SAP Executive Insight PaperGeneral topic or industry

In This Issue

Industry Perspective

High-Resolution Management 2-3

Is Your BI Strategy on Track? Get a BI Strategy Assessment and Find Out! 4

Product Update

Predictive Analysis Ditch the Crystal Ball 5

BI 4.0 Feature Pack 3 The Icing on the Cake 6

Perfect Preparation Renders Your 4.0 Migration Painless 6-7

Analytics, Mobility, and In-Memory A game-changing synergy 7

SAP’s Real-Time Data Platform Vision 8

BI OnDemand Self-service insight for all 8

Going Mobile at SAP 9

Gartner Positions SAP as Leader in Magic Quadrant 9

Partner Update

Listening in on the Social Media Conversation 10

Get Involved

Big Benefits from Big Data 11

How Can I Do That? 11

Upcoming Events 12

SUMMER 2012

The moment clarity transforms business fortunesInsIghT

I’m delighted to introduce the Summer 2012 issue of Insight, your authoritative source of news and information on SAP’s analytics, database and technology trends and best practices.

Analytics is a hotter priority than ever, so it’s no surprise that Richard Neale is exploring Business in the Moment in this edition’s “Industry Perspectives.” Today’s business decisions are often based on aggregates and estimates due to an excess of data, when what’s needed is fine, granular information. Richard abandons the tech talk in favor of a refreshing look at how High-resolution Management – enabled by real time analytics – is empowering companies

in all manner of industries to remove bottlenecks, rethink their businesses, and flip traditional models to drive innovative, highly differentiated products and services.

You’ll also get the inside track on our recently announced database strategy, which provides customers with a single, logical real time platform for all transaction and analytic workloads. It transforms unwieldy IT landscapes into simplified architectures that enable “big data,” cloud, and mobile applications. We also reveal how a triumvirate of analytics, mobility, and in-memory can accelerate business processes and deliver actionable insights in real time to any individual on any device in any location.

In our “Product Update” section, you can read advice on how to migrate to SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence 4.0 and discover what’s new in BI feature pack 3. We also show how business analysts can ditch their crystal balls by giving you a glimpse of the stunning new SAP Predictive Analysis software. Whether used on a standalone basis or coupled to the SAP HANA® platform to unleash the full value of “big data,” it can help you understand how historical metrics translate into future

performance and uncover hidden trends, clusters and anomalies. You can also learn how the SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution is adept at meeting departmental or divisional analytic requirements when time is tight and budgets are limited.

This issue’s “Partner Update” comes from enterprise information management consultants at ENTOTA, who discuss why it’s vital to listen to social media conversations if you want to tap into valuable customer sentiment.

Lastly, Insight isn’t limited to passive reading – there are ample interactive opportunities in our “Get Involved” section. Need to gauge whether your analytics strategy is on track? Use our intuitive, three-step BI strategy assessment tool to evaluate your challenges by line of business and receive expert guidance on best practices. Estimate the benefits of Business in the Moment to your organization with the SAP HANA value calculator. You can also register for one of our highly-anticipated forthcoming events or look back at sessions from past events using our watch on-demand feature.

Best wishes,

Clemens Praendl VP Analytics - EMEA

What’s the big idea behind big data?Find out in the Summer 2012 issue of Insight

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Industry PerspectiveIndustry Perspective

Proactive Analytics: FreshDirect

FreshDirect has an operations centre that manages its fleet of delivery trucks. In a large metropolitan area like New York, traffic doesn’t always flow predictably. A traditional approach to business intelligence (BI) would be to print a report showing the level of on-time deliveries (OTDs) the day before and then ask the transportation department what went wrong for the orders that were delivered late. FreshDirect uses analytics in a more impactful way.

The company monitors the delivery rate of every truck and enters that data into the BI system on an ongoing basis. Every hour, it uses the previous hour’s data to predict how many deliveries will be on time in the next hour. If the predicted OTD rate is below FreshDirect’s target, the company sends out an auxiliary truck or trucks to help make deliveries. The company holds 10 trucks in reserve for just this purpose.”

Rethink Business

Forward-thinking organizations are using analytics in new ways to change how they do business. Rather than simply providing the tools to monitor and ultimately improve a business process, analytics are becoming a fundamental component of the business process itself.

Proactive analytics – Instead of using analytics only to assess previous performance, companies are using the new capabilities to get data fast enough to make a real difference. So, rather than simply understanding what problems occurred yesterday, organizations can now predict what issues will happen in the next few hours and fix them before customers are affected. To find out more, turn to our article on Predictive Analysis on page 5.

New customer services – The UK roll-out of smart meters to monitor energy usage ushers in the prospect of offering innovative services to customers based on the possibilities enabled by half-hourly readings from millions of smart meters up and down the land. Providers like Centrica are planning to use SAP® Smart Meter Analytics powered by SAP HANA, to give them deep insight into consumption patterns. This can be used to understand peak demand and ultimately reduce the amount of infrastructure investment needed to meet it, by guiding consumers to change how and when they use energy and become part of the solution.

Integrated risk assessments – To avoid the cost of over-stocking, organizations can use sophisticated, risk-based forecasting rather than rely purely on static volume forecasts from sales. This offers a much broader context for decisions, minimizes the chances of excess inventory and affords greater production flexibility.

Flip Business Models

The really interesting opportunities for businesses lie in using real time analysis to fundamentally flip the way their businesses work: instead of analytics being part of a process, it becomes the business model itself.

SAP customer, T-Mobile, is transforming the way it attracts network subscribers by using customer analytics to inspire hundreds of discrete, highly personalized tariffs based on usage profiles instead of speculatively developing rate plans, promoting them, and then quantifying the uptake.

It pays to be detail-orientedOrganizations across a diverse range of industries are already combining these technologies to eliminate the uncertainties and delays caused by data variety, volume, and access and to reinvent their business processes by embedding real time decision-making. But the biggest incentive is the opportunities afforded by high-resolution management: to gain a detailed understanding of a business or market without limitation and to develop highly differentiated products and services in response to these revelations.

Now is the time to rethink how you can use analytic technologies to take account of new opportunities – both at the back end, for extreme data performance, and at the front end, for granular insights. With increased resolution come more options to drill down, eliminate inefficiencies, and cut costs. It’s time to start thinking about what you want to achieve because you’ll find High Resolution Management is ready when you are.

high-Resolution ManagementIt’s not about technology – it’s about business in the momentRichard Neale, Head of Business Development, SAP

What’s the biggest technology trend of 2012?Well, analytics is a hotter topic than ever – according to Gartner, it has reclaimed the top spot from cloud computing on CIOs’ priority lists – and innovations are converging to produce what Gartner refers to as “extreme data performance”. Everybody’s talking about in-memory, column data stores, in-database calculations, massively parallel architectures, complex event processing, “big data” and cloud architecture.

So I’m not going to. Because the most significant trend I’m witnessing in 2012 is a perfect storm of all these advances. One that will enable companies to fundamentally rethink key business processes to provide unprecedented opportunities for competitive differentiation – precisely what our struggling global economy requires. This potential has already been defined as “High Resolution Management” by Swiss Professors Elgar Fleisch and Christian Flockmeier.

High-Resolution Management Today’s management techniques are based on the limitations of information scarcity. Not that there’s a shortage of data – far from it – but decisions are often based on aggregated estimates. That’s either because there’s simply too much data across too many dimensions to drill down and understand what is happening in detail, or it’s simply too difficult to deliver information to business users.

Perhaps Gary Hamel sums the situation up perfectly when he says “Right now your company has:

• 21st century, internet-enabled business processes

• Mid-20th century management processes

• All built atop 19th century management principles”

Real time analytic technologies are already drastically changing the way management make decisions. With access to the finest granularity of information, management can move freely from macro to micro views and measure, plan and act accordingly. There are three main areas of opportunity to be gained from High-Resolution Management.

Remove Bottlenecks

The new analytic platforms are rapidly eliminating some of the bottlenecks that have historically prevented organisations from getting value from their data. These include:

• Faster, more flexible data access – Companies like Red Bull have been able to speed up and simplify their data warehousing environments with the SAP HANA® in-memory database. The beverage maker can now load detailed data into its warehouse 25 times faster and eliminate several levels of data staging.

• Data volumes and complexity – Fast-moving consumer goods firms have long had access to vast amounts of detailed data about their production facilities and sales channels – but the quantity of data meant that they were unable to run full analytics in a reasonable time frame. Now that’s changed. For example, Danone plans to track the carbon emissions of 35,000 individual products with new systems that collect, measure, and analyze data from cradle to grave: from sourcing through production, transport, retail, distribution, consumption, and end of life.

• New forms of data – Unstructured data such as that from e-mails or social media has traditionally been a challenge to incorporate into mainstream corporate analytics. Recent advances make it easier for companies to access and analyze huge volumes of unstructured data, such as customer complaints and product feedback, combine it with other data sources, and present it in a meaningful and dynamic way to business users. This can lead to new insights that were inconceivable when analysis was restricted to solely numerical data. Innovative companies like Medtronic are already combining structured data about products with unstructured customer feedback from their SAP CRM system.

• New interfaces and users – The days of information consumers and executives being office based are numbered, as more and more are working from home or on the road, or roaming on site. This means embracing technologies that push information out to wherever people may be, on their device of choice. That means leading information strategies with mobile solutions, rather than from desktops.

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVEIndustry Perspective

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Product Update

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Business intelligence (BI) has been a top CIO priority for a number of years. The return on BI investments can be substantial, yet some organizations fail to capitalize on the full potential of their BI initiatives through lack of a cohesive analytics strategy.

Is Your BI strategy on Track?Get a BI Strategy Assessment and find out!

BI and analytics technology is never an end in itself. The technology, people, and processes exist to provide support to decision makers or to automate certain decision-making processes. These in turn must lead to actions based on insight and augmented with experience. Therefore, it is imperative to have a strategy that guides the organisation toward effective and pervasive use of BI and analytics resources. Such a strategy needs to take into account the broad spectrum of decision makers and decision-making processes that exist in any organization.

Our BI strategy assessment tool has been developed to enable you to:

• Understand the importance of a clear, well-articulated BI strategy

• Find out how an effective BI approach benefits IT and line of business teams alike, from aligning business partners and formalizing business needs, to removing limits of a departmental focus

• Explore critical success factors for developing and delivering a comprehensive BI strategy that identifies a shared set of goals and delivers planned results

• Learn best practice approaches to executing this plan enterprise-wide, including guidelines to define and run a successful BI competency center

• Follow key recommendations to achieve high-level executive sponsorship that can help mandate change and organise cross-functionally for an enterprise-wide approach and outcome.

• Build a repeatable framework that engages and brings together the priorities of both CIOs and business executives to address organizational challenges that a BI strategy can resolve

The tool uses a intuitive three-step process to help you identify and rate your key business challenges by line of business, and assess the impact of addressing them. Your personal BI assessment guide will then be created to help you meet your most pressing challenges and prioritize your BI investments. In brief, it contains:

• Proven best practices to serve the information needs of your entire organisation

• A visual summary of your business challenges by priority and line of business

• Solutions and anticipated benefits to your biggest business challenges by area and line of business

• Next steps

To use the BI strategy assessment Tool for yourself, visit www.sapbusinessinthemoment.com/emea/analytics

SAP® Predictive Analysis software is a user-friendly, graphically stunning tool for predictive modeling and advanced visualization that aims to improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes.

Predictive modeling has traditionally been the domain of statisticians and data scientists. However, the intuitive interface of SAP Predictive Analysis is designed to bring predictive insight to an under-served user community – the business analyst – who can now:

• Understand how historical sales, costs, and other key metrics translate into future performance

• See how predicted results compare with goals

• Reveal the causes of customer satisfaction or employee turnover

• Show how past and emerging trends impact the bottom line

• Find correlations in data for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities

• Locate anomalies and clusters for targeted analysis

SAP Predictive Analysis is available on a stand-alone basis, but when coupled with the SAP HANA platform, the software can unleash the full value of big data – internal or external, structured or unstructured – by allowing businesses to reveal and act upon untapped opportunities and hidden risks.

Insights can be delivered to dashboards, alerts and mobile devices, or accessed by other analytics solutions, such as the SAP BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence platform, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer® software and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence® software, as well as Microsoft Office applications. That means more people in the business can explore, visualize, and share insights from exploding volumes and varieties of data.

Our analytics solutions are sparking a decision-making revolution for businesses that recognise the future starts seconds from now, not weeks or years from now.

Businesses rely on today’s information to make choices for tomorrow. The key is to learn not only what has happened, but also understand why it happened, what might happen and what the best course of action may be.

Predictive AnalysisDitch the crystal ball

Ready to join the evolution? Visit www.sapbusinessinthemoment.com/emea/predictiveanalytics

Product UpdateProduct Update

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The advances characterising feature pack 3 fall under four key categories:

Deeper integration

Universal support is significantly expanded by enabling direct access to the SAP ERP application. This aims to reduce complexity and total cost of ownership with consistent SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse component across all clients. Support is also provided for Hive, the data warehouse system for Hadoop, to facilitate data summarization, ad hoc queries, and the analysis of large datasets.

Richer insight

Feature pack 3 contains further enhancements to the user experience, with SAP Crystal Reports® software, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence® software and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis® software, edition for OLAP, all benefiting from richer data access and numerous improvements in functionality. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer® software now supports Hadoop and gains time- and location-awareness as well as auto-correction in the search feature.

Mobile

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence support has been improved and integration enabled with SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand. The home screen now employs thumbnails to make locating information simpler. SAP BusinessObjects mobile solutions will now be pre-wired for the SAP Afaria® mobile device management solution and security controls from Sybase Unwired Platform. The iPad version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will be able to access and analyse data offline and exploration views enable powerful new data viewing capabilities.

Social

Integration is now provided between SAP StreamWork and SAP BusinessObjects BI content for improved collaboration. While viewing a report, for example, someone can initiate a threaded discussion or action within SAP StreamWork.

Additionally, feature pack 3 will support Internet Explorer 9, which more and more businesses will welcome as they adopt Windows 7.

Feature pack 3 for SAP BusinessObjects Business Inteligence enables you to benefit from new and enhanced innovations on your existing BI 4.0 deployment as a straightforward installation rather than a major upgrade.

BI 4.0 Feature Pack 3The icing on the cakeRichard Neale, Head of Business Development, SAP

Previously, companies typically evaluated and appraised analytics, mobility, and in-memory as distinct areas of innovation. However, visionary leaders across multiple industries are now seeing the game-changing synergies enabled by a “holy trinity.”

Analytics, Mobility, and In-MemoryA game-changing synergy

Deployed together, these three technology strands not only accelerate business processes but drive actionable insights in real time to any device, at any location, and to any individual. This enables organisations to run smarter and faster than their competitors and create processes that offer true competitive differentiation.

• Harnessing the power of “big data” – By taking advantage of columnar data stores and the ability to manage data sets in the terabytes the SAP’ HANA® platform lets business users query “big data” with sub-second response times to provide unprecedented access to and subsequent iterations on data.

• A cost-effective solution – Market dynamics have reduced the cost of memory and processing power, while secure mobile device management solutions in response to consumerization have enabled the “bring your own device” movement to go mainstream. These two events have correspondingly brought the three-ply scenario within affordable reach of more businesses and more users.

• Instant visibility – Mobile analytics enable business decision-makers to track the performance of their companies by dimensions such as volume, value, and profitability at a glance, on the move. Deliver event-based alerts (for example when thresholds are breached or reports are published or updated), and put revealing metrics at product, customer, region, or contract level straight into executives’ hands to support confident, decisive action wherever and whenever needed.

Imagine how unleashing the “power of three” could prepare your business to deliver insights from terabytes of data faster and further afield – and what that might mean for your competitors.

For inspiration on how the combination of analytics, mobility and in-memory can aid you in turning data into a strategic asset, visit www.sapbusinessinthemoment.com/emea

Perfect Preparation Renders Your 4.0 Migration PainlessRoland Hoeller Senior Support Engineer, SAP

While upgrading to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence version 4.0 should be a straightforward exercise, we recommend that you don’t simply wade in and launch the installer. Instead, you should treat your upgrade as a project in its own right.

Here’s why:

• Get to know your new platform – It’s amazing what our customers can do with our software by developing tricks to get the best out of the products. However, there are lots of new features in the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 release, so check if one of them means you can simplify reports or a workflow, in which case you may not need those workarounds any more.

• Consider your hardware requirements – SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 runs on 64 bit platforms only. Don’t assume the kit used for your old SAP BusinessObjects software system will still be up to the job.

• Time for a spring clean – A tidy system is much easier to upgrade and maintain, so this is a perfect opportunity to clear your source system of old instances, events and reports that are no longer in active use.

• Choose your upgrade strategy – While a complete upgrade is simpler, it will invariably mean longer downtime. In some instances, it may not be possible, in which case an incremental approach (department by department) is preferable to reduce risk.

• Take advantage of the Upgrade Management Tool – Replacing the Import Wizard, with its sequential content migration and long runtimes, is the vastly accelerated Upgrade Management Tool, specifically designed for upgrades from a previous version rather than lifecycle management.

• Say goodbye to “Deski” – SAP BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence has reached its end of life, so these reports will need to be converted to SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence®software reports before your upgrade. There is a handy report conversion tool for that very purpose.

• Test, test and test again – To minimize risk associated with your migration project,

thorough testing is a must to detect and avoid problems before they scupper your upgrade. To avoid running into already-fixed problems, install the latest patches.

Don’t be afraid to reach out for assistance – our field services team is highly experienced and on hand to support you through your migration.

Watch Richard Neale and Martin Barrett demonstrate the new features at www.sap.com/uk/techforum

To find out more, read our BI4 Upgrade Wiki at www.sap.com/uk/bi4upgradeWatch Matthew Shaw share his advice on how to upgrade to SAP Business Objects BI 4.0 at www.sap.com/uk/techforum

Product Update

sAP® Business Objects™ BI OnDemandSelf-service insight for all

If a specific team, department or division of your business is being hampered by a losing battle with data and lack of timely insight, you may be looking for a more nimble, tactical approach to introducing business intelligence capabilities than traditional on-premise deployments typically allow.

SAP® BusinessObjects™ BI OnDemand is a self-service BI solution that allows business users to intuitively explore data and share their findings, enabling you to meet demands for analytical insight where technical resources and budgets are limited. It’s delivered in a software as a service (SaaS) model, so you can get everyone up and running in a matter of minutes.

How it works SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand is designed with the business user in mind. It’s simplicity itself to:

• Upload a spreadsheet and integrate different data sources into a complete view.

• Explore the data with the unique search-and-browse functionality.

• Create accurate, timely dashboards and reports without having to manually produce pivot tables, charts, and graphs.

• Perform ad hoc “what-if” analyses to model the outcome of decisions.

• Share and distribute information safely online with colleagues, customers or partners thanks to folder-level security – no need to e-mail spreadsheets and reports.

Why SAP Business Objects BI OnDemand? The software is free to try, and its affordable subscription-based pricing and scalable model flexes to every need and budget. Offered as a SaaS solution, it can be treated as operational rather than capital expenditure – there’s no software or hardware to buy and maintain. And the instinctively navigable interface means a short ramp-up to full productivity for non-technical users, so you can expect to start realizing value sooner.

Visit www.biondemand.com/businessintelligence to register for a completely free, unlimited trial of SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand personal edition.

sAP’s Real-Time Data Platform VisionA big change in the world of big data

SAP’s focus is on enabling a paradigm shift in data management – transforming enterprise IT departments from complex and slow landscapes that struggle to deliver on organizational objectives to simplified architectures that enable new classes of “big data,” cloud, and mobile applications. Recent advances in process, memory and networking technologies are making this a reality.

In April, SAP’s CTO Vishal Sikka announced our innovation roadmap to help transform the database and mobile markets. He highlighted the full integration of Sybase and unveiled our vision for a real time data platform, comprising the SAP HANA platform, Sybase base data management offerings, and SAP solutions for enterprise information management.

At the heart of our strategy is the now proven in-memory SAP HANA database, which is already helping customers access and deliver information at unprecedented speeds – up to 100,000 times faster than before – enabling them to envision fundamentally new ways of running their businesses.

Extending our vision to provide customers with one logical, real time platform for all transaction and analytics workloads, is the evolutionary and non-disruptive integration of SAP® software with SAP Sybase® Adaptive Server® Enterprise and SAP Sybase® IQ server. This will give customers unprecedented capability to transact, move, store, process, and analyze data in real time, while reducing costs with common design and landscape management.

SAP’s real time data platform will help simplify layers of complexity and enable unmatched capabilities in next-generation “big data” applications and analytics, plus enhanced support for cloud and mobile applications — all with minimal upheaval for the customer.

In addition, delivering on our promise of game-changing innovation, we have launched a US$ 337 million “SAP HANA Adoption Program” dedicated to customer adoption of SAP HANA and the real time data platform. For new customers transitioning from legacy databases, we will provide SAP Consulting services to facilitate adoption and implementation.

Download the key takeouts from our Big Data Forum at www.sapevent.co.uk/bigdataforum

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Product Update

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In its new “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms” report 1, Gartner recently recognized SAP as a market leader for our ability to execute and completeness of vision our mobile platform. The positioning is based on evaluation of the SAP mobile platform, which includes Sybase® Unwired Platform, SAP® Afaria® mobile device management solution and Sybase 365. SAP is recognized as a market leader for our ability to execute and completeness of vision.

The Gartner report highlights, “Mobile application development has become a top concern for enterprises and their CIOs. According to the 2012 Gartner CIO Survey (see ‘Amplifying the Enterprise: The 2012 CIO Agenda'), 61 percent of respondents plan to enhance their mobility capability during the next three years, and 48 percent believe they will become leaders in their industries by fully adopting innovative mobility solutions. This Magic Quadrant assesses the major vendors of application development platforms that enable enterprise developers to design, code,

integrate, test, publish and manage business-to-consumer (B2C), B2B and business-to-enterprise (B2E) mobile applications.”

Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms”, William Clark, Ian Finley, Song Chuang, April 26 2012

About the Magic Quadrant Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Mobile technology is impacting every business, transforming experiences for employees, partners and customers.

With more than 40,000 mobile devices in use, SAP is realizing significant business benefits from making employees mobile worldwide. Our early and aggressive adoption of new technologies and sound mobile strategy are critical to this success. Learn how we have made our own workforce mobile, driving growth and revenue by increasing collaboration internally and with our global customers.

Mobility is transforming how companies are run today. Game-changing mobility technology promises to revolutionize business in the future.

How has mobility evolved, and what lies ahead for its technology? How will mobility impact businesses and their consumers? What are the key challenges that CIOs must consider when adopting mobile technology?

Read the whitepaper at www.sap.com/uk/goingmobile or watch the video featuring Oliver Bussmann, CIO, at www.sap.com/uk/goingmobilevideo

Download this SAP Executive Insight in which we examine the impact, opportunities and challenges of the mobile revolution www.sap.com/uk/executiveinsight

going Mobile at sAP

gartner Positions sAP as Leader in Magic Quadrant

Mobility: Its Impact, Opportunities and Challenges

Download a copy of the full Gartner report by visiting www.sap.com/uk/gartner/em

Get Involved

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Quantify the value of in-memory analytics with the SAP HANA Value Calculator

Articles abound on the topic of explosive growth in data – fuelled by the volume and detail of information captured by organizations, the rise of social media and the Internet of Things – and its implications to the global economy. While this phenomenon might once have been solely of interest to data-oriented experts, advances in in-memory computing technology and analytics are now prompting leaders of enterprise to reframe big data as a significant source of business value.

In our experience, in-memory analytics technology has already earned its stripes across multiple industries and lines of business. Our customer testimonials (available at www.sap.com/hana) exemplify how best-run businesses are benefiting from SAP HANA® as the real time platform of choice – accelerating innovation to drive ambitious growth, pushing the frontiers of competitiveness and achieving new levels of productivity.

In a recent study, the McKinsey Global Institute evaluates how the use of big data will become a key basis of competition and growth. The report indicates that the U.S. healthcare industry could generate US$300 billion per year by reducing healthcare costs by 8% and driving efficiency and quality improvements. Retail provisionally stands to increase net margin by 60%, while manufacturing could lower product development and assembly costs by half. But, several benefits are universal across all industries:

• Big data can unlock significant value by making information transparent and usable at a much higher frequency.

• As organizations create and store more transactional data in digital form about everything from inventory to sick days, they can expose variability, support informed decision-making and boost performance.

• Big data allows ever-narrower segmentation of customers and therefore drives the

development of much more precisely tailored products or services.

Calculate the benefits

The SAP HANA value calculator has been designed to enable you to quickly and easily quantify the benefits of harnessing your organization’s big data with use cases that you can implement today. Based on your inputs and predefined assumptions, it provides you with an instant analysis of the potential value to your business of deploying SAP HANA.1 McKinsey Global Institute – “Big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity” (May 2011)

Big Benefits from Big Data

To download the value calculator, go to www.sapbusinessinthemoment.com/emea/inmemory

Q. I use SAP® BusinessObjects™ Web Intelligence® software to create operational reports for my team. I frequently get asked how the data can be filtered easily. Is there functionality inside SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to make filtering easier for my users?

how Can I Do That?Dean Farrow, lead presales consultant at SAP, answers your questions.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence has always included functionality enabling end users to filter their data. By pressing the filter button at the top of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, users can define how the data can be filtered, for example, select region and choose the regions to be filtered.

However, in version XI 3.1 service pack 2, we introduced functionality called input controls that made filtering much easier for end users and also enabled report writers to create predefined filters.

Input controls provide a convenient, more easily accessible method for filtering and analysing report data. They’re defined using standard Windows controls such as sliders, check boxes, text boxes and radio buttons and can be created by both report

writers and end users.

These controls can be associated with report elements such as tables or section headers, and used to filter the data in the report elements. When values are selected in the input control, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence filters the values in the associated report elements. Tables and charts can also be defined as input controls.

The screenshot to the right illustrates a variety of input controls on the report – a text list for multiple values, radio buttons for single values and a slider to filter the data according to specific parameters.

Input controls can be used to analyze different scenarios (“what if?” analyses) by changing the value of variables. Define a variable with

a constant value, and then assign an input control (for example a slider), to the variable. If the variable is part of a formula, the slider control can be used to examine different formula results based on the variable value. Input controls are report-specific and are grouped on the “Input Controls” tab.

A.

Partner Update

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Top tips from the Enterprise Information Management experts at ENTOTA.

While most organizations acknowledge that the explosive growth in the influence and power of social media is driving opinion and influencing buying patterns, many have yet to define their own social media strategy.

A number of recent surveys have shown that a significant proportion of businesses have still to build a legitimate social media presence. Although they appreciate the opportunity social media offers to improve consumer relationships and sales, they are also conscious that programs require investment, time – and most importantly – commitment if they are to be effective.

Even if your business has yet to fully embrace this burgeoning medium, you can be sure that people will be “chatting” about your products and services online. To stay ahead, you need to be aware of what users are saying, how they feel about your brand (and your competitors), and which social media sites are generating the most comments about you. This requires a proactive approach to monitoring and managing the way your business is presented and reviewed online.

However, analyzing the volumes of unstructured social media data can be a costly, highly complex, and time-consuming process. In a long list of investment priorities, building a case for social media analytics can prove to be challenging.

Past approaches have tended to be as unstructured as the data itself, with companies employing a variety of tools to track and measure diverse performance indicators across multiple departments. Unsurprisingly, the output rarely added any real value to supporting decision making or shaping business direction. With so many tools and services currently available on the market – and new entrants joining almost daily – what should you consider when selecting an appropriate solution for your business?

Andy Brasier, head of social media practice at ENTOTA, comments: “Gaining real-time [social media] insight is critical for any business that wants to effectively engage and influence its customers. And to deliver genuine return on investment, it’s important that you integrate your social media data into workflows, so your business can leverage this information to reduce costs and improve customer insight.”

To achieve this integrated approach, you need to deploy a solution in a standard and reusable manner. The solution needs to be highly scalable and easy to customize so you can build your own in-house capability without having to use specialized consultants and developers.

It should be quick to deploy and use advanced text analysis functionality so that projects can start delivering value from day one. You also need flexible reporting capabilities and clear dashboards with layers of data easily accessible for deeper drill-downs. The option to “try before you buy” with a proof of concept will also help you to assess suitability and build your business case. But perhaps the most important feature is to ensure that you own your solution and can reuse it across the business to continually track whatever is relevant to your current business priorities and plans.

ENTOTA is the largest consultancy for SAP® solutions for enterprise information management, offering ideas, solutions, and practices that help solve the complex issues associated with managing and exploiting business data.

Listening in on the social Media Conversation

For more information, visit www.entota.com, e-mail info@entota.com, call 0845 003 8304, or follow @entota on Twitter.

Get Involved

get Involved

With a busy calendar of events scheduled throughout the rest of 2012, we hope to see you at one of our face-to-face events. You can also watch previous events online at www.sapbusinessinthemoment.com/emea/webcasts.

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Join our Business Analytics group at www.facebook.com/sAPanalytics

Watch the latest videos at www.youtube.com/sap

Dedicated Website This SAP sponsored site focuses on how key innovations – analytics, SAP HANA, mobility – are evolving, innovating and impacting four lines of business: finance, IT, marketing, and operations (manufacturing, supply chain and procurement).

Visit www.innovationsinanalytics.com

Community The SAP® Community Network is a collaborative forum that connects developers, dashboard designers and IT professionals. It allows them to share resources, expertise and collaborative tools to create an expert community for BusinessObjects business intelligence solutions and SAP solutions for enterprise information management.

Visit www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/bi and www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/im to find out more.

Keep an eye out for more upcoming events on www.sap.com/events

SAPPHIRE® NOW from Madrid

November 13-15, 2012, Madrid

Transform your business with essential information and best practices for business executives, lines of business, and IT decision makers, and business managers.

The SAPPHIRE® NOW conference from Madrid gives you hundreds of opportunities to learn and network with customers, SAP executives, partners, and experts across our entire ecosystem and partners.

SAPPHIRE NOW OnDemand

Syclo Virtual Event

Replay sessions and keynotes from past years at SAPPHIRE NOW: www.sapvirtualevents.com/sapphirenow/sessions.aspx

Replay sessions from our recent Mobile Conference: www.sapvirtualevents.com/smc

Find out more or register now at www.sapphirenowsapteched.com

Find out more or register now at www.sapphirenow.com

SAP TechEd Madrid

November 13-16, 2012, Madrid

Run smarter with education for IT professionals through more than 500 hours of hands-on workshops and in-depth technical training plus access to all SAPPHIRE NOW content.

The SAP TechEd conference offers in-depth technical training and community support to allow you to develop practical skills that will add value to your IT investment.