SAP Business Analytics

Business Intelligence [BI: Business Intelligence]

Users need to have access to business information to be able to find answers to their questions at any time. Most people think that it is difficult to access critical business information that is not contained in standard reports. User demands for additional data or up-to-date information usually result in frustration and a lengthy report list. Even if ad hoc query functions are available, they are difficult to use. Besides, these functions do not provide a practical research method for gaining a better understanding of critical business issues.

With SAP BusinessObjects solution, your users can use data reporting and simple information analysis functions within a single integrated product through a self-service approach. This way, they can take effective decisions by gaining a better understanding of the business. They can access information with a few clicks, format it and then analyze it in order to identify basic trends and main reasons for them.

SAP BusinessObjects supports your users with a self-service access to information by providing the following:

• Powerful online and offline ad hoc query and reporting features
• Integrated and reliable analysis functions for all users A tool built on a complete, reliable and agile business intelligence (BI) platform

SAP BusinessObjects offers a user-friendly interface with query and reporting features that allow business analysts and non-technical information users to perform searches. For example, you can compare the performance of suppliers during the current year with their performance during the previous year, review data along with your forecasts contained in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and access reliable data sources for more details. Therefore, you can quickly understand trends in a single session and identify the areas that you need to optimize so as to maximize profits within the supply chain.

Users can format the information that they access through SAP BusinessObjects according to their requirements with a user-friendly "drag and drop" web interface. Users can adapt the "zero footprint" web interface according to in-house and external user segments. Your users can also access and synchronize data in many data sources ("comma separated values" [CSV] files and text files that are in the form of configured, text-based files and even spreadsheets) with minimum knowledge about basic data structure. They can use variables by creating special formulas in a single report.

Analysis does not have to end when you are disconnected from the network. You can use SAP BusinesObjects to create queries and reports in offline mode. This way, you can synchronize your data when your network connection is restored and then share the results of your analyses.

Improve Your Decision-Making Process With Visual and Plain Information

In today's business world, companies face an ever increasing amount of information input, and this volume continues to increase exponentially along with the self-produced information. For maintaining competitive advantage, it is important that key data is converted into value by processing it in a quick and efficient manner. Visualization of data through charts allows decision-makers to quickly evaluate key business information and thus engage in collaboration. Collaboration done on the basis of such information is a simple and effective method of increasing performance.

SAP BusinessObjects solution, the leading data visualization product in the market, makes it easier for you to visualize your data. With SAP BusinessObjects, you can design interactive and plain images that any user can easily understand. These images, combined with dropdown menus and slideshows, show commercial data in a clear view and enable decision-makers to access data with just a few clicks, work in an interactive manner and test future business processes. They allow you to create dashboards that are secure and meet your personal requirements by utilizing an existing IT infrastructure. This means that you can use dashboards which have the same level of security and same reporting features and contain the same data.

Think of a sales manager who needs to explain sales information about different products in various markets and regions. The manager, with the help of dashboards created by SAP BusinessObjects, can use "what-if" functionality to demonstrate how reduced inventory of a particular product affects the regional sales in the Northeast region. As these visual models are linked to data sources, they are continuously refreshed, enabling the manager to see the current status.

Provide Not Only Data, But Also Information

Use the unique "what-if" analysis feature to assess your options with the help of interactive slideshows and graphics. View the details on screen by opening a document directly from your dashboard.

Turn Insight Into Strategy

SAP BusinessObjects solutions are open, process-oriented and interconnected. They provide a complete and intuitive business performance profile by utilizing data residing in any application or platform, and makes collaboration easier to improve decisions and resolve issues. The solutions automatically detect major risks and performance issues within and outside the business.

With the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio, you gain a broader view and set your strategies, optimize decisions and improve risk management, regardless of the key operational systems. This portfolio offers portable, interoperable, consistent and integrated solutions that change the way you work by connecting people and information and increasing your business performance. In short, SAP BusinessObjects solutions help you to turn insight into strategy and the strategy into actionable operational decisions.

Dashboards Created By Page Editing and Design Tools

Today, many companies use composite dashboards. Such dashboards consist of different types of components such as reports, measurement tools and portal pages. With the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder solution, you can design interactive composite dashboards for all of your employees. By using the drag and drop functionality, you can build dashboards without the help of IT staff.

Page editing and design tools give users flexibility in many areas:

• Personal or enterprise dashboard options: You can create enterprise dashboards that can be used by many people or assign users the right to create their own personal dashboards.
• Method of access to dashboards: Managers can assign dashboard access rights based on duties, roles or security profile. WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface for creating dashboards and editing pages: You can create and share dashboards with only a little training or without any training at all. With SAP BusinessObjects, you can prepare dashboards to which you can include all of your content; for this, you can use tools that make your job easier, such as templates.

Summary

SAP BusinessObjects is a query, reporting and analysis tool. By providing self-service access to business information, it allows users to analyze data, identify trends and turn their information into effective decisions.

Business Challenges

• Self-service access to important information that is not included in standard reports
• Gaining a better understanding of key business points
• Comparing data, analyzing and identifying trends
• Online or offline access to information at any time and place
• Reducing the number of reports accumulated in the IT department

Key Features

• Online and offline query and reporting: Ask questions, compare data and identify trends.
• Intuitive, web-based interface: Adapt the interface to meet certain user requirements and synchronize data from many sources.
• Controlled and secure access: Determine who can access which data.
• Single interface: Access information without needing a separate analysis tool, format and review this information.
• Interactive analysis: Provide users with analysis functions on the report.

Business Benefits

• Improved decision-making processes
• Secure decision-making
• Control over data access and use of system resources
• Reduced number of tools required to transfer information across the business
• Reduced cost of business intelligence applications across the business

Business & Budget Planning and Consolidation [BPC: Business Planning and Consolidation]

Make Processes Efficient and Reduce Business Risk

CFOs and managers are under big pressure to maximize the profitability of their companies, reduce company costs, minimize risks and reinforce the trust of related parties. In order for a company to effectively reach these objectives, it needs reliable, up-to-date and functional data for planning as well as budgeting, forecasting, analysis and legal management reporting. Inevitably, it needs the capability to set operational budgets according to strategic plans, seamlessly combine plans drawn up on a company and department basis, intelligently model cost scenarios and carry out vulnerability analyses. You need to find a way to establish a fully documented control mechanism and ensure compliance with legal regulations in order to be able to manage reporting and consolidation process, both internally and externally.

However, in some cases, it may become impossible even to get a picture of your company's current status, let alone forecast its future performance. Operational and financial information that is of critical importance for your company may be currently scattered across many applications and databases, trapped in e-mail attachments and spreadsheets of your employees in the form of non-structured data. In such cases, controlling financial data can be difficult or the reliability of results may become questionable due to ineffective controls.

Business planning and budgeting is often a long and challenging process which needs to be carefully executed and effectively managed. Budgeting process can rapidly turn into a "hell of spreadsheets" when, for example, individuals responsible for operations send in unrealistic budget figures, managers responsible for enforcing the budget make changes in the figures beyond their knowledge, and version control issues cannot be managed and thus result in confusions. If this data is scattered across different departments, systems and even countries, then the consolidation processes will be even more problematic. This is why many leading companies are turning to strategic enterprise management solutions such as SAP Business Planning and Consolidation.

Designed for Users, Built by Considering All Requirements of Companies

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation not only allows you to access reliable company data, but also optimizes your planning and consolidation processes. The SAP BPC solution enables you to align strategic and operational plans with the company objectives, initiatives and indicators that are defined by using the SAP Strategy Management application. By using this application, you will have a system with which you will be able to plan for and understand all risk factors and manage budgeted financial resources in order to support all initiatives.

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation is an application that has been designed for all users in a company. It provides all users within your company with a personalized, role-based access to the functions. This access can be described as follows:

• User-oriented
• Process-driven
• Forward-looking
• Composite.

SAP Business Planning and Consolidation offers a unique user experience. In order to ensure ease of use, local interface for known tools such as Microsoft Office applications as well as the user-friendly web interface serve as local interfaces for the application. For example, this feature offers users local access to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that are directly linked to “live” operational data; when data are updated, the spreadsheet is also updated. While working with familiar tools, users need minimal training and can start to work productively on the very first day.

Smart operation panels provide users with appropriate options based on where the users are in an application and their security profiles. This way the users, with minimal training, can understand what they do, when and why they do it.

With self-service reporting, all users can immediately access information and create reports instantly without needing to demand anything from IT department. Simple "drag and drop" interfaces allow your users to easily create reports. You can create custom reports or use the reporting templates that are provided with the SAP BPC solution in order to meet your company standards.

Summary

With SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, you can reduce the total business risk and streamline planning, forecasting, financial consolidation, legal reporting, management reporting and consolidated budgeting processes.

Challenges

• Shortening cycle times for planning and budgeting processes and increasing user productivity
• Increasing the accuracy and reliability of legal and management reports
• Streamlining legal consolidation process
• Keeping the costs of compliance and auditing low
• Supported Business Processes and Software Functions
• With Business Planning & Budgeting, automate your budgeting process by following a top-down or bottom-up approach based on collaboration.
• With Forecasting, prepare more accurate plans and budgets and consolidate real-time actual data with retrospective data analyses.
• With Forecasting and Analysis, get automated warnings and suggestions about potentially risky critical performance indicators and access descriptions of deviations and reasons with a single click.
• With Reporting and Analysis, access current production and management reporting, financial, operational and multidimensional analysis processes with a single click.
• With Consolidation, centralize all data related to performance, finish your consolidation processes weeks earlier than scheduled and improve compliance.

Business Benefits

• Shorten the total budget preparation time in budgeting and approval processes by enabling finance managers and all process owners to collaborate for developing accurate budgets and aligning them.
• Have common business processes in place and modify them without needing help from the IT department.
• Enable decision-making processes by taking risk probabilities into account.
• Minimize the need for training and increase user productivity with familiar tools such as Microsoft Office.
• Minimize business and compliance risks by offering transparent financial reporting with quick closure and completely documented auditing mechanism by using data collected from a single data warehouse. 


SAP Strategy Management

Offer company-wide compliance and corporate strategy.

In order to be successful in today's competitive business environment, your company needs to be able to quickly respond to internal and external changes. You need to discover new ways of growing your company to maintain its leadership in the market, such as launching a new product or starting a new operation. You need to quickly align resources with your company and implement new strategies that will ensure productivity and profitability. So, how can you continue your operations by focusing on your business while trying to achieve this kind of quick response?

The key step here is to ensure that the entire company moves in the same direction, which is not an easy objective to reach for many companies. This objective requires a strong management leadership, a business-oriented way of thinking that values performance measurements and an approach which encourages higher efficiency and performance. When these factors come together, you will need basic information, a clear understanding of commitment and insight into personnel or budget needs in order to develop correct strategies. To ensure adoption, you need to communicate strategies to workers in a context that is understandable to them. You need to provide the right tools and initiatives to help workers carry out their work on a daily basis and in a manner aligned with the corporate strategies.

However, due to deficiencies in one or more of these areas, a significant gap arises between strategies and execution in many companies.

Assess the following questions with respect to your company:

• Do the employees fully understand how their roles, daily decisions and actions affect the business revenues and your corporate strategy?
• Do the employees have the information and initiatives that they need while making decisions which not only provide benefits, but also move corporate objectives even further?
• Does everybody work by using the same reliable data source so that all reports contain consistent information?
• Are your resources and budgets visibly linked to your strategic objectives? Are your objectives prioritized based on their effect on your corporate objectives?

If your answer to these questions is No, you are not alone. You cannot fill these gaps by just holding more frequent meetings or publishing more indicators. You need a comprehensive solution that will help you to ensure alignment across the company, achieve the collaboration and accountability necessary for managing your corporate strategy and apply risk management.

Summary

Quick action means that everybody from the top management to workers at production level should align to the changing strategies. This requires everyone to communicate plans clearly, turn them into priorities and tasks, and continuously monitor and report progress at a detailed manner. The SAP Strategy Management application supports users at all levels in quickly aligning resources in order to implement strategies, understand risks and drive efficiency and profitability.

Challenges

• Closing the gap between strategy and implementation
• Spreading strategy among all stakeholders in the company
• Ensuring changing strategic objectives and initiatives are implemented together
• Monitoring and reporting progress by managing changes effectively
• Managing exceptions, cause-effect relationships and priorities

Supported Business Processes

• Communication: Turning written plans into live documents that can be used with employees to define, discuss, share and update objectives
• Collaboration: Motivating and encouraging employees to engage in more collaboration by personalizing performance-related data
• Strategy management: Utilizing resources more effectively by understanding cause-effect relationships, indicators that are below objectives, risks and the importance of initiatives towards strategic objectives.

Business Benefits

• Optimized performance through better organizational alignment and compliance with strategy
• More agility thanks to effective collaboration and communication as well as better understanding of cause-effect relationships, priorities and risks
• Ensuring visibility of the factors that affect your company and better control over these factors
• More confidence in the decisions and information when everybody uses the same data and can respond to changing business requirements more quickly