SMEs Run SAP – Myth 4: SAP is not Agile Enough

Picture3

The 4th and last post on our SAP Myth busting series, this article intends to show how SMEs can meet their need for speed with SAP.A bigger business is a better business. It’s a common assumption, but it’s not strictly true. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have a number of advantages over their larger counterparts. Their size is often their strength – it makes them agile. In fact, most SMEs we speak to pride themselves on this. They can respond faster to changes in the market and take advantage of new insight and opportunities faster than larger organizations.

To capitalize on their agility, SMEs need systems that play to this strength. Unfortunately, some SMEs get bogged down by manual processes. They rely on off-the-shelf software that doesn’t quite meet their needs and depend on spreadsheets for their business intelligence. All these things slow their businesses down and mean they’re more likely to miss opportunities. In this environment, executives often resort to making important decisions on a gut feeling rather than the latest data.

That’s why it’s always a surprise to hear an SME wondering if SAP software will slow them down. Maybe the perception is that SAP software is only for enterprise organizations, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s another business myth. Rather than slow these businesses down, SAP helps them become more agile and able to capitalize on opportunities faster.

Clariba has helped companies streamline their internal reporting processes, arriving in a particular case to an 80% reduction in the time it took to produce monthly internal reports. We also allow organizations reduce reliance on manual data, improving reporting accuracy, reducing errors and promoting decisions based on solid information rather than just gut feeling.

More importantly, we have the expertise to speed up the implementation process, so that your company can start enjoying the benefits of an SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence solutions in a short time frame. Furthermore, if you are worried about the impact the change will have over your employees, Clariba has best-in-class trainers, with years of experience, ready to help your employees make the transition from a spreadsheet based organization to the innovative and integrated information hub they will soon benefit from.

Contact us to discover how much SAP and Clariba can deliver to your company.

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 3: SAP is Too Complicated for Us

Blog number 3 on our SAP Myth Busting Series. It intends to show how SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligece (BI)can take you on a simple route to real business benefits. We know that implementing new IT systems can be a daunting prospect for some businesses. They worry that it’ll interrupt their everyday activities, take time to deploy and that staff will need time to get used to it. Similarly, when we talk to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) about SAP software, they’re often under the false impression that SAP software is too complex for a business of their size. While they agree it could help them, they’ve always assumed it’s built for large enterprises.

The complexity of SAP is yet another myth that vanishes when you start looking at hard facts. We often speak to SMEs and they’re looking for software that’s easy to run, install and use, and they want to see real-life examples to prove it. They want to see organisations like theirs that have been there and done it. Thankfully, for us, SAP has 88,000 SMEs that have been there and done it. You can see what some of them have achieved by clicking here, they’ve got the figures to prove that it doesn’t take long to deploy the software and see a return on investment.

In the last few years, the number of SMEs implementing SAP software has tripled. That’s partly down to the fact that it’s easy to use and install, but also because it delivers all the benefits that SMEs are led to believe are just for the big boys. It’s not usually very long before they’ve automated previously manual processes, gained greater insight into their business and generated significant cost savings.

Clariba can help you unleash the potential of your SME, with the right business intelligence solution for your company, no matter how you are running it now. Our solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects technology and the expertise of our consultants will help you implement faster so you can enjoy the benefits quicker. We are also experts in end user training, to make sure that your employees will make the best of their new BI tool.

Still think SAP might be too complicated for you? watch this SAP Video and think again!

If you are an SME and want to know more about Clariba and SAP BusinessObjects Solutions, get in contact with us.

Clariba Webinar – Exxova MyBI Mobile: Movilidad para su Negocio

Obtenga la posibilidad de tomar decisiones a cualquier momento visualizando los datos de su empresa desde su dispositivo móvil con Exxova MyBI

Asista a nuestro Webinar (en Castellano) 16 de Mayo de 11.00 a 12:00 (CET GMT+1:00)

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Muchas empresas han realizado importantes inversiones en el desarrollo de sus soluciones de Business Intelligence. En el caso de SAP BW y BusinessObjects, dichas empresas han acumulado cientos de informes utilizando herramientas como Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence y Dashboards (Xcelsius) de SAP, realizando además grandes esfuerzos para establecer un modelo de seguridad y suponiendo todo ello, una inversión considerable. La percepción actual del mercado es que los dispositivos móviles actuales, no pueden manejar el análisis de datos de la misma manera en que lo hacen las soluciones de BI avanzadas y maduras de hoy en día, por lo que los negocios tienden a modificar sus procesos y contenidos para la movilidad.

Sin embargo, la aplicación MyBI Mobile permite a las compañías aprovechar sus inversiones anteriores. Con ella el usuario puede acceder al contenido crucial de toda la empresa en cualquier lugar, en cualquier momento y sin ninguna modificación importante en el contenido o la plataforma existentes. Los usuarios pueden imprimir, cambiar, actualizar y hacer todo el trabajo que realizan actualmente en el sistema BI de la empresa a través de un dispositivo móvil, facilitando la acogida por parte de los usuarios.

Le invitamos a invertir una hora de tu tiempo para conocer esta solución y verla en acción en nuestro webinar MyBI. La agenda del evento es:

• Introducción
• Características principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Beneficios principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Demo
• Preguntas y respuestas

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Para obtener más información visite nuestro sitio web.

Saludos Cordiales,

Lorena Laborda Business Development Manager – Clariba EU

Clariba Webinar – Decision Making goes Mobile with Exxova MyBI

Are you looking for a way to access your company data from your mobile device? With Exxova MyBI, you can!

Attend our Webinar (in English) on the 15th of May from 11.00 - 12:00 (UAE - GMT +4:00).

REGISTER HERE

Currently, organizations have made significant investments in developing their Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. In the case of SAP BW and BusinessObjects, business and IT organizations have amassed hundreds of reports using tools such as Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, and Dashboards (Xcelsius) from SAP. Additionally, significant efforts have been used to establish an enterprise security model. These combined efforts represent a considerable investment.

The existing market perception is that the current mobile devices cannot manage the heavy lifting of the data analytics comparable to today’s advanced and mature BI solutions, so businesses tends to modify their processes and content to adapt to mobile tools.

However, Exxova´s MyBI mobile app allows companies to leverage their previous investments. With it users can instantly access Enterprise wide content at crucial decision points at any location at any time without any major modification to any existing content. Users can print, change, update, and do all of the work that they currently perform on the enterprise system through a mobile device, increasing end user adoption.

We invite you to invest an hour of your time to get to know this solution and see it in action in our MyBI webinar. The agenda for the event is:

• Introduction
• Main features of Exxova´s MyBI mobile
• Main benefits of Exxova´s MyBI mobile
• Demo
• Questions and answers

REGISTER HERE

For More information about Exxova MyBI visit our website.

Best Regards,

Xavier Marigó Sales Manager – Clariba ME

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 2: SAP is Too Expensive for Us

Continuing on our series of blogs on Myths that surround SAP, this second one intends to show how spending can be the best way to save.

Invest to Save

A popular piece of received wisdom is that you have to speculate to accumulate, or, in simple terms, you've got to spend money to make money. Most businesses know that you can’t just throw money at a problem. However, they also recognise that carefully planned purchases can pay dividends.

Clariba works with many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and we know how important every financial decision is to them. That’s why it’s important that we can demonstrate the value of what we do. Most of the businesses we talk to know SAP software can help them reduce costs. However, some of them have been under the impression that the software is only available to enterprise organisations with big budgets. These businesses risk missing out.

We get to break the good news that SAP is an affordable option for SMEs. In fact, SAP has around 88,000 SME customers to prove it. These businesses are not only reducing costs with SAP, they’re also boosting profitability. In most cases, that translates into a quick return on investment. As a result, we find that most of the SMEs we talk to conclude that they can’t afford not to deploy SAP software.

Whats more, Clariba´s solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects have helped small and medium sized business to:

• automate distribution process of reports to users

• improve management performance with reporting, query & analysis, and data integration

• optimize customer support resources

• improve campaign effectiveness

• enhance data quality and compliance

We also have available our range of pre-packaged solutions called FastTrack. They are accessible and quick to deploy, which means your company can start enjoying the benefits of a top technology tool in a short time frame.

Here is what one of our SME clients has to say about one of our FastTrack solutions: “With Clariba’ FastTrack for Siebel CRM solution we are now able to better analyze data, segment customers, measure the ROI of our marketing initiatives and provide a rolled-up sales forecast. This capability allows us to be more competitive, offer better service to customers and provide a faster response to changing market conditions.”

Is your company an SME?  Contact us to  know more about how to benefit from SAP Solutions

SMEs Run SAP - Myth 1: You Have to be Big to Work with SAP

Myths and misnomers litter the business world. All small businesses are agile, all enterprises are big corporate entities, sales figures are the most important, customers will always buy the best product. As we all know, these don’t stand up to scrutiny. Some large businesses are agile, some small businesses aren’t, cash flow is more important than sales and the best product isn’t always the most popular. Business people can’t afford to make assumptions and to blindly follow these misconceptions. That’s why we do our research and base decisions on facts. We started a series of blog post about myths that surround SAP, the platform that Clariba chose to bring Business Intelligence (BI) to our customers. This first one intends to explain why you DON´T have to be an enterprise to work with SAP and SAP BusinessObjects.

SMEs can run SAP

SAP actually works with a client base composed by a  majority of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SAP software combined with Clariba´s implementation expertise allows them to automate processes and gain valuable insight into their businesses. By doing this, these businesses take assumptions out of the equation – it means that instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, they work with the facts. The result is they find it easier to spot opportunities and identify areas to improve.

However, before these businesses start dealing with the facts, they often need to challenge another set of preconceptions. One Clariba comes across frequently is that SAP only works with enterprise organizations. But this isn’t the case. More than 77% of SAP’s customers are SMEs. That’s about 88,000 businesses! What’s more, SAP has been working with SMEs for nearly 40 years. As a result, the company understands the unique challenges they face and the tools they need to grow.

Clariba´s work is to translate that to the customers, helping them match their requirements to the best SAP tool available. Our audits help SME´s to get an idea of where they are in terms  of their BI environment and the benefits they could enjoy with Clariba and SAP:

• our accessible pre-packaged solutions allows for rapid deployment

• streamline processes by automating reporting tasks

• improve data quality, reducing misleading information that leads to poor decision making

• uncover hidden  facts and make insights available to take the best course of action

• help small companies improve management of different departments

If you are an SME and want to know more about SAP Solutions, contact us.

Problem Uninstalling Data Services

I have faced a problem uninstalling Data Services  recently and I wanted to share the resolution, just in case you find the same problem. I was trying to upgrade a Data Services machine following SAP procedure (this is copying the configuration files uninstall and then install the new version – not very sophisticated as you can see). This was not as simple as I first thought.

Problems started after uninstalling the software, the new version refused to install stating that I should first uninstall the previous version. I uninstalled the software again… but Data Services is still there, so uninstalled again, but this time the process failed (makes sense as the software is already uninstalled), so I kept trying… reboot…uninstall… reboot…rename older path name… reboot…you see where this is going…

So, how did I finally solve this?

1. Start Registry Editor (type regedit in a command window or in the Execute dialog).
2. Take a backup of the current Registry content. To do this, with the top node of the registry (Computer) selected go to File -> Export and select a name for the backup file.
3. Delete the Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIM (Suite XX.X may vary).  NOTE: You may want to write down the key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIMKeycode first as it contains the license code.
4. To remove the entry for the software in the Uninstall Window’s dialog, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionUninstall and look for a KEY which property DisplayName is “BusinessObjects Data Services.
5. Finally delete the content of the installation directory (typically: C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsBusiness Objects Data Services)

Now you can launch the installer and it should work.

Hope this may help you if in case you are experiencing the same issue. If you have any doubts or if you ever faced the same issue, leave a comment below.

Exxova Announces Clariba as New Channel Partner

Exxova Worldwide Corp., a Georgia-based business intelligence (BI) solutions provider, on the 16th of April announced a value-added reseller agreement with Dubai-based Clariba  to resell Exxova's MyBI Mobile product as part of Clariba's solution range. The MyBI Mobile technology allows Clariba customers the ability to meet the ever-growing demands of business users to access actionable information through either iOS or Android mobile devices. “We are pleased to have Clariba join the growing Exxova partner network and act as a value-added reseller through its operations in Spain, Europe, and the Middle East,” said Todd Baker, vice president, Global Channel Sales, Exxovaa.  “Businesses are wanting a mobile BI solution without having to redevelop, redesign, and re-platform their BI content.  Clariba – an SAP® channel partner – provides leading support in the implementation of SAP® BusinessObjects™ business intelligence (BI) solutions and provides validation of the need for full business intelligence on a mobile device.”

"We believe that it’s important for the entire SAP BusinessObjects BI portfolio to run on multiple mobile platforms," said Marc Haberland, managing director of Clariba. "Our customers have been asking for SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards to run on iOS, which Exxova delivers. In addition, Exxova’s MyBI Mobile solution is a very cost-effective, easy-to-use option to deliver existing SAP BI content to decision-makers on a tablet device without compromising data security. “

Having launched the MyBI Mobile product to the market in 2011, the MyBI product now provides customers the ability to go mobile with SAP BusinessObjects content, including SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, without limitations currently found in iOS and Android devices.

“Users can expect the same access to the reports, documents, and dashboards that they have on their PCs,” said Glenn Hillam, senior solution architect, Exxova.  “They can print, change, update, and do all of the work that they currently perform on their enterprise systems through a mobile device. The difference is that the app allows users to access their enterprise information at the decision point.”

For more information on Exxova’s MyBI Moble app, please visit Exxova’s website at  www.exxova.com.

About Exxova

Exxova Worldwide Corporation is a global technology company delivering high quality products and services through innovative solutions, methodologies and tools. With a relentless focus on innovation, Exxova differentiates from the norm and brings unique, creative and flexible ways of accomplishing complicated initiatives.  Exxova is a recognized thought leader in business intelligence and also provides solutions in data warehousing and enterprise consulting.  Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Exxova has operations in the UK, Singapore, and India.  For more information on Exxova’s solutions, including the MyBI Mobile app, please visit www.exxova.com or contact us at +1 770-343-8484.

About Clariba

Clariba, founded in 2002, is an expert provider of business intelligence services, training and solutions across many industries including telecommunications, high technology, banking, manufacturing, retail, oil & gas, public sector and education. Clariba works with the most advanced BI technologies and works closely with SAP as a channel partner. It is recognized internationally as a leading BI consultancy offering support of SAP BusinessObjects solutions.

With a focus on best-practice BI implementations and its rapidly deployable FastTrack solutions for enterprise performance management, planning & analysis, and operational reporting, Clariba provides its customers with the clarity and actionable insight to improve their business performance.

Clariba has a European office in Barcelona, Spain and Middle East offices in Dubai, UAE and Doha, Qatar. For more information on Clariba, please visit www.clariba.com or contact us at +971 4431 5011

Installing Data Services 4.0 in a Distributed Environment

Following my first experiences using SAP BusinessObjects platform 4.0, I decided to write this article after spending 3 days to discover how to install Data Services 4.0 in a distributed architecture. Why did I spend so much time to figure this out? There is something different in the new Data Services: SAP has tried to unify the security and the control of the servers using the CMC. With this new feature we will be able to manage Data Services users and services using the CMC instead of using the Data Services Management Console. This has brought slight changes to the installation process of Data Services 4.0 in comparison with other releases.

I was working with a distributed architecture, which means that I was planning to install the SAP BusinessObjects platform (including Live Office, Dashboard Designer 4.0, Client Tools and Explorer) in one server, let’s say “ServerA”, and Data Services 4.0 in a separate server named “ServerB”.

If you have installed older version of Business Objects such as XI R2 or XI3.0 and 3.1, you know that we would install BusinessObjects platform in ServerA and Data Services in the ServerB and then we would see that we don’t have Data Services intragrated with the rest of the platform and probably we would see the same in the CMC that is shown in the image below.

As you can see this image comes from a SAP note that explains how to solve this problem on past releases, but if you installed Data Services 4.0 in a distributed architecture, the error won’t be solved using the solution described in the SAP note 1615646.

Once the scenario is clear let’s start with the process to install Data Services in a distributed architecture. Before starting ensure that BusinessObjects 4.0 platforms and the client tools with their latest service packs and patches are installed in the ServerA.

Step 1: Install Data Services 4.0 in ServerA

As in every new software that has to be installed the first step is uncompress (if needed) the file downloaded from SAP service market place in the ServerA. Open the root folder, go to data_unit and run the setup.exe. After that chose the language to use during the installation.

After these “typical” steps the installation program checks for required components. Review the results and decide whether to continue with the installation, or abort and correct any unmet requirements.

In the next three steps you have to review the SAP recommendations, accept the license agreement and finally, fill the gaps with the license key code, name and company. Once the license key is verified you can chose the support language packs you wish to install.

Then it is time to choose the folder, but in this case, the wizard doesn’t let you choose because BO platform was install before so it takes the BO installation folder as a default.

After that you have to configure CMS information. In this case our ServerA is going to be named “MVBOBITEST01”

This is the important step! The next screen invites you to select what you want to install. In ServerA you have to install all (if needed) Data Services’s features apart from Designer, Job Server and Access server. See the image below.

The subsequent screen will ask for merging with an existing configuration. In this case no existing configuration can be reused so the answer is: skip configuration.

Then you can choose if you want to use an existing data base server or you want if you want to skip this part and do it after the installation. Chose what suits you best. Imagine that you or your vendor doesn’t have the database or schemas for the CMS repositories ready when you were planning to install Data Services. In that case, you can configure the CMS parameters after the installation without problems.

After filling in the information for the CMS systems data base and the Audit database (if required), the Metadata Integrator configuration starts. I am not going to describe this step in depth because it hasn’t got an impact on our installation. Furthermore, configuring Metadata Integrator is not  difficult; as always you only have to choose the ports, folders and the name.

Once we have finished installing Metadata integrator and ViewData, the installation will start. After the installation process we can proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Install Data Services 4.0 in ServerB

After a few hours installing the first part of Data Services we are ready to install Data Services in a dedicated server which is going to have the ETL only.

Again it is time to uncompress the file you downloaded before, run the DVD or whatever is the installer you are using. Run the setup.exe.

Once the installation starts, we are going to repeat the same firsts steps mentioned before until we reach the screen to specify CMS information. Add the CMS information related with the ServerA or “MVBOBITEST01”. Why? Because we don’t have CMS installed in the ServerB.

Choose the components that we did not choose before during the BusinessObjects server installation: Job Server, Access server and Designer.  

As we did in the ServerA installation choose skip the configuration if no previous configuration exists.

In the next step you have to configure the account on which you would like to run Data Services. You can choose to run it using a system account or run it with a specific service account previously defined. What is good about using a service account rather than a system account is that if you want to stop a service (like Data Services Job Server) you need the password of this account, because it is not related to the system account with which you log onto the S.O.

Then configure the Access Server. In this case I kept the default values.

After the last step the wizard asks to start the installation. After a couple of hours you will have Data Services 4.0 running.

There is another important point after the installation process that I will be covering on my next article due on the beginning of May:  the repository configuration. One of the new and best features of Data Services 4.0 is the integration with the BO platform using the CMC, which results in a complete integration when you configure the repositories properly.

If you have any questions or other tips, share it with us by leaving a comment below.

How to convert a Universe to Multi-source in SAP BusinessObjects BI4

The new BI 4 offers a very powerful meta-layer capability: a single Universe can sit on top of several data-sources with great benefits offered by a real-time integration. At a first glance, you might think that existing Universes would need to be typed from scratch, but this article explains how to re-use an existing Universe to provide this highly scalable and expandable meta-layer.

The multi-source Universe

A multi-source Universe is now designed as a project with the following components:

• Connections
• Data Foundation
• Business Layer

These items can be created and configured separately, and then be connected one with another. The cycle of creating a new Universe is easy because the connections, data foundation and business layer can be created intuitively and always using the common SQL language, so no need to know native connection peculiarities. Once built, what happens behind the scenes is transparent to the end user and he/she will see that Business Objects will produce a query which takes pieces of information from different sources in real-time.

However, while the creation process is quite simple when generating a new Universe from scratch, it is not so straightforward if we are migrating from a legacy universe. Let’s see why.

UNV to UNX conversion process

In our experience, the three steps to be completed are the following:

• Legacy Universe (UNV) import: Using the standard migration process the legacy Universe can be inserted into the new BI4 platform. This can be done in a very short time and it has the following quick advantages:
  • Migrated Web Intelligence reports will still sit on top of this legacy meta-layer.
  • Live Office BI4, Crystal 2011 and other client tools can continue to perform as these are still using this format.

But we still cannot use platform modules like Explorer BI4 or Crystal Enterprise, or use the new security model or the new features advantages of the new Information Design platform, so the natural next step is to enable this.

• New Universe (UNX) conversion: From the Information Design tool we will click on File, “Convert .unv universe” and a new UNX universe is provided, with a project containing the three main items: Connection, Data Foundation and Business Layer. The advantages are the ones we previously stated, but there is one big disadvantage: The automatically generated Data Foundation is mono-source type, so the resulting Universe will not be scalable, and there is no easy way of turning a Data Foundation from mono to multi-source. Therefore this will need to be re-built. The process for re-building the Universe is explained simply in the following step.

• New Universe (UNX) multi-source conversion:

A new Data Foundation shall be created, following the steps stated below:

• Define connections
• Create new Data Foundation
• Copy and paste items to the new Data Foundation and/or re-type tables and joins using the standard SQL language.

Also the Business Layer needs changes, basically to be re-pointed to the new Data Foundation. The recommended steps are:

• Re-point the Business layer to the new Data Foundation
• The calls from the objects to the tables will need to be re-typed using the standard SQL language

A limitation in this stage is that the useful “View Associated Table” feature that showed the table lineage from a certain object has disappeared, so this might become quite a manual work. Opening the Universe Design tool in paral.lel with the Information Design tool to get the lineage might help here.

Once this is done, verify and export this new universe.

As a final step, the WebI reports can now be re-pointed to the new multi-source UNX so they can be enhanced with new alternative data.

Process summary

See in the following diagram a summary of the process:

• Step 1: Legacy Universe import
• Step 2: New Universe UNX conversion
• Step 3: New Universe UNX multi-source conversion

UNV to UNX conversion process summary

UNV to UNX conversion process summary

Conclusion

In the short term, in BI4 it should become a common practice to have 3 versions of the same universe:

• UNV: To preserve the legacy WebI reports and to use certain client tools like Crystal 2011 or Live Office.
• UNX mono-source: To use certain platform tools like Explorer or Crystal Enterprise and to have a higher level functionality.
• UNX multi-source: To use certain platform tools like Explorer or Crystal Enterprise, have a higher level functionality and be able to use several sources in one Universe.

Mid-term only this last multi-source version should remain.

Benefits

This Universe conversion method is time-efficient as it reuses all existing folders and objects, and shows tips for a better Universe re-creation.

The multi-source Universe gives superior benefits to the end user, providing a real-time integration and report design simplicity which will make their life easier. It also helps the meta-layer designers who will see their development time reduced with the help of the new design panel functionalities and a common standard language which is easier to understand. Project managers and architects can also consider the fact that they do not have to build a professional Data Warehouse for their projects, and with all this, IT managers will see a quick ROI and lower TCO for their investments.

If you have questions about this method or about the new Information Design Tool in SAP BI4, or if you want to share your experience or tips, please feel free to leave a comment!