While having the opportunity to be the first speaker at the SAP Inside Track event in St. Louis I had two questions:
1) So What are the main drivers behind the BI implementations of SAP customers in St. Louis, Missouri?
2) What are the best parts of St. Louis to see while I am here
Fortunately for me , when asked if anyone had implemented BusinessObjects, only one person raised their hand. That meant a few things.
1) My presentation on the SAP plan for BusinessObjects as part of the overall roadmap was perfect for the target audience.
2) I would be able to understand the struggles of a non BOBJ shop in implementing BOE.
The organization of the event was setup to be laid back and friendly. The cross section of people was really excellent. Some were performing BOBJ implementations in the next 30 days while others were still catching up from the BW push of the last 5 to 8 years.
Over all what was interesting was that the audience had several commonalites
1) for the most part REALLY wanted to implement the BusinessObjects Enterprise suite.
2) they GENUINELY believed it was the best BI product suite on the market.
3) They were driven by what their sales reps/account managers were driving in the market.
HOWEVER based on current BI initiatives not yet completed, challenges with source control and the larger question of having the proper skill sets and budget to adequately implement a quality system, many were still conservative as to when they would perform the switch.
I was happy to be able to answer most of the questions on the spot, while deferring the other questions into a future presentation topics.
As for the best of St. Louis I had a diverse set of answers including Arch visit, the Hill, the river, the Zoo, a baseball game, the science center and more. So far we have been to the first 3 and hope to hit the Zoo as well. People here were very friendly and I hope to visit again.
