Business intelligence (BI) platforms are increasingly common among businesses intent on utilizing enterprise data for strategic planning, market analysis, product development, and much more.
SAP business intelligence, however, empowers intelligent business decisions with key advantages:
- Cloud-based or on premise solutions
- Elimination of guesswork and assumptions
- Quick access to information at users’ fingertips
- Measurement of results using pre-defined KPIs
- Insight into customer activity and behavior
- Incorporation of visual representation for critical metrics
SAP Business Objects BI empowers business users with tools to access meaningful information with a few clicks from any device, anywhere, anytime. Unlike other BI platforms, SAP BI brings real-time information to business areas, giving them the tools and capability to tailor reports and visual representations independently.
First of all, the SAP Analytics Cloud opens the capability to combine data from multiple disparate sources to generate pre-defined or ad-hoc reports and visualizations quickly and efficiently. In addition, with today’s mobile workforce, such abilities offer significant value over other BI platforms.
Why Turn to SAP BI?
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Mobile access to BI tools is nearly a must-have feature for companies seeking a competitive advantage. BI is critical now for so much more than upper management. Getting the right data when needed is critical for:
- Service technicians and dispatchers relying on call history or product maintenance data
- Mobile sales forces benefiting from sales history, marketing plans, and potential lead information
- Other customer-facing employees who can improve service and company image by providing actionable information for existing or potential customers
SAP BI includes incorporation of mobile-specific functionality in the Roambi product. Therefore, this facilitates quick access on-the-go for employees who need data quickly, wherever they may be. This is not only for executives and decision makers, but for administrators, store management, inventory managers, and many other employees in the mobile workforce. Robust security features are incorporated including file expiration, remote wiping, and more.
Use the Right Tools
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Selecting the BI architecture and product that conforms to your business needs requires consideration of both current features and strategic direction for product development. Look for BI functionality that includes:
- Intuitive user interface – self-service use of BI functionality
- Scalability – can the product performance and capabilities grow as your needs and data expand?
- Mobility – support for your mobile workforce while providing enterprise-level security
- Flexibility – BI systems often require data from outside systems to facilitate business decisions
- Reporting – ad-hoc reporting and graphic visualization are both important for users of the system
- Data Sources – ability to include data from disparate sources for analysis
- Self-service – systems that require IT participation or high degrees of technical expertise to perform an analysis may be self-defeating or result in minimal use
- Advanced analytics – this is what the system is all about – there must be a high level of sophisticated analytical capabilities
- Dashboards and visualizations – graphics in the form of user-configurable dashboards and other data representations are essential for quick-look, comprehensive viewing of metrics
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant places SAP BI in their ‘visionaries’ quadrant, citing the “broad range of BI and analytic capabilities” inherent in the product offering. Consequently, other benefits mentioned by the Gartner review included ease of use and self-service capability.
SAP Business Intelligence – Leading the Way
SAP BI provides the features that enable business decisions faster, more accurately, and smarter.
- On premise or cloud solutions
- Ease of use
- Robust, flexible reporting
- SAP Analytics Hub – provides powerful access to analysis of data from multiple environments, generating accurate information to the right people at the right time, for actionable decision making
- Predictive data management and data modeling
Manage your business to maximize profits and efficiency with SAP BI functionality.
- Strategy planning and management
- Forecasting, planning, and budget metrics
- Analysis of enterprise expense and profitability
As a result, a major reason for adapting and expanding the use of SAP business intelligence is cost savings. Therefore, through making better decisions with real-time, accurate information, the ROI for business intelligence is realized in a short timeline. Rather, one study by Forester Research revealed a stunning ROI of 171% for advanced analytics provided by BI implementations.
Next-generation Business Intelligence
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While a number of BI providers have struggled to keep pace with technology and business demands for more robust functionality and features, SAP business intelligence leverages your business’ considerable investment in applications and data models to add value unmatched by BI products of other vendors.
Lastly, among SAP BI users engaged in the Gartner BI study, key reasons for selecting and staying with SAP BI included SAP’s future vision for the product as factors in their decisions. As a result, SAP’s course toward integration of planning, analytical, and predictive functionality in a single product proved influential in the view of existing SAP BI customers.
In conclusion, A stand-out feature for SAP is the Digital Boardroom, built on the SAP BO Cloud product. Therefore, this includes support for large touch-screen displays, and “what if” logic for simulations and analysis, making the Digital Boardroom attractive to decision-making executives.
