OK, I admit. The title is maybe too alarming and made on purpose to call your attention. However, you should be worried. If you think SAP BI Consultant role has dramatically changed after BusinessObjects acquisition, you did not start to realize what might come.
If you are an experienced SAP BI Consultant and started your BI carrier around 1999 or 2001 (as did I, by the way), you are from a time when proposing tools to address our customers issues went more or less, like this:
Scenario 1
Customer: “I need a tool to create an ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Load) process”
SAP BI Consultant: “You should use SAP NetWeaver BW (update rule, infopackage, infopackage group, etc.)”
Scenario 2
Customer: “I need a tool to create an operational analysis of my DSO (Days of Sales outstanding)”
SAP BI Consultant: “You should use SAP NetWeaver BW (Query Designer)”
Scenario 3
Customer: “I need a tool to create a beautiful Dashboard to my CFO”
SAP BI Consultant: “You should use SAP NetWeaver BW (Web Application Designer – WAD)”
Then, in the middle of 2000’s SAP invested heavily on Analytics with the improvements on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0, and the acquisitions of BusinessObjects and Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) to name the two more relevant.
At that point-in-time, the role of a SAP BI Consultant evolved clearly: the “one man show” which was de “BW Consultant” initially had to specialize in - at least - four different roles:
I know that some people may have a different vision on the number of roles and on my simplistic view on the “history of SAP BI”, but I believe you got my meaning.
Fact is, however, that we still see a few SAP BI consultants that did not adapt to that. They are still “BW Consultants” or “BO Consultants”, they have no holistic view and they are stuck in a 10+ years old view of the world, focused on tools and not in solution.
While that is still the case, a new move will change the game once more. This time, there will be no evolution, but revolution! With the release of SAP Smart Finance and the S-Innovations, SAP made it clear its bold move to realize Hasso Plattner vision to bring transactional and analytical worlds together.
At first glance, it may look that this is only marketing stuff but not when you look it close. Reviewing the analytical content provided with Suite on HANA (SoH) and SAP Smart Financials it powered by SAP HANA Live, for example, it is really easy to see that several historical requirements can now be seen in a beautiful interface (HTML5 based), subject oriented (and not transactional oriented) and with the unprecedented power to allow insight-to-action type of analysis. All this in real time and at (almost) line item level!
In short, the “common” operational analytics – which historically has been delegated to SAP BW analysis – is now delivered as part of the SoH. And more, it is nicer, more flexible, more user friendly and faster than ever before.
Once more, I can “see” in the faces of many people reading this text the old (and outdated) question: “Are you saying BW is dead?”. The answer is still no – and I’ll not go into much detail about this again. The short answer is simple: every time, a customer needs a Data Warehouse or an Enterprise Data Warehouse, SAP NetWeaber BW (powered by SAP HANA) is still the best choice!
Having that said, it is necessary to understand that the role of the SAP BI Consultant must change to address the new reality. I short, those major challenges are:
With this picture and challenges in mind, here are the 3 tips to survive as a SAP BI Consultant:
Conclusion
The Business Intelligence subject area is changing. What has started with simple data visualization now has to deal with Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Real Time, Mobile, Self Service BI, Cloud Computing and more. It is time to prepare oneself for the challenges to come and support our customers on taking the best of every single opportunity!
All the best,
Eduardo
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