SAP Business Warehouse Reviews

Getting high volume data is most valuable for us. It is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-sap system.

For example, only sales and distribution has approximately 150-200 mio transactional data for each year. As a result, we mention that we have approximately 400-500 mio transactional data for all our ERP system. It’s not possible to analyze that data without using Business Warehouse. Besides all those pluses, SAP BW provides us with real time analyzes for non-system.

The big minuses are its not being user friendly. The user interface and it’s reporting tool called BEx have room for improvement. SAP Global always promotes Business Objects for visualizing.

We have been using SAP BW for four years and also we had been using an old version called SAP BW 7.0 between 2008 and 2011.

Sometimes we do have stability issues, but if we evaluate the entire system, it provides more stability than its not being stable. Big stability issues are about getting dumps without any reasons and integration with Business Objects.

We have had absolutely no scalability issues. If a developer or product owner considers their data volume, BW never encounter any scalability problems.

I rate technical support so highly because of its being an old product.

We have never used any other business warehouse program except using an older version.

Setup is sometimes complex, sometimes not. For example, LIS structures are initially highly complex; you have to drop setup tables and re-fill it again. But other structures do not use setup tables and are more straightforward.

Every product owner has to be careful to evaluate the number of users. First of all, pricing is really high when compared with other business warehouse applications. Product owners also have to consider consultancy. Consultancy is more expensive than ERP consultancy.

Actually, we did not evaluate any other product because we were using SAP ERP.

Absolutely avoid non-standard structures. SAP BW is a highly established application that brings us many standard functions.

Note: My opinion here is NOT specifically focused on SAP BW. It is based on overall experience I have on SAP software. As we know BW user always involve in different SAP modules for data extraction, transformation and load process for analytical reports. From this I have learned so much on how SAP software is being used in my organization and hopping that it's worth sharing with thers.

Some of the most valuable features are:

SAP ECC Finance – AP module

• Payroll and Procurement
• Human Capital – Organizational Management
• PA and Benefits
• BW/BO – SAP Webi

Finance and Human Capital modules are the core departments that support the overall organization and we run SAP ECC system in this area.

HR module – Starting from the process of hiring the employees and their benefits, all of this happens within the SAP system.

FI module – All the budgeting, fund management and payroll functions take place in the SAP Finance module.

SRM – The procurement process such as to create a purchase order for schools and departments, also takes place in this system.

It has helped our financial transactions and the HR-related functions to communicate across our organization. All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members.

We are an educational organization. Our core value is to concentrate on the children’s education and their well-being. Sometimes, we find ourselves moving away from the core value. The reason for this could be that the business process is not simple or clear enough for the administrator to do their daily tasks. It could also be that the software is complicated or not capable/scalable to do certain tasks/new functions or maybe there are no right skill sets/human capital in the right place. All these are key factors that play a big role to achieve the overall goal of our organization.

With the SAP ECC upgrade, we are hoping that it will streamline the existing business process and provide opportunity for new functions, increase the user performance and satisfaction and lower the overall costs which can be used for the children’s education.

Our system is old. After the system upgrade, it will open opportunities to explore so many new functions in the FI and HCM modules that could be very valuable to our organization.

The upgrade will allow improvement in the below-mentioned three areas and there are many more that we have yet to discover.

• Business Functionality
  • Implementing the SRM’s procurement function for the public sector such as the supplier registration, strategic sourcing, contract management, plant maintenance and MRP. The key features that we would like to achieve are a simple interface for the user and supplier, support on both the supplier and buyer-end solutions, future enhancement capabilities and cost saving benefits.
  • Travel Management - To support travel-related functions and lower the travel costs.
  • Human Capital - To allow integration between SuccessFactors and SAP ECC. It needs to allow reporting capabilities using BI/BOBJ modules.

• Technical support
  • It will maximize the system performance and allow continuous support and enhancement of new functions. Hence, there will be reductions in the overall support cost.
  • Take advantage of updated Solution Manager functionalities.

• UX - demand (Screen Personas and SAP Fiori)
  • The current SAP ECC version does not support SAP Screen Personas or SAP Fiori.
  • With the help of these UX capabilities, we would like to simplify the user experience, increase user performance and reduce the manual process/errors.

I have been using this product since 2005.

We have a handful of experts to administrate the overall working of the SAP system; it is stable.

In order to address known issues in SAP System, SAP release SAP notes that has issue details and instruction to fix the issue or workaround solutions. If it is relevant to our SAP system, we review the SAP Notes and follow the instruction to correct the issue.

It could be changes in code or apply recommended patches and should fix the issue but if it goes wrong all these activities could deteriorate or defect the system and it could lead to catastrophic system failure.

As of today, we do not have any system failure and we received very minimum user complaints regarding errors. Taking this evaluation, I would say our SAP system has no stability issues.

We are running an older version. It is doing what we need it to do but there is some limitation due to its version.

SAP has been providing support that we need based on the severity of issue that we face. Sometime, it is not the way we need but it is same across any other software vendor.

Since I have joined this organization, they have always been using the SAP solution.

Licensing is expensive but you will get the value for it.

SAP offers so many solutions based on the type and size of the company.
I would advise to always use best practices, establish strong project governance, define the scope of the project, maintain a project plan, etc.