Innovations in 4.0: Next-Generation OLAP Analysis

Innovations in 4.0: Next-Generation OLAP Analysis Pierre Leroux   Business Card Company: SAP Posted on Jul. 11, 2011 03:15 PM in Business Intelligence (BusinessObjects)

So you’ve read about SAP BusinessObjects Analysis or even played with it. So what! you might say, OLAP analysis is not new after all… True, but SAP BusinessObjects Analysis differs from previous OLAP solutions. It’s the results of a significant software project (code name Pioneer) aimed at bringing together the best of SAP BEx and SAP BusinessObjects Voyager. The outcome: 1- a modern and compelling user experience leading to greater satisfaction and ultimately driving BI adoption among the business crowd. 2- Two different editions; the edition for MS Office for users of Excel and PowerPoint, and the edition for OLAP that provides self-service multidimensional analysis work spaces for personal or shared use over the Web.

Modern and compelling user experience

This is a major strength and value for our customers especially in comparison to legacy BEx front-ends. It enables fast business insights with intuitive drag-and-drop steps to analyze multiple dimensions and hierarchies. All of that in modern and familiar MS Office or web browser environments allowing pervasive deployments with much less dependency on IT.

MS Office ribbon-like toolbar in the edition for MS Office

Tabbed toolbar in the OLAP edition

And thanks to dedicated panels, workflows such as filtering, conditional formatting and adding calculations can now all be achieved without hiding your data (no more pop-up dialogs).

Analysis panel in the edition for MS Office                         

  

Data and Layout panels in the edition for OLAP

 

Light footprint and versatile deployment scenarios

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis is a superb fit for IT organizations wishing to bring innovation without disruption to their SAP NetWeaver BW deployment. First, it runs natively on top of current BW version 7 instances with existing BEx queries. Second, the edition for MS Office comes with a light footprint and versatile deployment scenarios that make it for an easy adoption. Third, it lays the groundwork for ongoing benefits as customers proceed along the business intelligence maturity curve at their own pace.

The edition for MS Office as a client/server application streamlines implementation and mitigates risks associated to the adoption of any new technology. Customers can start with the edition for MS Office for existing MS Office users (such as financial and business analysts) and set their “own pace” when it comes to deploying the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform and the edition for OLAP to more users across the organizations. Customers can even start with the edition for MS Office running with the successful and widely adopted version 3.1 of SAP BusinessObjects BI platform.

Benefits today, benefits tomorrow

While SAP BusinessObjects Analysis delivers tangible business benefits to our customers today, it is also a great investment for the future. As organizations grow more and more accustomed to SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, they have the ‘option’ move at their own pace, adopting other solutions of the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite.

 

Acknowledgement: I owe a great debt to my colleague and “Analysis expert” Thierry Audas for providing much of the material you just read in this post. Thanks for your contribution Thierry!

 

Other articles, posts, and links about SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Innovations:

Innovations in 4.0 (summary)

Innovations in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Presentation

Innovation in 4.0: The New Semantic Layer

Innovation in 4.0: Unified User Experience

Innovation in 4.0: Personalized, Self-Service Access to Information

Knowledge Center for Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office 1.1

Knowledge Center for Analysis, edition for OLAP 4.0 

 

Pierre Leroux   is part of the SAP Business Analytics team and based out of Vancouver.

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