Blog of SAP Business Intelligence Insights & Information - Lonnie Ayers, CEO and SAP Certified Consultant

We focus a lot here at SAP BW Consulting, Inc. on SAP Business Warehouse and more broadly, analytics.  Sometimes, a casual conversation reveals that we need to address some issue of how to implement or otherwise work through a SAP BW project.  One that came up recently, and surprisingly from a SAP Consulting manager, was the question, “so what’s the benefit of SAP BW, afterall, it is just a reporting tool, and the system has many reporting tools built in besides SAP”? 

In every SAP implementation, almost without exception, the need will arise for one or more developments, popularly known as FRICE-W (Forms, Reports, Interface, Conversions and Enhancements and Workflows).  In the current SAP ASAP methodology, these are normally identified during the blueprint phase, but developed during the Realization phase

Col. John Boyd, was a USAF Fighter Pilot, and the developer of the OODA loop, or Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. He, along with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who developed the PDCA Plan, Do, Check, Act loop, used statistical analysis to lay the foundation for much of the core business process improvement concepts in use today.  The key element of both of these concepts is the loop or feedback information that runs through the loop.  Today's highly integrated, global, always on enterprises can benefit highly from taking a look at these loops within their enterprise and redesigning them avoid these mistakes.