SAP BI 4.2 – Choosing the Right Tool – Decision Tree

The purpose of this post is to provide assistance to the SAP BI team and helping then decide what tool to use based on users requirements.  This decision tree selection process was created working with SAP BI team at one of our large government clients.  Please see below image that asks the key question in helping you choose the right tool for the user requirement.

SAP had well-established guidelines on selecting tools based on organizations that have SAP BW integrated with the SAP BusinessObjects suite of tools. The general guidelines recommended:

• For Query & Analysis and general interactive reporting where BW is in place, use Web Intelligence with BICS connection to BW
• For OLAP InfoCube navigation where BW is in place, the Analysis for OLAP and Analysis for MS Office are the tools of choice – typically used by business / planning analysts. Analysis for MS Office must first pass all security requirements prior to any implementation.
• For Operational or print-perfect reporting from either BW or directly from ERP (ECC), Crystal Reports is preferred but Web Intelligence can also work depending on the complexity required.
• For management and executive Dashboard where BW is in place, a combination of SAP Lumira Designer &/or Discovery will do the job depending on complexity of BW Queries, Web Intelligence can also work in some situations especially with all the new functionally added since SP4.
• Finally for Data Visualization / Data Discovery SAP Lumira Discovery will work best, especially with Explorer set to be sunset within the next 2 years.

Hopefully the extensive work done at our Government customer with SAP team can help with your deployment easier process.  Please keep this selection process is only a guide with your SAP BI Tools selection process.

NOTE: This is based on-premise deployment only, next version I will incorporate SAC.

Regards,

Ajay