Benefits of SAP BW Reporting
Here at SAP BW Consulting, Inc., we receive a constant stream of request to define what are the benefits of SAP BW Reporting.
As you might imagine, this is a subject near and dear to our hearts, as it is indeed, our core business - to deliver business benefits via SAP BW based business process reporting! So, we would like to say “we’re glad you asked”
In the Field Observations
But ‘in the field’ observation is what we most like to use to answer this question, and we have a “LOT” of data points from a large number of SAP BW projects and now, we have a large number of ‘in the field’ observations that also include SAP BusinessObjects (BOBJ) based solutions, such as xCelsius (dashboarding), Webi, BOE, Explorer and SAP BW on HANA.
So when you read through this, keep in mind that the solution architecture required to achieve these benefits often times requires one or more of these solutions:
Money may not grow on trees, but it does grow in SAP BW
So What Business Benefits Have We Seen?
Most benefits come from solving a problem or uncovering a previously undiscovered opportunity, especially in the area of Strategy.
- One of the major benefits of using SAP BW we almost ALWAYS come across is the opportunity to discover and fix Unit of Measurement issues.
Sometimes, these errors are minor, but more often than not, they are so deeply embedded in the company’s operations, they may require a restatement of the company’s financials. - Discovering the root cause of product outages, especially, but not only, with Retail Operators who have a high degree of interest in making sure their product is available on the shelf when the customer, who they have spent so much time and effort in getting into their establishment in the first place, passes by the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) location.
- Identifying problems with MRP settings in the underlying ERP system.
One of our more advanced dashboard projects involved ERP-BW-BOE-LiveOffice-xCelsius.
After Go-Live, it was almost immediately apparent that forecasted outages were due to continuously failing to update the MRP settings with the data available from the datawarehouse. - Item 3 above typically requires the expertise of logisticians and BW consultants, so we look for BW Consultants with combinations of skillsets.
Why?
The ability to provide high level interpretation of the data is an advanced skill that few in the BW world actually get much practice at. - Identifying bad data and correcting it.
With $600,000,000,000.00 reportedly lost by the U.S. economy due to bad data, this is an area ripe with opportunity.
SAP BW is without peer in identifying bad data.
The BOBJ data tools make it somewhat easier to fix the data, but we find the ability to recognize bad data, and determine where the bad data is being generated in the underlying business process, is a key skill, which, when deployed, results in rapid benefit to the business. - A key benefit of a SAP BW datawarehouse is that it is considered a prerequisite to establishing and executing a Balanced Scorecard based Strategy, at least among SAP customers, especially those using SAP SSM.
- Despite the ready availability of over 6000 standard ERP reports, and numerous other standard reporting tools, the SAP Business Warehouse provides a unique ability to uncover false assumptions.
In one recent project, one of our customers discovered that their most profitable contract type was not the one they had assumed. - Being able to think through the process of what comes after you have the data from a SAP BW report is also a critical benefit of SAP BW.
For instance, the commercial manager of one of our Airline Customers was faced with a never ending flow of vast volumes of information about how the airline was performing and needed to know what to do next, based on what the route profitability was telling him and his team.
SAP BW allows such situations to be modeled and responded to much more effectively. - SAP BW allows you to segment your prospects and customers on a vast scale, with almost infinite granularity, so that you can more effectively leverage your CRM system.
When properly designed, this granularity can be fed from many parts of the SAP system and 3rd party systems, such that you can integrate social media feeds, order history, search history, and predictive analytics, to create focused, relevant offerings. - The current ‘hot trend’ of providing real-time embedded dashboards is potentially a game-changer for many business executives.
The danger is losing credibility in the data, and SAP BW is a primary source of ‘high quality accurate data.
There are many dashboard scenarios where SAP BW is not in the loop, but for the majority of SAP Customers, we see the SAP BW system as the source of record and thus, of critical value to the acceptance and profitable use of dashboards.
Many Benefits of Using SAP
There are many other benefits, and in fact, SAP offers a free service to help you develop an Enterprise Reporting Strategy.
Use them.
We can help you with that or design, build, and deliver a highly beneficial SAP BW system for you. Click the button to get started.
We would love to hear about some of the unique benefits of SAP BW you have uncovered. You never know, might work their way back into the BW business case somewhere down the line. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog for more updates.
