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Author's profile photo Eric Vallo

DSLayer: Live from SAPPHIRE on BI4

Jamie, Greg, Clint, and I were at SAPPHIRE last week and had a chance to connect with Kurt and Alex.  Kurt and Alex come to the table with a different perspective than many of us in the US community.  We try and get a little more perspective about the path to BI4 for APJ customers and what the challenges are.

Tune in over at dslayer.net.

0:22 – Clint is in the house!  He only came for the showers.

0:49 – Kurt Bilafer, Regional Vice president of Analytics, Asia, Pacific & Japan at SAP joins us as well.

1:00 – SAP BusinessObjects BI4.1 is RTC/Ramp up ready!

1:39 – BI4 vs. Bi4.1 – Should I stay or should I go?  Nah nah nuh nuh nah nah nah.

2:52 – Analytics takes front stage at SAPPHIRE and we all feel good.

3:25 – Clint says don’t wait, start sandboxing BI4 now.

5:21 – Was FP3 the 4.1 we always wanted?  If so, does that diminish the impact of the real 4.1?

6:50 – Go big go home – BI4 is ginormous.

7:00 – Analytics drives businesses.  Fact.

7:22 – Better hooks into SAP BW and SAP HANA.

7:58 – Alex Andrenacci of Accenture in APJ joins us!

8:52 – Test test test and test more before you go.

9:26 – Clint waxes poetic or something about dam data.

10:25 – What to migrate and when?

16:40 – The opportunity to revisit how we deliver information is great.  Take it.

17:11 – A network of truth is an opportunity for a bunch of users to enrich the data.

18:17 – Business needs to have a seat at the table as the migration happens to learn to take the most advantage of new capability.

19:54 – Creating awareness in technology in the new SAP BI suite tools.

22:21 – Novel idea: IT needs to redevelop it’s own road show to get business user buy in on the new capabilities.

23:05 – Driving a bigger SAP Community Network via APJ?  Challenge…accepted.

24:08 – Has the idea of a competency center taken shape in APJ?

25:17 – Tableau and Qlikview has taken full advantage of the need of the power user.

30:45 – Even if an org is missing a competency center, the business needs a champion in IT that gets the business.

31:36 – A google like search…we’ve been here before, haven’t we?

32:29 – The single biggest barrier to adoption – we make things more complicated than they have to be?  Is that an SAP issue or a development work product issue?

33:41 – Data is absolutely key.  The universe creates user-friendly terms for complex data structures.  Just sayin’.

35:15 – Interesting take – user behavior drives data quality.

36:17 – Analytics journey to ROI is dependent on data quality, tools, and more.  The problem is the business has an assumption the data is already right.

39:27 – That old converation about 400 tools to solve a problem comes up again.  This is a topic that needs a deeper dive.

41:04 – What is the state of tne Analytics bundles in APJ?  We’ve already recently plugged here, but what’s the scoop globally? 

44:21 – Clint with a valid point – so few customers have actually heard of the bundles.  Why?

45:00 – BetterBOBJ in APJ is in play.  Don’t miss it.

45:21 – Accenture and EV Technologies announce for the first time a strategic partnership in APJ for implementing BI4.

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