Strategies for Creating an Information-Driven Culture

The July edition of the SAP Community Network BI News is out. This month's newsletter focuses on strategies for creating an information-driven culture in your organization, and includes articles on the following topics:

• Design thinking methodology
• Building a BI business case
• Building a BI competency center
• BI adoption
• Self-service and mobile BI

...and more. Worth a look.

Webinar Q & A: What Migration Value Do APOS Solutions and ProductsOffer?

Migration remains this year's big story for the SAP BusinessObjects community. Here's one final question from our "The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4" webinar attendees:

Q: BI 4.0 comes with a migration tool, so what value do APOS solutions and Migration Accelerator productsbring to the table?

Fred Walther, APOS: When you use the BI 4 migration tool, you move the content from your XI 3.1 environment to your BI 4 environment, but you are moving it as is. Converting UNV universes to UNX universes is another task altogether, and APOS Migration Accelerator products can help you convert universes in bulk, and repoint Web Intelligence reports to the new universes. APOS well managed BI solutions also allow you to compare your old system with your new, and to bulk-manage security, objects, schedules and instances.

Okay, that was a bit of a softball, and right in Fred's wheelhouse, to continue the baseball analogy.

What have we learned so far in our migration webinar series?

• From Pierpaolo Vezzosi, we learned about innovations in the semantic layer.
• From Ty Miller, we learned about the many new features in BI 4.1.
• From Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar, we learned about the business value of BI 4.x.

We've really only just scratched the surface of the migration topic. Our webinar series continues on Sept. 19, 2013, when SAP's J. C. Raveneau joins us to discuss the finer points of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.x migration planning.

Webinar Q & A: Your Biggest Migration Challenge

Great question from one of our "The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4" webinar attendees:

Q: What is the biggest challenge in migrating from 3.1 to 4.x you've seen?

...and a great answer from our guest presenter, SAP's Saskia Battersby:

Saskia Battersby, SAP: In general, the biggest challenge is understanding the size and complexity of the migration project. BI 4 contains many changes which complicate the migration process, but which are necessary for the future of BI within your organization. It is important to come to terms with the scope of the migration project during the planning stage, to use all of the resources at your disposal, and to work with experienced partners to increase your prospects for an effective and efficient transition to BI 4.

...and also from APOS Systems' Fred Walther:

Fred Walther, APOS: One specific challenge is the migration of large amounts of content. Sometimes migration of a large number of instances is not practical, so it is important to have a strategy and solution in place to archive those instances, and to be able to retrieve them selectively as needed, whether for operational or compliance purposes.

For more help in planning, preparing and achieving an efficient migration, see our migration webinar series.

Webinar Q & A: The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4

A number of great questions were raised and answered at our recent webinar on formulating your business case for upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4:

Q: What BusinessObjects reporting is available on iPad? WebI? Xcelsius? To what extent is this supported?

A: SAP BusinessObjects Mobile 5 supports all of the content types. Explorer is now included, as well as Dashboards (Xcelsius), Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, and Design Studio

Q: What are the new features of the UNX universe format?

A: The ability to handle multi-dimensional data sources and changes to the way data federation is done are some of the key new features. For more information, review our earlier webinar, "The SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 Semantic Layer & Migration," in which SAP's Pierpaolo Vezzosi provides a detailed discussion.

Q: Are all components of Dashboards/Xcelsius supported on the iPad? In earlier versions of 4.0, several components were not supported (e.g.: spreadsheets).

A: More connectivity options (i.e., not just UNX) have closed the gap considerably between what is available via the Web and via Mobile.

Thanks to SAP's Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar for being our guest presenters in this webinar, and for providing some insightful answers to our webinar attendees' questions.

Migration is this year's big story for the SAP BusinessObjects community. For more help in planning, preparing and achieving your migration, see our migration webinar series.

Self-Service BI - The Business Case for Upgrading to SAPBusinessObjects BI 4

Traditional BI answers known questions. Self-Service BI answers unknown questions.

So say Saskia Battersby and Pierre Leroux in a presentation they delivered at the ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference 2012 (Extending Self-Service Capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects BI (PDF)).

Saskia and her colleague Deepa Sankar will be joining us for a webinar on Thursday, July 11, 2013, to discuss The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4. Part of that business case is the new self-service capabilities of BI 4, and the growing importance of self-service BI for competitive advantage.

What are unknown questions? As Donald Rumsfeld once said:

There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.

While Rumsfeld's statement was widely ridiculed, it is actually quite accurate and succinct. If you don't know how to formulate the questions that challenge your assumptions or fill the gaps in your knowledge, then that information will elude you.

Or, as Mark Twainsaid, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

Standard reports answer a set of standard questions on a periodic basis. They provide information on the known knowns and known unknowns -- the information you use to manage your daily operations. But what about those unknown unknowns? How do you find answers when you can't yet formulate the questions? More and more, your competitive advantage depends on learning those unknowns through proactive analytics. Your performance will depend not just on how you react to markets, but also how you predict events and act to take advantage of them. You will be judged not just on what you know, but on what you should have known.

That's where the self-serve aspects of BI have their impact. That's why it's important to take advantage of the new capabilities in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4. Join us for this informative webinar to learn more.

View the recorded webinar.

Mobile BI - The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4

Business is conducted in real time, and on location, so your BI has to be available in the same manner. Mobile BI confers competitive advantage, and the mobile BI capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 are a large part of the business case for upgrading. No matter how decentralized your workforce and decision makers, they can have the information and analytic power they need when they need it, and where they need it. Every business should build mobility into its BI strategy.

SAP has placed great emphasis on mobile BI in BI 4. Yourmobile workforce can both access information remotely, and also analyze it using applications optimized for mobile devices. The acquisition of Sybase, the consolidation of interfaces, the development of mobile applications, and the strong mobile SDK for third-party application development have all been milestones in the push toward an advanced mobile BI strategy -- providing real-time engagement and collaboration, and instant access to business and location analytics

• See a mobile location intelligence demo.
• Check out the SCN SAP BusinessObjects Mobile Blog

Our upcoming webinar, The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4, addresses mobile BI and many other BI 4 value propositions. SAP's Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar will discuss:

• The value SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 brings to your organization
• How it aligns with strategic business intelligence objectives
• How you can increase Return on Investment (ROI)
• How you can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

View the recorded webinar.

This webinar is the third in a series on migration issues. View other webinars in the series.

Data Analytics – The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjectsBI 4

Most organizations are now data-driven. Competitive advantage demands it. In data-driven organizations, the focus is turning to data analytics as the volume, types and sources of data multiply. If you're having a hard time keeping up to that reality, wait until you see what comes next.

As of mid-2013, a full 90% of all the data that exists in the world has been created in the last two years. Collectively, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, and a healthy slice of that data concerns your business. It's easy to see that a proactive approach to data analytics and big data is required.
One of the key justifications your business case for upgrading to BI 4 should emphasize is the need to embrace data analytics as a key strategic investment.

Our upcoming webinar, The Business Case for Upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects BI 4, addresses this need and many others. SAP's Saskia Battersby and Deepa Sankar will discuss:

• The value SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 brings to your organization
• How it aligns with strategic business intelligence objectives
• How you can increase Return on Investment (ROI)
• How you can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

View the recorded webinar.

This webinar is the third in a series on migration issues. View other webinars in the series.