Taking the “giant leap” into the world of Business Objects reporting on SAP
Now within the specific area of reporting and BI there were offerings for the various service lines like OLAP analysis, dash-boarding, enterprise, regulatory reporting and so on and so forth. Then SAP took the much predictable route of trying to provide a very tight integration road map of this product suite with its home grown datawarehouse solution, the SAP-BW. In the last two years SAP has also come up with an official roadmap of how each of these products in its enlarged suite would either be evolved or married with another product or retired altogether.
While this rationalization idea sounds quite logical and the natural way forward but it put quite a few questions and should I dare to say headaches in front of one person. And that is the IT Manager who was till now running his SAP-BI team using the home grown BI products and solutions from SAP. Over the last few months I have had the opportunity of meeting quite a few SAP-BI IT managers of some of our marquee clients and most of them are in a state of confusion. Their main dilemma is on whether to take the “giant leap” now or to wait and watch for some time to come.
Some of the pertinent questions that are tormenting them at the moment are:
i. Should I or should I not start looking at/adopting the BO tool set like WebI/XCelsius/Crystal for my reporting needs?
ii. With SAP talking about drawing the curtains for BEx by 2016, should I already start thinking about Pioneer (as and when it is released) or should I adopt a mix of WebI /Crystal/XCelsius, right away?
iii. The tools from the BO suite look good and have rich capabilities, how do I go about migrating my current reports on BEx to WebI/XCelsius? Should I go "big-bang" or should I take baby steps? Is a PoC/pilot really required?
iv. Last but not least how about my TCO? By paying an upfront license fees and doing a migration do I gain in my TCO over say a 5 years time scale?
If you are an IT manager running a SAP-BI unit for you organization, I am sure such questions would have definitely crossed your mind and if you have already not done anything about them yet, I am sure you must be thinking very hard by now.
Test the waters: Once you have decided that you really have that strong and compelling reasons to look at BO suite of products as they might be able to bridge some of the gaps that your current SAP reporting platform has, you need to test the waters. You could orrather should plan a Proof of Concept (POC) phase which would look at identifying some of your critical reports/dashboards in BEx or WAD and do a migration to WebI or XCelsius as the case may be. In our experience we have seen the PoC phases to be of an immense learning phase where we are able to de-risk, mitigate and plan work around for specific reports/functions. A PoC phase is definitely a MUST HAVE which will not only help you to understand the technical challenges and the magnitude of the same but also to help you get the necessary “buy-in” from your business community. It would serve as a good phase for business to also understand the nuances of the tool set and find out if it is indeed satisfying their needs and addressing their aspirations and much desired needs.
Also it is the right time to try and chart out a broad roadmap to perform the migration. This will help give you a clear idea of the detailed activities and an indicative time line to get this done.
Does it make “business sense” at the end of the day?: Before you actually cut that cheque to settle your license fees- you need to do some back of the envelope calculations as well. Now while all the benefits that you may derive out of your BO investments may not be quantifiable or tangible but you should not definitely look at what realizations you are going to get by saving on IT resources, increased development cycle time, ease of maintenance etc.
Once you are through with the above steps you should be more or less in a position to either take the plunge or retract your steps. As I said there is no one size that fits all and what makes sense to one organization may not make sense to another and deciding either way may be just alright. But what I have tried to bring to fore is a thought process which I believe should be adopted to decide on whether that giant leap is something worth taking or not.
While this rationalization idea sounds quite logical and the natural way forward but it put quite a few questions and should I dare to say headaches in front of one person. And that is the IT Manager who was till now running his SAP-BI team using the home grown BI products and solutions from SAP. Over the last few months I have had the opportunity of meeting quite a few SAP-BI IT managers of some of our marquee clients and most of them are in a state of confusion. Their main dilemma is on whether to take the “giant leap” now or to wait and watch for some time to come.
Some of the pertinent questions that are tormenting them at the moment are:
i. Should I or should I not start looking at/adopting the BO tool set like WebI/XCelsius/Crystal for my reporting needs?
ii. With SAP talking about drawing the curtains for BEx by 2016, should I already start thinking about Pioneer (as and when it is released) or should I adopt a mix of WebI /Crystal/XCelsius, right away?
iii. The tools from the BO suite look good and have rich capabilities, how do I go about migrating my current reports on BEx to WebI/XCelsius? Should I go "big-bang" or should I take baby steps? Is a PoC/pilot really required?
iv. Last but not least how about my TCO? By paying an upfront license fees and doing a migration do I gain in my TCO over say a 5 years time scale?
If you are an IT manager running a SAP-BI unit for you organization, I am sure such questions would have definitely crossed your mind and if you have already not done anything about them yet, I am sure you must be thinking very hard by now.
Wish I had a simple solution or a step by step approach to get to the bottom of this well.However I would like to propose a thought process around trying to prepare or not to prepare for this “giant leap”. The following are some of the key considerations that someone should have while thinking about that giant leap.
Does the BO suite fill-in the gaps? : First try and see if the tool set that is on offer plugs those white spaces or gaps that exist in your current reporting NEEDS. The features that WebI, XCelsius, Crystal offer are indeed very rich and are positioned for specific needs like analytical reporting, dash-boarding, enterprise reporting respectively. Should your business have some such need(s) which it is not able to realize using BEx/WAD then it does make all the sense to look at the suite. For example a burning desire for power users to be able to create their own reports. However on the other hand should you have strong and compelling reason(s) to believe that your current tool set is largely able to address the business needs then possibly you need to put the considerations in the back burner for the moment. My mantra here is that one should not think of adopting this tool because it is the new gizmo in the block. The driver should rather be some strong business vacuum that this suite should try and fill.Test the waters: Once you have decided that you really have that strong and compelling reasons to look at BO suite of products as they might be able to bridge some of the gaps that your current SAP reporting platform has, you need to test the waters. You could orrather should plan a Proof of Concept (POC) phase which would look at identifying some of your critical reports/dashboards in BEx or WAD and do a migration to WebI or XCelsius as the case may be. In our experience we have seen the PoC phases to be of an immense learning phase where we are able to de-risk, mitigate and plan work around for specific reports/functions. A PoC phase is definitely a MUST HAVE which will not only help you to understand the technical challenges and the magnitude of the same but also to help you get the necessary “buy-in” from your business community. It would serve as a good phase for business to also understand the nuances of the tool set and find out if it is indeed satisfying their needs and addressing their aspirations and much desired needs.
Also it is the right time to try and chart out a broad roadmap to perform the migration. This will help give you a clear idea of the detailed activities and an indicative time line to get this done.
Does it make “business sense” at the end of the day?: Before you actually cut that cheque to settle your license fees- you need to do some back of the envelope calculations as well. Now while all the benefits that you may derive out of your BO investments may not be quantifiable or tangible but you should not definitely look at what realizations you are going to get by saving on IT resources, increased development cycle time, ease of maintenance etc.
Once you are through with the above steps you should be more or less in a position to either take the plunge or retract your steps. As I said there is no one size that fits all and what makes sense to one organization may not make sense to another and deciding either way may be just alright. But what I have tried to bring to fore is a thought process which I believe should be adopted to decide on whether that giant leap is something worth taking or not.
Comments
This is very pertinent to the situation customers are facing today. Most customers followed strategy of “wait and watch” last year but today many are ready to seriously look at it at least from prototyping stand-point. I think for customer to undertake migration to BO (even after successful prototype), few more things are going to be important
Migration Tool – The transition can involve huge developmental efforts and complexity. SAP or consulting partners will need to develop a tool for automating it. This will effective address not just cost aspect but other aspects such as timeliness, quality, repeatability.
Clear vision and road map of reporting strategy based on business needs – Migration to BO will make sense for advanced features for data analysis. Customer will need to evaluate what their business needs will be in upcoming years and evolve this strategy and roadmap.
Premium Licenses Cost – I believe this cost is $4k/license minimal and this can be deterrent for many customers. SAP will need to address this as there may not be clear ROI and business justifications at this level of cost.
Posted by: Nitin Kulkarni | December 10, 2009 12:56 PM