opinion > [SAP BO], master and oversimplify your platform in just a few clicks?

 

     

        

1. Short history of SAP BO

• Business Intelligence has been around for 30-40 years. Business Object, has just celebrated its 30th birthday (1990). Almost at the origins!
• The inventors' brilliant idea: to make data intelligible, and to put it just a click away for the business.
• Initially, in every company that implements SAP BO, there are few users, but very quickly the platforms are overwhelmed by their success. Business Analysts come to interface. Complexity, and even hyper complexity, is becoming the norm. And the confidence disapears.
• The versions (BO 3.0…. 6, XI, XI R3, 4.0,1,2,3…) followed one another over almost 30 years without really upsetting the starting concept.
  

2. SAP BO vs “market trends”.

• The business wants autonomy, wants to be able to play in huge "sandboxes" of data, and to obtain instant and reliable answers. We have entered the era of dataviz, self-service BI, etc.
• For some time now, the Cloud has taken everything in its path with promises of scalability, contained prices, and above all a delegated IT infrastructure.
• Big Data platforms complete this inventory with a promise of exploiting mass, unstructured data.

 

SAP BO keeps its loyal supporters, but more and more voices are challenging this hitherto acclaimed solution, deemed too complex, too static. But how can you significantly improve your SAP BO platform, and how can you get to the target quickly? How to make it intelligible enough to be migrated to the Cloud (SAC)

 

3.Massively simplify SAP BO, the pitfalls.

• Business teams have habits, and despite certain difficulties, SAP BO is still working very well.
• IT fears a monumental site, with strong risks of load disruptions: investigating each of the existing dashboards, its outbuildings, and carrying out massive purges is complex.

Making things happen is wishful thinking, but rarely a reality, as the BO platforms have become so complex.

   

4. Our bias: automate the introspection of a SAP BO platform  

• An SAP BO platform can be made up of hundreds of thousands of Documents, Data Providers, thousands of Objects.
• The platform's administration tools do not allow for granular impact analysis between each of the layers or for massive cleansings.
• The platform is evolving at high speed, rendering each of the audits that may have been carried out obsolete.
 

 

It is much more efficient to automate the reading and understanding of its platform: dynamic scan of Universes, Documents, continuous analysis of the audit ("Auditor"), in order to be able to construct powerful answers, always "up to date" , and add means of action!

5. Better understand how a SAP BO platform works

a.   Output #1 :

« An exhaustive inventory of platform Documents »

 

• To view all platform documents from a single source with autocomplete engines, to quickly reach the target.
• To view all platform documents from a single source with autocomplete engines, to quickly reach the target.
• An "identity card" for each of them: its weight, its quality (Perfect document, error in a formula, Document without result), the date of the last action (creation, modification, execution), file….
• The "pollution" of requests returning information is also indicated = Document request returning an Object unnecessarily.
• In addition, we record all the evolutions of the platform, Universes, Documents and we are therefore able to answer simple questions such as:
• When was the object created in the universe?
• By who ?
• What was my formula, expression, variable in such a document before which migration,
• What are all the documents affected by the deletion of which object, etc.

b.   Output #2 :

« A granular impact analysis between the sources of the platform, and the SAP BO platform »

• Know which fields (from which tables) are hidden behind each of the Objects.
• Know which Data Providers are used to feed which Documents.
• Know which Objects are present in which Documents.

6.  Massively simplify its platform

       a. Output #1 :

 

« Discard obsolete or unnecessary BO Documents»

• We make it possible to identify obsolete Documents en masse.
• And / or, identification of the Documents that you would like to exclude according to their terminology, their belonging folder ... or other.
• It is then possible to operate mass archives by creating unitary BIARs (with roll back possible).

    b. Output #2 :

 

«Discard Replicated Documents »

• Identification of analogies between all Documents (content, form, formulas, filters).
• Possibility of archiving them very simply and massively

c. Output #3 :

 

 

« Mass simplify the semantic layer »

 

• Massive identification of Objects that are not used in Documents, in any way.
• Possibility to hide them in the semantic layer.

 

Thus, in an excessively short period of time, it is possible to simplify a platform in large widths: we observe on average that 80% of a platform can be decommissioned -

In addition, the analyzes are very simple. 

 

 

d. Output #4 :

 

 

« An up-to-date cockpit to monitor the progress of the project »

• We make it possible to measure the continuous progress of cleaning on a large number of criteria: number of Documents, obsolescence of Documents in place, replication between Documents, number of unused Objects, number of unused source tables, number of Data Providers in pollution ...
• The steps up to a possible complete decommissioning are intelligible

 

 

7. Understand finely the construction of the platform

a. Output #1 : 

« Conduct your own investigations »

 

• We provide the underlying databases that allow the mappings to be reconstructed in the target solution at very high speed.
• Even though Objects rely on views, we analyze them to know the physical fields behind them.

 

b. Output #2 :

 

 

« Introspect complexity »

• The complexity of the formulas in BO is literally broken: each Document is edited in pdf, and each cell becomes a hypertext link allowing to introspect its construction (the Objects used, their Universes of origin, the underlying expressions and variables ...).
• .....
• Overall, we have in-depth expertise which has enabled some of our clients to overcome insoluble technical or functional dead ends (eg: one of our clients encrypted his data with a homemade plugin)

8.  Conclusion

 

By massively simplifying a SAP BO platform to bring it back to its proper proportion (on average - 80%), by having perfect knowledge of the mappings of each of the Documents, the underlying formulas, etc., the real control of SAP BO becomes a real possibility !!!

PS: our expertise also allows us to consider other types of support with automated responses: :

• UNV> UNX migrations,
• Simplification of security,
• Version upgrades,

…..

Ellipsys is a Luxembourg start-up specializing in the analysis of data processing and its uses in a number of analytical technologies (including SAP BO), and has a few large companies among its customers:

BNP Luxembourg (BGL / BNP), Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), European Investment Bank (EIB), ADEO Group / Leroy Merlin, Banque Raiffeisen, Cora, and many others ... 

Ellipsys@ellipsys-bi.com

www.ellipsys-bi

#SAPBO, SAPBI