SAP Business Intelligence Platform

SAP Business Intelligence Platform

The real motorist of any exertion is a decision. In terms of business, any company can be allowed as a decision plant. While a product director makes big opinions every week, other workers might make lower, but more rapid-fire bones . Deciding on a thing requires some knowledge. And, the more you know, the better the decision. In the business sphere, a certain area of technology helps people make the right opinions by supporting them with the right data. This field is called business intelligence or BI.

Business intelligence consists of multiple tackle and software units that serve the same idea. Take data and show it to the right people. While BI wo n’t tell you if it’s time to walk the canine, or make a marriage offer, it can be fairly effective for business opinions. The fashionability of BI made it a need- to- have thing, which caused growth of the BI results request.

There are a lot of BI merchandisers, and you might stick with recognizable names such as QuickSight, or Power BI by Microsoft, if the request is a dark timber for you. But for a moment we ’ll speak about lower celebrated seller SAP BI. This composition will give general information about the SAP BI platform and each separate result. We ’ll also dissect the product as a whole to find its pros and cons and give you some points to take into account.

What’s SAP Business Intelligence?

Let’s launch by introducing the seller. SAP( Systems, Applications, and Products) is a transnational IT company that develops software for enterprises. Its product canon is emotional, but we ’re interested in its BI results. Without stating the factual names, SAP’s BI results can be broken down into two broad orders: database/ data operation and logical results.

Database and data operation results

Business intelligence consists of a stoner- facing part, where the end stoner( data critic or business stoner) interacts with the data and data- channel technologies. The ultimate performs three main functions that make data accessible and consumable through the end- stoner interface

  • Rooting raw data from its sources,
  • Transforming data and storing it in the storehouse, and
  • Giving access to the data for certain groups of people via the end- stoner interface.

So, in terms of storing and managing data, SAP offers its database and data operation products. This set includes 4 products

SAP HANA and Database is a managed database or database operation tools.

Data Warehousing is a warehousing service to collect and manage all commercial data from a single storehouse.

Enterprise information operation is a general tool for data, data quality, and metadata operation.

Cybersecurity Governance, Risk, and Compliance are tone- explicatory. These are tools that support data security, fraud protection, and threat operation.

SAP HANA and Data Warehousing are both storehouse results that can be combined with each other. Each result can be stationed on premise in the pall or hybridly, combining the benefits of both former variants. These features come hand- in- hand with the logical platform and its instruments.

Analytics results

In terms of SAP BI, database and data operation results concern data storing, metamorphosis, and operation functions. The analytics result is a set of tools that give access to your data and ameliorate logical capabilities. In simple terms, logical results are the front- end of a BI system, which provides reports, visualisations, dashboards, or data discovery tools for judges.

The analytics results platform includes the following different products for business intelligence and data analysis

SAP Analytics Cloud is a Software- as-a-Service( SaaS) business intelligence result, that provides access to all the commercial analytics from one place. Consider Analytics Cloud as the interface for allBI-related SAP products. Analytics pall provides access to all the database results and combines different logical instruments in one place.

Cooperative Enterprise Planning performs the part of a commercial diary, where each department can arrange its conduct with others grounded on data- driven opinions. So this is a Google timetable on steroids for enterprises that plan strategic and fiscal opinions.

Prophetic Analytics is a tool that allows you to apply machine literacy algorithms to prognosticate unborn trends grounded on your data. Prophetic analytics comes with pre-built algorithms and machine literacy model operation tools.

SAP Business Intelligence. This product focuses specifically on the tools that concern business analysis, reporting, and visualisations of the given data.

SAP business intelligence is a core product that includes several data access instruments. The instruments within SAP BI can be divided by end- stoner groups. The first group is business druggies( or data consumers) a stoner group that queries data, while not dealing with the inner structure of the database. The alternate group is data judges( or the IT department) These drugs operate within a database to add meta, explore data, and support queries.

From the end- stoner perspective, let’s break down the instruments included in the SAP BI offer

SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite is an on- premise BI platform that provides real- time data access. Business druggies can operate with the data without too important involvement by the IT department, as it’s a tone- service BI system. BusinessObjects offers colourful capabilities similar to reporting, ad hoc( moment) reports, interactive dashboards, and data visualisation.

Like utmost BI tools, BusinessObjects has in- erected instruments for business druggies that allows for creating visualisations via a drag- and- drop interface. It can be integrated with numerous other products with the help of APIs. Integrations include fresh logical instruments, data sources, or separate operations similar to ERP.

SAP Lumira is a tool for creating data visualisations dashboards. Lumira is a part of BusinessObjects that helps business druggies and data specialists to work on data analysis. Another important point is that the results of visualisations can be participated across the association and in Microsoft Office documents.

SAP Demitasse results is a BI suite for small to mean businesses packed with different reporting tools and participating features. The difference between BusinessObjects and Crystal results is in performance figures. Still, stoner reviews ontrustradius.com show that Crystal results are used by enterprises not lower than small andmid-sized businesses.

As in the case with database results, logical instruments can also be stationed on premise or in the pall. Depending on the armature you choose, there’s a certain degree of inflexibility in choosing the product and deployment options. Having a full picture of SAP’s BI products and how they interact with each other, we ’ll move to agitating the platform as a whole.

The Pros of SAP Business Intelligence

According toBizVibe.com BI request share statistics 2018, SAP occupies over 16 percent of the global request. While the canon of its BI results is wide and includes products for different size businesses,g2.com reviews show that for the utmost part SAP is popular among> 1000 workers companies.

BusinessObjects Reviews

The number of SAP BI reviews is inviting among enterprises

So, grounded on the big picture, then are the advantages of using SAP Business Intelligence products.

Full range of business intelligence- related products

While not surprising for an old, established company like SAP, it has to be considered a pro. SAP offers all needed technological units to influence a data platform and reporting tools at your company. There are a couple of options for each product, so depending on your requirements you may emplace on a factual garçon or use the pall. pall, on premise, and mongrel deployment options are valid for nearly the entire product line both in Analytics results and Database results.

Analytics pall, in turn, is a good way to polarise your BI related instruments in one place. From this place, you may give authorization- grounded data access, so that each stoner will use an interface touching only the data needed for them to do their job.

flawless graphical stoner interface

Business intelligence tools Frequently look like delve delineations substantially because business druggies and tone- service tools are n’t the main focus of the seller. This results in a big interface aimed at professed programmers or data judges.

SAP Business Intelligence provides a bunch of good instruments with an intuitive stoner interface. While it may bear some time and skill to learn how to use it( enough like any BI tool), SAP stoner interface happens to be easy to understand. On top of that, with penetrating all the instruments from a single web- grounded interface, it’s much easier to conduct onboarding for your business drugs

.

Participating functions and Microsoft Office comity

Having access to data isn’t enough. The real value of reports and perceptivity you get from using business intelligence comes with participating in this knowledge. So, there are two cool effects about it

Nearly all the reporting or dashboarding instruments on SAP Analytics results are armed with participating functions. This guarantees your workers or directors can fluently partake precious perceptivity with each other. When we speak about reporting, these can be reports in the textual format, visual liar, or participated access to the constructed dashboards.

It’s also possible to upload the data into Excel or Spreadsheets documents and share across associations the “ traditional ” way.

But if your primary concern is data security, you can give rules and authorization either via database SQL warrants or data operation tools.

tone- service tools vacuity for wider stoner followership

Working with data requires a lot of data-specific knowledge and engineering chops. While the main function of BI tools is to automate the process of dragging data from a large storehouse and introducing it to a stoner, occasionally they need the support of a mortal agent. This job is frequently done by BI inventors, ETL inventors, or a devoted IT department.

SAP BI offers a number of tone- service instruments( BusinessObjects, Lumira) that give a toolset for casual druggies to manage with data. It does n’t mean that your BI druggies wo n’t need any help, but it’ll surely reduce conservation costs and time spent on reporting- related tasks.

SAP HANA real- time database and performance

Considering all the aspects of SAP BI products, we should mention the HANA database. The database provides real- time data access, which guarantees quick processing of large quantities of data and small response time. The HANA database is also compatible with different database operation systems. That makes data integration a lot easier within the whole association.

Data Source Integrations

We ’ve mentioned the wide integration list with external sources, but it deserves to be a separate point. SAP offers integration with two of its own data warehouses( SAP HANA and Data storehouse). But it also covers external services similar to Apache Hadoop, Hive, and Hbase. This can be especially salutary when working with big data and using a BI interface as a data disquisition tool.

Like utmost BI tools, BusinessObjects has in- erected instruments for business druggies that allows for creating visualisations via a drag- and- drop interface. It can be integrated with numerous other products with the help of APIs. Integrations include fresh logical instruments, data sources, or separate operations similar to ERP.

SAP Lumira is a tool for creating data visualisations dashboards. Lumira is a part of BusinessObjects that helps business druggies and data specialists to work on data analysis. Another important point is that the results of visualisations can be participated across the association and in Microsoft Office documents.

SAP Demitasse results is a BI suite for small to mean businesses packed with different reporting tools and participating features. The difference between BusinessObjects and Crystal results is in performance figures. Still, stoner reviews ontrustradius.com show that Crystal results are used by enterprises not lower than small andmid-sized businesses.

Inflexibility

the utmost of SAP’s BI products are pall- grounded, which are easy to integrate with and use. still, SAP also offers options in deployment type for nearly each of their products. Depending on your preferences, it allows you to get a bit of inflexibility in terms of deployment, tackle conservation, and system operation.

While the list of pros looks solid enough, there are no unicorns. So we ’ll pivot to cons now.

The cons of SAP business intelligence

precious licensing and overall pricing

While cost depends on the factual use case, SAP BI’s software licences are known to be precious. For illustration, look atcapterra.com 2019 figures on the SAP BI price, which starts at$,000 a time for using BusinessObjects. With further offers included in your package, the price can reach$,000 before any conservation costs. Much more painful is the absence of a free trial for BusinessObjects, but you can use the Analytics Cloud free trial to test what it offers.

Poor client support and platform administration

Lots of druggies ontrustradius.com report unreliable client support and administration of the platform. SAP is taking a way to ameliorate its support platoon. One of these advancements came in the form of an enhanced client success platoon that supported druggies using Lumira and BusinessObjects. But, that’s not the case with platform administration.

Platform Diversity

SAP is known to acquire a lot of companies. In fact, nearly all the BI products are the result of accessions of lower request players, like BusinessObjects in 2007. As is too frequently the case, the integration between the new products may appear lower than smooth.

Reporting performance and quality

While some druggies claim SAP BusinessObjects to be performant, there’s a contrary opinion that we’ve to address. According tobrightworkresearch.com case description on testing SAP’s BI and warehousing results, the results feel to push “ performative status ” down. To be more specific, there’s an issue with report detainments or indeed exposure. The same narrative can be set up ontrustradius.com andfinanceonline.com client reviews, that claim reports come slow or noway appear after a query was made.

Garçon shut down due to heavy loads

This issue is also reported multiple times in stoner reviews across TrustRadius. The main issue is described as waiters shutting down, when a certain degree of complexity is applied to reports. The same goes for SAP HANA waiters that feel to witness shutdowns as the query volume grows. While it might be an issue with any garçon, we had to address this bone as it looks sufficiently savage in discrepancy with SAP BI pricing and licensing.

What’s the stylish fit for SAP business intelligence?

So, who should look at a SAP BI offer in the first place? Grounded on the mentioned features, benefits, and problems, there are a many cases

Good fit for the enterprise. SAP is substantially used by big companies for a number of reasons. The primary focus of the product line is to serve enterprise requirements. BusinessObjects and Analytics Cloud are good for distributing content for a large number of consumer groups. The Enterprise Planner and overall list of integrations( videlicet with SAP’s ERP) suggest a good option for pots with a large quantum of data and mortal coffers to supply data with. Add then costs, and a complete service range for creating a BI result, and you ’ll get an optimal result for the enterprise.

Integration with multiple data sources. SAP offers some good options on integrating with colourful data sources, substantially because of SAP HANA source dogmas . The overall list of integrations is massive enough. The last- but- not- least point is integration with MS Office products, the most used data storehouse format.

Digital invoicing via SAP Business One

Digital invoicing via SAP Business One

The carrying of goods or commodities from one place to another is enabled by the filing of ‘E-Way Bills’ on the usual GST portal. Likewise, the GST Council is intending to execute a system of e-invoicing.

E-invoicing is not indicative that the company should make their invoice with the government’s software system. Rather, it implies that the company should provide information about their already produced invoice (from their ERP system) to the Invoice Registration Portal (IRP) and get the unique IRN (Invoice Reference Number) and a QR code from the portal, which requires to be showcased on their invoice.

E-invoice should chiefly follow the GST invoicing norms. Besides, it has to even make space for the invoicing system or rules adhered to by each industry or sector in India. Some information is essential and the rest is optional for businesses. And, every e-invoice needs to be registered personally and should not be processed together.

Following this system has become convenient thanks to SAP Business One. It provides two options to customers regarding the real solution deployment and use.

Two Options

File Download

With regard to this option, SAP Business One will permit your user to download all concerned information in the format and type of file needed by the government portals with just one click. As for E-invoicing, SAP Business One can produce the JSON file that can be transferred to the IRP (Invoice Registration Portal).

Unification with GSP (GST Suvidha Providers)

Over here, your SAP Business One system will be unified with the GSP’s software with the APIs for E-Invoicing. This computerised the procedure and your user can straight away print the sales invoice within SAP itself, which would possess the IRN and the QR code issued by the IRP. Customers can select to work with any GSP. We have built an automated solution that can be utilized with any GSP.

Other GST Solutions

We even have solutions for handling your GST reports, returns & E way Bill as well, apart from E-invoicing.

How Winklix Enables Delivering Results With Fully Remote Team

How Winklix Enables Delivering Results With Fully Remote Team

With recent outbreak of Coronavirus worldwide , almost all companies have moved towards remote workforce . If you or your team is among one who is not familiar with remote collaboration , then this  might be the difficult time for you . Winklix has already well experienced with remote work force as we are six year old agency , and at every stage of work of being professional , we found effective remote work function gives best result with proactive and thoughtful planning .

We want to share the ways we can define our success journey with our clients – particularity at the time of social distancing with the help of different tools which only focuses on clear result in paramount . Below given are some of the steps which Winklix take to provide you with great experience and successful outcomes for ourself and our clients .

Project Initiation 

Setup is key to successfully carry on the work and organisation is gold . Every project is successful if you follow who , what and how approach . At initial stage , we closely take our client requirement in order to start their project . These requirement includes planning of key project events , creation of project schedule , project tools definition , collaboration plan creation that takes everyone on same phase . We use tools for conversation which we are already in use or even use tools that our client teams are confirmable with .
All the above given activities have been made possible by using tools for web meeting , polling softwares , group / individual chat applications . We are familiar with Zoom for video conferencing and Slack for real time communication with our internal team and clients . For further team work we use Google Drive , Microsoft 365 and Confluences .

Participants 

The Winklix project manager works closely with client team lead which facilitates updates regarding planning activities from time to time .

Project Discovery 

During project discovery phase , our team and our clients team come closer to discuss existing functionality as well as brainstorming on what’s else new can be implemented . We firstly focuses on pain points of our clients and then our business development manager come up with innovative plan to steer entire project with right framework and solutions needed to build perfect solution .

Participants 

Winklix in house team compromise of SMEs , designers , programmers , testers , managers , team leaders and more in discovery phase . Whereas on client side , in general product owners , business leads , products experts and technical team is present to discuss unique needs .

Remote Discover Success Tips

In order to get best result of discovery phase onsite meeting is always preferable with clients and clients personnel , however their might be a situation that not all clients may get present onsite and in that case remote discovery phase is what all is required . We have years of experience in conducting remote discovery with team of many sizes .
Here is Winklix’s key to make you successful in remote discovery phase : 

  • Quick Meeting : Conduct a quick video meeting with Winklix and clients team wherein the aim will be to introduce everyone , make them understand what all the project is about , how will each person will get involved individually and collectively and future planned activities .
  • Pre-reads / pre-work : Both teams are equally responsible to provide the necessary documentation in relation to project to be read in advance that helps in gaining insights about discovery phase .
  • Agendas : Always try to crystal clear the agenda in advance so that every participants can prepare themselves in advance for discovery phase . Always try to consider different time zones and remember that we are humans , and it is quite obvious to have breakthrough of mistakes .
  • Duration : This said , if you have a meeting which last longer than 90 minutes  , try to break them into sessions of smaller minutes . Try to also give clear break during meeting and finding engaging ways for persons who are present in meeting .
  • Audience : Although their may be times you may require many people to be part of audience in order to gain interaction and participants for given agenda , however you can on the basis of priority can invoice the audience .
  • Material & Preparation : As all team members might not be present all the time in future , always try to provide them with relevant material , flow , software requirement sheet and more during meeting only .
  • Technology : Winklix after listening to client requirement , tries to make familiar the client with the technology we are going to use which best suits their requirement .

Project Build 

Project building phase requires both client and Winklix team to work closely , all together . We try to facilitate all our works remotely by using different tools and with our active client participation , as after all we are making the products as per their demand .
At Winklix , we dynamically change ourself as per client requirement . We use to collect feedback and adjust between sprints . Some of the major benefits of getting into virtual environment is we saves travel time , can experience face to face meeting and can start direct conversation using Slack , setting reminders in calendar and more . By this way people closely focuses on their work , rather than wasting time on other non sense things .

Validation 

Validation is the time wherein we validate with our clients for the solution that is made by us for them  in relation to awesome user experience and satisfying business needs . In order to complete this phase , we make use of different tools like Jira , SalesForce DX and Circle CI to carry on our testing , revision and easily push adjustments from time to time .

Training 

As training is equally important as delivering the software solution to our clients , we help to strive companies empower end users with platform knowledge that can set team for success . We create various training material why is easily accessible like Trailheads , videos , knowledge article in Salesforce and more so that it can be used by present staff as well as remote staff who was present during training session .

Project Launch 

A project is said to be really launched , when our clients begin real use fo software and started gaining value from it . For almost all of our project , we use to launch it remotely . This helps our clients to enjoy the benefit of fully remote enablement . And then at last we work with our client to create a launch plan which includes final testing , acceptance and user enablement .

Support After go-live 

If you are adopting to anything new , you will always have sets of questions in your mind . Thereby it is important for us to answer every question that may arise after launch of software to enable our clients to effetely evolved with software along with their team . At Winklix , our project development is not one time thing , rather we treat it as ongoing relationship that can take on various forms and we always try to support our clients at every point of time during their journey .

End To End Support Irrespective Of Geological Boundaries

Although we only have presence on some countries of the world , we provide support services on global scale irrespective of different time zones . We have experience on Salesforce Technology , SAP Technology , Microsoft Dynamic 365 and remote delivery .

So in case you are in need of support services or want to fully switch to remote operations due to COVID-19 or want assistance in maintaining your Salesforce org at distance , contact us