Describing Web Intelligence Concepts

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to explain Web Intelligence concepts

Objectives - Interactive Analysis for Business Information and Insights, Empowering Users with Self-Service Access

Objectives - Interactive Analysis for Business Information and Insights, Empowering Users with Self-Service Access: See text after image for more details.

With SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software, companies can perform sophisticated ad hoc reporting and analysis. Powerful functionality and an intuitive user interface enable your people to turn data into insights, improve decision making and productivity, and share knowledge across the enterprise.

To keep pace with the competition and seize timely opportunities, people in your organization need access to critical business intelligence (BI) to answer to their business needs.

Predefined reports created by IT are an excellent resource but don’t answer all business users’ needs. When further questions arise during the course of analysis, additional reporting demands can overwhelm IT and slow decision-making processes.

Moreover, using various analytics tools can result in multiple versions of the truth, lead to decisions based on isolated, outdated, or erroneous data, and thwart the ability to learn from earlier decisions.

With a few clicks, users can access, format, and analyze information to identify trends and root causes. They can build two and three-dimensional charts to visualize data for sharper analysis and deeper insights. The software is built on a trusted and agile BI platform and allows both online and offline use.

Solution - Powerful Ad Hoc Reporting Solution

Solution - powerful ad hoc reporting solution: See text after image for more details.

Business analysts and nontechnical information consumers can use SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to ask spontaneous and iterative business questions involving diverse sets of data.

For example, people can compare the performance of suppliers this year over last year, combine the data with forecasts from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and access trusted enterprise data for more information regarding actual facts.

Business users can identify trends and areas within the supply chain to reduce costs and optimize profitability – all in a single session.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence is designed to support the typical decision-making life cycle and the analysis and reporting process. Business users can follow the life cycle and query, access, analyze, and share data – and they can enter the cycle at any stage, facilitating collaboration and enabling greater flexibility.

People can start from scratch to build reports, solicit or weigh in with comments in reports, and also use and customize existing reports, leveraging previous learning and improving efficiency.

Solution - Intuitive, Web-Based Interface for Easy Data Access

Solution - Intuitive, Web-Based Interface for Easy Data Access: See text after image for more details.

The software offers self-service access to heterogeneous sources of data – such as data from relational and dimensional databases, personal files.

The query panel makes it easier to access all types of data, including multidimensional sources. A robust, patented semantic layer hides the complexity of underlying data sources, so people can analyze information using their own business terms.

The semantic layer also makes reusable metadata and powerful calculation functionality available, to get to key information rapidly.

With minimal knowledge of underlying structures, people can use the intuitive interface to access and analyze data stored in multiple formats, including multidimensional or relational databases, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, text files, and comma-separated values (CSV) files.

Merged Data Sources

On the fly browsing of data providers and result validation provide a deeper understanding of data behind reports and analysis.

In short, the software lets business users analyze reports to find the desired exact information rapidly, even by merging different heterogeneous sources to generate new insights.

Solution - Intuitive, Web-Based Interface for Interactive Analysis

Solution - Intuitive, Web-Based Interface for Interactive Analysis: See text after image for more details.

With SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, business users can access, format, and analyze information in a single interface – there’s no need for a separate analysis tool. The software offers a feature-rich, enhanced interface organized to reflect the natural analysis workflow.

The interface that is easy to use for both new and experienced users. Commonly used features are just a click away. Context-related menus and drag-and-drop features improve usability and enhance productivity.

People can analyze and format reports, by dragging and dropping report elements such as tables and charts. They can navigate hierarchies to get deeper insight.

Users can choose from different options, including heat maps, tree maps, tag clouds, bar charts, and bubble charts. And they can quickly build these charts with simple drag-and-drop techniques.

Sophisticated Visualization

This functionality allows business users to view two and three-dimensional charts and graphs and zero in on specific areas of focus for more powerful, revealing analysis.

Each visualization has many properties allowing end users to represent information in the way they would like, in a report or a dashboard.

Solution - Sharing Trusted Insights

Solution - Sharing Trusted Insights: See text after image for more details.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence enables your organization to share, and comment, its insights across a wide audience. Although your end users may sometimes need to build reports from scratch, they will often be able to answer current business questions by adjusting existing reports, to meet their information needs. The result is increased end-user confidence in business decisions made using timely, accurate, and interactive reports.

Multiple Delivery Options

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence offers multiple information delivery options and integration points. Built on an open platform, the software can also be integrated with custom applications.

Multilingual Information in a Single Deployment

It is crucial for global organizations to provide end users with multilingual information access. SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence allows users around the world to work with the software in their native language.

The software supports the major Western European languages, as well as languages such as Japanese – all from a single server. Beyond interface localization, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence helps end users access and create reports containing Unicode data.

The semantic layer metadata and report prompt can be localized to the language of the report viewer, enabling your organization to standardize on a single query reporting and analysis solutions, thus reducing deployment costs.

Solution - The Power of Mobility

Solution - The Power of Mobility: See text after image for more details.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence delivers a unique, single environment for accessing and interacting with information.

If you access your Web Intelligence documents from a mobile device, an optimized interface is available for easier navigation on such small screen. This optimized interface does not require to install a specific application on your mobile. It is available through a browser but can only be accessed if you open your document from an Opendoc URL, to skip the BI Launch Pad pages that have not been optimized for mobile devices. You only need to authenticate to the SAP BI Platform Repository through the SAP BI Launch Pad login page.

This mobile mode is proposed only for Reading mode, since it would be too cumbersome to edit a document on a mobile device. The mobile interface is identical to the one available when accessing on a non-mobile device, with some updates for a better display on mobile devices. Only the interface is adaptive, the document content is not and is displayed as it has been designed.

Toolbar, Dialog Boxes and Side Panels

If you open a Web Intelligence document using an Opendoc URL in a mobile browser, the document is displayed in a user interface adapted to the smaller screen once you have authenticated.

This interface is available only in Reading mode, but proposes all features available through a desktop access. When the screen is displayed horizontally, the toolbar contains only the most common commands: Refresh, Undo, Redo, Filters. You may tap the More icon button to open a side panel with the other commands available in Reading mode. When the screen is displayed vertically, the toolbar contains only the More button you may tap to open the side panel with all commands.

Benefits - Benefits of Flexible, Self-Service Reporting & Dashboarding

Benefits - Benefits of Flexible, Self-Service Reporting & Dashboarding: See text after image for more details.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence offers self-service information access to your business users, providing full flexibility and control on data analysis and interactivity.

Business users have decision-quality information at their fingertips – they can investigate issues, identify the root causes of problems, and explore new opportunities.

They don't need to rely on IT or expert programmers to create reports. With self-service business intelligence available throughout the enterprise, IT is no longer burdened with a backlog of reports, and doesn't need to build and maintain multiple variations of numerous queries.

By implementing the flexible, powerful ad hoc query, reporting, and analysis tools to your end users, you enable IT to focus on other value-added activities.

As a part of the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio of solutions, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software serves as the foundation of a broader BI strategy and provides information reliably and securely over the Web or within enterprise applications

The software scales to meet the needs of any size organization and leverages your investment in other SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions, reducing the overall cost of your enterprise BI deployments.

Quick Facts

Summary

With SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software, users can perform sophisticated ad hoc query, reporting and analysis. Enhanced functionality and an intuitive interface in the new release help people turn insights into effective decisions, improve productivity, and share knowledge across the organization.

Business Challenges

  • Enable self-service access to information spread across data sources and not found in standard reports.
  • Improve understanding of business issues with data and trend analysis.
  • Provide access to information on-site and remotely at any time.
  • Reduce report backlog in IT.

Key Features

  • Access to heterogeneous data sources – combine multiple data sources within a report.
  • Online and offline reporting and analysis – ask questions, analyze data, and identify trends no matter where you are.
  • Interactive and intuitive interface – use the organized toolbar, menus, drag-and-drop features, and charting options.
  • Flexibility and control – create new reports or modify existing reports.
  • Consistent, familiar metadata – leverage the semantic layer and common business terms.
  • Data lineage – view definitions of document filters, report objects, variables, and formulas.

Business Benefits

  • Improve decision-making and user autonomy with better access to better data.
  • Increase confidence in business decisions.
  • Gain new insights by breaking data silos.
  • Improve productivity with enhanced intuitive interface.
  • Spread insights across the organization by sharing interactive reports.
  • Control data access and use of system resources.
  • Reduce tools needed to deliver information throughout the organization with unified query, reporting, and analysis software.
  • Cut overall cost of business intelligence implementation across the organization.
  • Enhance IT role as a business partner supporting and driving business changes.

Log in to track your progress & complete quizzes

Learning

SAP FacebookSAP YoutubeSAP LinkedIn