By now, you may have seen several different demonstrations of SAP’s Business Objects Explorer, most likely on an Apple iPad. It is a very impressive tool, and I encourage you to explore it using SAP's
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a data discovery application that allows you to retrieve answers to relevant business questions from your data. Through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, you can quickly perform keyword searches to find information, filter your dataset to focus on specific dimensions, and display the results using a wide array of visualization tools. Explorer gives you access to all of your data quickly and in an easy to read form, allowing you to make business decisions with all the information possible
You need SAP BO Explorer to explore, visualize, and analyze corporate data. You explore your data using keyword searches for information spaces or exploration view sets that contain the most relevant data to answer a business question.
An information spaces contains data organized in facets, and its associated exploration view sets allow you to visualize the data using multiple charts optimized for the type of data being explored.
In my experience with this SAP Business Intelligence Tool so far, I see two areas where you need to really think about the best way to implement it and how to use it.
The first area you should be aware of is the need for a solid datawarehouse, i.e., SAP Business Warehouse, or the proper use of a BOBJ Universe.
SAP customers will normally have SAP BW system available, however, there are many SAP BusinessObjects Explorer users out there who do not have an SAP system nor a SAP Business Warehouse system. They can still easily set up SAP BOBJ Universes connected to any number of data sources, and use SAP BO Explorer to perform their data exploration work.
Why do I start on the back-side? Because even though the tool gives you tremendous on-the-fly analysis capabilities, it is of little to zero value if it is based on incomplete data or non-architected datawarehouses.
If you want to explore, say Sales, then you will, of course, need to have your complete Sales datawarehouse up and running and have validated the data thoroughly.
By the way, I just read this week that the U.S. loses over 600 billion USD annually on bad data.
A supercharged BOBJ Explorer, if fed bad data, will simply lead to bad decisions quicker.
More reading:
Thanks