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Problems reporting against an OLAP database.
December 21, 2012

Problems reporting against an OLAP database.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review

Software Version

3.1, 4.0 SP

Overall Satisfaction

  • I would score an 8 if reporting on a relational database - performance is good and the product works well.
  • Features and options are good. It can cater to many different use cases, depending on end-user requirements.
  • The suite contains multiple tools - OLAP, Explorer, Dashboards. It's highly versatile with a great variety of tool-sets. It doesn't force people to do things one way using a single tool.
  • However, continuing problems in reporting against an OLAP database reduce the overall score to a 6.
  • BW / Business Objects integration: SAP has more work to do here. Version 4.0 has removed major obstacles in stability, but we still have a lot of performance issues. The Business Objects features have been limited by the BW background. I would give this a score of 5 overall.
  • SAP is pushing an in-memory database solution - HANA. SAP resources are focused on moving BW to HANA database. I believe BO performance will improve significantly as a result of this. We want to re-evaluate our data warehousing strategy, middle of next year. We are going on two paths currently. We want to take a step back and re-evaluate if SAP has a better solution.
  • Dashboard tool sub-standard relative to Tableau. Takes weeks to get working vs. days in Tableau to build.
  • Mobile compatibility is far ahead in Tableau.
  • From the admin perspective, Business Objects is not fine tuned out of the box.
  • Rolling out support packages is not disciplined -sometimes every 2 weeks, sometimes every 2 months.
  • No good alerting and monitoring systems.
  • No handshake to BW - e.g. send something on a trigger basis from another system to Business Objects.
  • Sales - helps track revenue, shipments, pay commissions to reps.
  • Operations - usability of tool is good - one common repository for every body to see reports. This really is a one-stop-shop for reporting.
  • Inter-operability of analysis views.
We will likely make this decision at the end of next year. We have 2 paths. We have to determine how we consolidate our various data warehouses, and what are the enterprise promoted tools.

Most of the operations reports are in the WebI ad-hoc reporting tool, and we don't have any complaints about them.

Product Usage

300 - Operations

Finance

Sales
2 - One is a DBA, the other is SAP Basis person.
  • Operations: We use Business Objects to create operational reports on manufacturing processes. We pull data from SAP ERP into BW and then report on that data.
  • Finance: We bring in data from SAP ERP to BW and report using the native BW reporting tool called BusinessExporer (BEx). This has all GL information, and we use a profitability analysis tool called CO-PA (cost and profitability analysis) to track revenue, and sales goals.
  • Sales:we pull data from all systems - SAP ERP, Salesforce.com, SAP CRM - and bring the data intoto BW, for where we report on it using Business Objects. We use Business Objects to build pipeline reports, revenue reports, shipment reports. and also to track the revenue quarter to quarter. We have another system called Adexa Collaborative Demand Planning (CDP) - for trend analysis and forecasts.
  • We are not using Salesforce as revenue system. Everything related to revenue has to come from SAP. Primary report that SAP is looking for is revenue. We collect all data from transactional systems into BW.

Evaluation and Selection

We were using the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) for reporting, visualization etc.
Originally, Business Objects was implemented before I joined.

When we had issues with Business Objects Version 3, we evaluated:

1) Tableau - This is a great product, really rich/appealing, and good mobile finctionality, but the price and the ETL functionality were issues. Allso performance of Tableau against OLAP data was not that good. It was much better against relational databases.

2) SQL BI - This had most of the features looking for. We have started to use SQL BI tools - not in production, we are stilltesting. We are not using with OLAP - we bring data from BW and store in a SQL data mart, stage, transform if required, model, then report.

- Finance still using old SAP BW tools.
- Operations is using BO 4.0
- Another group using Business Objects 3.1, and is going to try out SQL BI tools

We also evaluated another product called Greenplum (acquired by EMC). This has no front end to it, and is essentially a data warehouse.

Implementation

For both 3.1 and 4.0 implementation was a combination of us and SAP Professional Services.

Tool implementation is overall pretty easy.

In addition to SAP, we hired another consulting company to help audit and troubleshoot. They didn't find anything wrong with what we were doing - although we were experiencing some issues.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
  • Professional services company

Training

  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user.

Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.
We learned through on the job training as administrators.

End users learn through documentation, online training and classroom training that we put on. We put on a class whenever we roll out a new report.

Support

Initial level of support is normal. Used to respond quickly, now less so. Quality seems to be degrading a little.

Level of expertise - sometimes it takes months to get to the right level of information, sometimes it can be fairly quick. On average it's pretty fast compared to other SAP tools. Business Objects support is better than that for other SAP products.
Yes - Seeing how difficult the tool is to keep up and running, our CIO decided to do this.

Usability

If end users are trained enough, this tool is pretty slick. People can create reports without too much trouble.

Training is a very important component to use the tool. Most training is pretty straightforward. Classroom training comprises 3-4 sessions or two weeks of orientation.

Reliability

When we implemented 3.1, we had a tough time managing the system: It took almost a year to stabilize.

With 4.0, we want to roll out to more users, and are holding back because of fears about the performance issue
Highly contingent on source database.

Integration

  • SAP Business Warehouse
  • SQL relational database tool called Planview
Data from SAP CRM, etc, into BW.
  • SAP ERP directly
SAP has given a few direct integration points for specific use cases. This helps us to avoid ETL processes.

Vendor Relationship

It's tough.They are very bureaucratic - there's no one person to go to who can directly help us .We have a service coordinator - every meeting has 10 people.

No dedicated technical account manager.