Tag: Self Service BI

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (aka Polestar)

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is an exciting Business Intelligence data discovery tool. We’ve created a short live demo video entitled Fast Executive Data with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. The Explorer tool is excellent for non-technical business managers that want to gain insight into their data. The data made available for analysis is provided via a SAP BusinessObjects universe.  The universe can be based on SAP BW or relational data platforms such as MS SQLServer. Features include Google style key word searches on your BI data and data slicing.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is currently available in two flavours. The first is as an add-on to SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise and the second is packaged with BWA on a blade.

The pre-requisite for analysis is for a Space Creator to set up an Information Space based on a SAP BusinessObjects universe and then index the data.  This is not a complex task.  Once this is done the business user can immediately find data insights. We made a live demo video demo which you can watch on the BI System Builders YouTube channel.

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Web Intelligence

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence makes Self-service BI a reality by providing access to data in an intuitive information analysis product. By simply dragging and dropping objects into their reports users can gain business insights and turn these into true Business Intelligence for effective decision making. A business user can quickly create a query from scratch with a few mouse clicks. This is frequently termed ad hoc analysis or creating queries on the fly. Users can then format the retrieved information and analyze it to understand underlying data trends and root causes. The Web Intelligence interface is intuitive in design allowing business analysts and non-technical information consumers to ask spontaneous and iterative business questions of their data using their everyday business language. For example, users could easily create a query that allowed them to compare the performance of their top customers this year over last year. The user could then create their own variables, for example a forecast algorithm and add this to their report. Web Intelligence allows trends to be quickly identified along with sub-optimal areas. Users can drill down and drill across on their data. Web Intelligence access to the data is via a robust semantic layer known as the SAP BusinessObjects universe. The universe objects make query building easy and shields business users from needing to understand database technicalities. Multiple universes from different data sources can be combined in a single report.

The earliest versions of Web Intelligence were only available in thin client. In other words Web Intelligence had to be accessed via InfoView and a web browser. Web Intelligence is now available in the Rich Client version. This is loaded on to the users local machine. A report can now be viewed or developed on the local machine and then published to the BI Platform and shared and viewed as thin client via InfoView. This is great news for people working from home or on a train etc. They can now make changes to their Web Intelligence document off-line and then publish their changes next time they connect.

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BI Content Search

SAP BusinessObjects Search delivers innovative capabilities to bring the simplicity of search to the world of Business Intelligence, allowing users to search using the Search interface and retrieve, index, and deliver BI content, presentations, business content in documents, and web pages.

Search reduces the time and effort users spend finding the specific piece of data or report they need to answer their business questions. Simply by entering text into the search box within InfoView, users can quickly find relevant, categorized, and ranked sets of results from within their SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise system. Other search capabilities include document ranking based on frequency and position of use of the user’s search string, intelligent categorization of documents by relevant topics and type based on SAP BusinessObjects advanced semantics, and step-by-step refining of results based on a user selecting defined subsets of documents.