface (UI) and comprehensive coverage of the strategy management process.

Figure 1

Standard KPI reporting screen in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

In many cases SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management data can (and should) be made available to a broader group of employees and business partners beyond dedicated strategy management users, such as strategy analysts and selected managers. Here are a few examples:

• A selected slice of strategic objectives and KPIs from both financial and customer perspectives of a scorecard might be highly relevant for most sales employees of a company. These employees typically do not have access to a full-blown strategic scorecard and probably would not have the time to read and understand it. However, regularly sharing selected, relevant objectives and KPIs in the company’s intranet via a simplified, animated dashboard would help ensure that the sales force is aligned with these strategic goals.

• During the workforce planning process, a broader team of HR experts and representatives from different lines of business might benefit from gaining access to a combination of HR- and finance-related objectives, KPIs, and initiatives from the company’s strategic plan. This would ensure that the resulting workforce composition targets and related tactical HR guidance formulated during the workforce planning process are in line with the company’s long-term, strategic objectives.

• A group of analysts might be interested in receiving a subset of strategic KPIs and their quantitative ratings as determined over a longer period of time by SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. Visualizing this information in a multidimensional report and feeding the data in an advanced analytical model might help discover interesting causal relationships between different KPIs such as brand recognition and market share/profit.

SAP BusinessObjects Voyager and Xcelsius can work with a specific slice or detail level of strategy management data to enable additional enhanced visualization and analysis options. They can help you populate an executive presentation with data on strategic objectives and initiatives (Figure 2), perform drill-down-enabled comparisons of KPIs and initiative statuses between business units, or run simulations. By using SAP BusinessObjects Voyager and Xcelsius on top of SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management, you can visualize a selected slice of your strategy management information analyze trends and forecast based on data from SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management.

Figure 2

Executive dashboard in Xcelsius featuring strategy data

SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management 7.5 provides metrics and scorecard application data to external BI tools via dedicated connectors. I’ll describe how to set this up in the following sections:

• Populate an Xcelsius dashboard via a Web service
• Integrate SAP BusinessObjects Voyager with SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

A BI expert with SAP BusinessObjects administration knowledge could drive the setup with assistance from an SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management system administrator and an SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application consultant.

Populate an Xcelsius Dashboard Via a Web Service

Xcelsius has its own Web Service Description Language (WSDL) parser to consume Web services. By parsing SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management Web services via WSDL, Xcelsius can access SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management services. You can create the dashboards by using SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management data and other applications’ data.

First, you need to make SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management data available to the Xcelsius dashboard users. SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management provides two Web services to enable Xcelsius integration:

• SMDataService: Acquires SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application objects such as objectives, initiatives, KPIs and their labels, long-text definitions, properties, hierarchies, and assignments

• CubeService: Acquires data from the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (SAP NetWeaver AS) such as measure-based quantitative metrics (actual vs. target) and their associated statuses, scores, trends, and other calculated data

You can access and test the Web services using Web Services Navigator. You must have SAP NetWeaver administration authorization to perform the testing. You also should know the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management SAP NetWeaver AS address and port number. Start Web Services Navigator using the URL https://<nwce_server>:<port>/wsnavigator/enterwsdl.html. From the list of all Web services, select SMDataService or CubeService. All possible operations for the selected Web service are listed to give you a sense of the available fields.

Next, any user who will be using the SMDataService and CubeService Web services must be added to the SAP user management engine (UME). Log in as an administrator in SAP NetWeaver via URL https://<nwce_server>:<port>/nwa. In the Users and Access tab, select Identity Management. Click Create User, enter all the user information needed, and assign the user to a group (if needed). Save your settings.

Now you must configure the Web service providers for both services to use basic authentication. Start Web Services Administration in SAP NetWeaver using the following URL: https://<nwce_server>:<port>/nwa/WSAdmin. Search by Service Definition Name and select jee-default_SMDataService or jee-default_CubeService, respectively. Select the Configuration tab and then select the Service Endpoints tab. From the Service list, select SMDataServiceService or CubeServiceService. On the Security tab, fill the value of the HTTP Authentication parameter section by selecting User ID/Password. Save your settings and repeat the same steps for the second service.

The next step is to export the WSDL files from SAP NetWeaver and prepare the files for importing into Xcelsius. In Web Service Administration, select the respective service SMDataServiceService or CubeServiceService and click the WSDL tab. Click the WSDL link https://<nwceserver>:<port>/strategy/SMDataServiceService?wsdl&mode=sap_wsdl in the Details about WSDL section. A pop-up window appears showing the SMDataService WSDL data. Click File > Save As and save the opened WSDL file (replacing the .xml extension with the .wsdl extension) into a directory accessible by Xcelsius. Save as type All Files (*.*). Repeat these same steps for the second service.

Before Xcelsius can load the exported WSDL files, you need to modify those files. Open each WSDL file in Notepad. Search for the following text string: parts= “parameters”. Remove all occurrences and save the file.

Next, import the WSDL files into Xcelsius. You must configure a dedicated Web service connection for both files. Start Xcelsius Data Manager and go to Data > Connections. Add a new Web service connection. In the WSDL URL field, enter the URL for the SMDataService service as a server address (if stored on the SAP NetWeaver server) or browse for the file locally (if stored in the local directory). Click Import. All available Web methods and parameters are displayed in the Data Connection window. Create a new service connection for the second file as well.

Now you need to map input and output values to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that will contain data returned from the Web services. Xcelsius uses the spreadsheet to read data before displaying results. In Data Manager, open the connection created for strategy data (Figure 3). Select an Input Value and click the icon to the right of the Read From field. In the Select a Range box, enter the cell location where the input parameter is set. Select an Output Value and click the icon to the right of the Insert In field. In the Select a Range box, map the return value to a set of rows in the spreadsheet. Make sure to allocate adequate rows in the spreadsheet for the data to be retrieved by the Web Service because Xcelsius does not support dynamic rows.

Figure 3

Mapping input values in the Xcelsius spreadsheet

As a last step, you have to configure Xcelsius components (e.g., combo boxes, gauges, tables, and charts) to use data from the spreadsheet. Double-click each component to display the property window (Figure 4). Use standard Xcelsius configuration to map the labels, sources, and destinations of the individual components to the respective rows or ranges in the spreadsheet and configure the components’ behavior and appearance.

Figure 4

Set up the Xcelsius combo box properties

Finally, your Xcelsius dashboard is ready to use the visualizing strategy data populated by the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management Web services (as shown in Figure 2).

Integrate SAP BusinessObjects Voyager with SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management

With SAP BusinessObjects Voyager, your business analysts can explore online analytical processing (OLAP) data. Analysts can quickly answer business questions and then share their analysis with others, spreading knowledge beyond the confines of a single department or group. Integrating strategy data in SAP BusinessObjects Voyager extends the ability to perform queries and analysis of strategy management information. By accessing strategy management data in SAP BusinessObjects Voyager, users can gain deeper insight and understanding about the way strategy is being executed.

First, you need to add the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users and system groups in the Central Management Console (CMC) to the strategy group to identify them as SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management users. To log into the SAP BusinessObjects User Management System, follow menu path Start > All Programs > BusinessObjects XI 3.1 > BusinessObjects Enterprise > BusinessObjects Enterprise Central Management Console. From the CMC home screen, select Users and Groups in the Organize section. Right-click the Strategy group and select Add Members to Group (Figure 5). Add the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users and system groups to the strategy group, identifying them as SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management users and groups.

Figure 5

Add SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users to the Strategy user group in CMC

Next, assign the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users to a SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application group and context. Log into the Strategy Management administrator interface using the URL https://<nwce_server><port>/strategy/administration. Navigate to Set System Defaults in the Administration section. Click Synchronize user tables to make the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users known to the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management system. Assign the new SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management users to an existing application group (or create a new one) and assign the application group to a context.

Then, install and register the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management ODBO provider. In the Windows Start menu, select All Programs > BusinessObjects 3.1 > BusinessObjects Enterprise > Central Configuration Manager. Click the Manage Servers button. Log in as Interactive Publisher Administrator. In the server name listing, select the MultiDimensionalAnalysisServicesServer option and click the Stop button. Copy the entire ODBOProvider directory (found at Program files (x86)SAP BusinessObjectsStrategy ManagementInternetPubODBOProvider) from the Windows server where the SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management Interactive Publisher component is installed to any directory on the SAP BusinessObjects XI server. Run the SSMProviderReg.bat file to register the DLLs from there. Add the SAPBusinessObjects Strategy Management ODBO provider to the Data Driver by entering the following registry setting: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0MDAODBO] "SupportedProviders"="SSMProvider.1”. Then restart MultiDimensionalServicesServer.

Your next step is to create an SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection for the ODBO provider of SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. Start the CMC and log in with administrative rights. Navigate to the Voyager Connections tab and click the new connection icon.

Enter a description for this connection. In the Provider field, select SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management as the ODBO Provider. In the Server Information field, enter the IP address and port of the server where SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management is deployed on SAP NetWeaver.

Click the Connect button and log into SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management as the administrator. Browse for the InfoCube that contains the strategy data you want to associate with the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection. In the SSMCatalog folder, each Strategy Management context (with perspectives, objectives, initiatives, and KPIs) is represented as a multidimensional InfoCube, which enables further analysis in SAP BusinessObjects Voyager (Figure 6). Select the context you want to assign to the connection.

Figure 6

SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management contexts in the Cube Browser of an SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection

From the Authentication drop-down list, select Prompt, SSO or User-Specified. Save your settings.

If you are using Single Sign-On (SSO) to authenticate between your SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application and SAP BusinessObjects Voyager, you need to assign SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users and groups to the new SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection. Start the CMC and log in with administrator rights. Navigate to the Voyager Connections tab and select Manage > User Security. Click Add Principals. From the Available users/groups list, select the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager users and groups who may log into SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management using SSO. Click Add and Assign Security on the Add Principles page. The Assign Security window pops up. Allow the Voyager group to have Full Access, click Apply, and then click OK.

Finally, create a Voyager workspace populated by the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection to SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. The Voyager workspace is an analytical UI in which users can access SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management data within SAP BusinessObjects Voyager. From the Windows Start menu, select All Programs > BusinessObjects 3.1 > BusinessObjects Enterprise > SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Java InfoView and log in with the appropriate username and password.

In the InfoView window create a new Voyager workspace by clicking Document List > New > Voyager Workspace. When the Choose Connection window pops up, select the SAP BusinessObjects Voyager connection you just created and click OK. SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management measures are visible in the Measure dimension. Perspectives, objectives, KPIs, and initiatives are contained in the Strategy dimension. Drag the metadata on the left side to the appropriate positions in Crosstab or use other data view types, such as 3D Clustered Columns or Stacked Bars.

You can now use SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management application data for ad-hoc analysis in SAP BusinessObjects Voyager using the Voyager workspace (Figure 7). The Voyager workspace allows you to:

• Access and use SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management data within SAP BusinessObjects Voyager
• Analyze scorecard data from SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management InfoCube models in ad-hoc reports
• Create custom InfoViews displayed within SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise
• Perform queries and analysis on SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management custom data models

Figure 7

Voyager Workspace for advanced analysis of Strategy Management data

Dr. Karol Bliznak

Dr. Karol Bliznak is vice president of the Rapid Innovation Group (RIG) within the mobility division at SAP. He focuses on converging SAP’s strategic innovation categories, such as mobile solutions, SAP HANA, business analytics, and the cloud. He works at the SAP AG headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. He has more than 14 years of SAP experience in business intelligence, mobility and in-memory technologies, enterprise performance management, financial accounting, controlling, governance, risk, and compliance.

You may contact the author at karol.bliznak@sap.com.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.