What is SAP BusinessObjects? It allows you to convert any data you have in your business into information and analysis – to make stories, reports and visualisations from the applications and systems your organisation uses. You can connect it to almost any data-source and it will help you to obtain insight into how your business works and make decisions on how it should work more efficiently.

Any business intelligence software needs to go through a few steps before you begin to gain insight to your data. You need to connect the BI software to your data and manipulate it into the right format to present the stories you want to tell, maybe mixing data from multiple places; then you will need to build visuals that present the data in engaging ways that are easy to interpret; then you need to get those visuals in front of the people that can act on the stories they tell.

Whether you are using SAP BusinessObjects, Tableau, PowerBI, Qlik or Cognos you will need to go through these same steps.

SAP BusinessObjects provides tools that are easy to use for all these steps, whereas some of the other packages only provide tools for part of the process.

• Data Services, Data Integrator and the Information Design Tool connect to databases and allow skilled users to manipulate and transform data so that it is in the best format possible for consumption. They can handle data in many forms, structured or unstructured, relational or columnar, big or small. They can mash-up data from multiple sources at once, giving you a holistic view of your organisation, your clients or your output.
• Reporting and dashboarding tools such as Web Intelligence, Lumira, Crystal Reports and Live Office are in the BusinessObjects suite to enable the creation of attractive visualisations and analytical tables. Formulas and functions are available for users to further manipulate the data. Branding can be applied, colours matched with corporate schemes and interactivity built in.
• The BusinessObjects platform is there to tie all of this together and apply security at each stage. Automated scheduling and delivery of reports via email or to shared folders, in formats such as PDF, CSV and XLSX, is handled in the web-front-end and can be set up by users or administrators with ease.

The core part of BusinessObjects, the BI platform, is installed on a server (virtual or physical, local or cloud-hosted) – users then interact with this platform via web-browsers such as Edge, IE or Chrome.

The data manipulation tasks are performed in client-side tools where graphical user-interfaces enable complex processes to be built up in simple stages. Reporting and dashboards can be created either within the web-based front end or in client-side tools. The output can be viewed interactively in the secure web-front end, embedded in other applications, or delivered direct to users via email.

To find out more details about SAP BusinessObjects and see if it is what you need to explore your data and benefit from insights you already own but haven’t discovered yet, talk to us at DSCallards.