Reporting and Analysis

Requirements

Which hat do you wear in your company? For which business processes and decisions are you responsible? Depending on this, also your requirements to the functionality of your Business Intelligence system will differ.
Your colleagues and you would probably make the following statements regarding this:

"I would like to have an overview of our sales figures nicely formatted on one page."

"I need to carry out ad hoc reports regularly in order to take fast decisions."

"I am sending automatic emails with target settings and current data to all field service employees."

"My standard reports show exceptional values in color. This way I gain a fast overview."

"I travel a lot and need to have a mobile access to my data."

"I need waterproof data and want to be able to comment them directly."

The requirements to a reporting system differ from one another in multiple ways, amongst others regarding their analyses and formatting functionality. We help you with the definition of your requirements and realize them with an adequate technology.

Categories

We suggest going for a categorization to keep the decision processes for tool selection and practice as simple as possible and to focus your resources on the optimal implementation. Analyses functionality and formatting possibilities serve here significantly as selection criterion.

Click on the play-buttons and explore in video format the examples of use and solutions.

• Print processed reporting
  In the foreground stands the formatting for preparing your complete balance or bonus invoicing for the print and/or dispatch in your corporate design at a pixel level.
• Dashboards
  Information from large data volumes is clearly prepared in a compressed form. Focus lies here on ergonomics, clarity and presentation.
• Standard Reporting
  Employees of operational areas are provided with predefined reports. Target is here to make supporting reports for all fields of activity available at the push of a button. Exceptional values and violation of limit values are visible by color markings at first sight.
• Ad-Hoc Reporting
  The structure of ad hoc tools is configurable universally in order to allow individual and thorough analyses. Detailed breakdowns, individual filtering and conditions offer a broad usage of the Business Warehouse by any user.
• Automatic Reporting
  The routine publication of standard reports can free valuable resources for individual tasks. Moreover, automatic messages can help to call attention to a fast changing business situation.

Specialized BI components help e.g. to send out formatted reports in PDF format per email automatically or to provide standard reports for operational departments in the corporate portal.

A clear concept for the usage of BI reporting functionalities can provide a basis for an optimal user interface for an announced user circle in the first place as well as cost minimization. The essential aspects of this cost-benefit calculation are the different requirements of your operational departments along with your overall IT strategy.
Your frontend strategy will always be based upon a reasonable combination of requirements and the qualified technologies.

Next to the selection of an optimal BI functionality, the functional aspects like user access, the localization of user groups, the definition of information areas and standards play a decisive role for effectively using SAP Business Intelligence functions.
We develop together with you amongst others the following cost-benefit parameters within an utilization concept:

• Functional criteria
  Will you be planning with BI? Which business processes are to be supported? How complex are the applications? What requirements do you have concerning authorizations, graphical displays, printing, dispatch etc.? Which user groups can be defined?
• Statistics of use
  Which information areas can be defined? Which requirements on actuality do your user groups or information areas have? How many BI users will work with the different functionalities? How often will those applications be used?
• Corporate standards
  How does your company handle local client installations? How shall a central portal be used? Are analyses also to be used via local excel add-ons or exclusively via web applications in the browser? Are there specifications concerning the corporate design?
• Organization
  How is the allocation of tasks between IT, power and end users in the BI area defined? Which know-how is available in your company and how is it to be applied? Which are the BI relevant IT processes and how are they handled? Are BI processes to be supplemented?

Please contact us to plan the use of BI functionally or if you would like to get more information about the different possibilities.

The reporting system with SAP Business Intelligence offers integration with Microsoft Excel as well as the use as web application. The tool sets of SAP Business Explorer and SAP Business Objects offer various ways to use the needed information.

We support you with the tool selection via demos, analyses and the creation of decision memos.

Click in the graphic on the name of the SAP product and discover the functionality of the different applications in the cimt video demos.

SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx)

The functionality of the SAP Business Explorer Suite covers a broad spectrum. Here, the BEx QueryDesigner takes center stage, which assures a uniform definition of the queries and offers several possibilities to define ad hoc and standard reports. These reports can optionally be executed on the web (BEx Web Application) and in Excel (BEx Analyzer). Moreover, the BEx Analyzer and BEx Web Application Designer offer broad functionalities in order to implement reporting folders or analytical web applications individually. There, combined reports with graphics and tabs are generated and dashboards can be defined. Within the SAP Business Explorer Suite, PDF files can be created without difficulty and alerts are triggered in case of new information or exceptional values. BEx Information Broadcasting and BEx Mobile complete this tool set. Especially the publication, but also precalculation and dispatch to mobile phones can be provided with both tools.

SAP Business Objects

Business Objects completes SAP BI in the area of presentation with valuable functionalities. The technological integration takes place step by step. Crystal reports needs to be pointed out here. An important gap is closed with the SAP BEx in the area of formatted reporting.

The target group for ad hoc analysis applications with SAP Web Intelligence can be found in analysts and power users, which have the possibility to create their own individual reports. They can access a defined subset of the central SAP BI Data Warehouse.

The product Xcelsius is intended to create dashboards and simulations in order to cover the requirements of executive management for clarity and an appealing design. Xcelsius offers for dashboard designers an intuitive tool, which helps to keep the implementation effort limited. The same target group can be served via Live Office. With this integrated solution tables and graphics are integrated into Office documents and can be updated online. This helps to reduce throughput time and manual handling during information allocation.

SAP Visual Composer (SAP VC)

As tool for model-based development of portal applications the SAP Visual Composer reaches beyond analytical utilizations. The SAP Visual Composer's strongness lies in the areas of integrating analytical with functional applications as well as the display in general. Would you like to offer your users in context with analytical reporting or dashboards the possibility to interfere or to be guided through these business processes by a wizard? Then the SAP Visual Composer provides the necessary instruments. The presentation of reports, planning and analytical applications can be carried out via appealing and animated FLASH websites. Cross-fading techniques and animated graphics allow dashboards to be developed, which present information at a glance and still offer more information views when needed. Requesting another report or manual drill-downs are not necessary.

Individual extensions

We also introduce customized solutions for you if required. Here, we use amongst others the following technologies and procedures:

• Javascript for particular web functions
• CSS and SAP Themes for an consistent formatting of your web interfaces
• Integration of Web 2.0 frameworks
• VBA for superior Excel solutions
• Customer-Exits for specific BEx-functions
• Webdynpro resp. Java for individual user interfaces

Benefit from our broad expertise with handling SAP Reporting tools in all shapes. We would like to support you regarding the most suitable tool selection.

In your SAP Business Warehouse the essential corporate information is bundled. The next step is to make this information available when and where needed at the right time. The SAP Enterprise Portal (SAP EP) reveals here its performance and thus creates a new central working platform for your employees. Analytical applications, operative processes, internal and external information as well as collaboration tools and document management are available in the portal. From the view of SAP BI, these reports and planning sessions can be integrated directly into the personalized portal pages or can be published to the target groups as statistical analytical results. Moreover, portal applications can be developed, that propose reasonable transactions in the framework of a dashboard and provide an integrated view for the user. An additional logon in SAP ERP or calling the corresponding transaction is not necessary anymore.

Let's talk about these possibilities and use your SAP Enterprise Portal gainfully.