Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse: Leveraging the Business Intelligence Capabilities of SAP NetWeaver, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 10Business Analytics

Henry Morris of IDC Research defines an analytic application as a packaged software application that performs the following tasks:¹

1. Process support — This consists of organizing and automating tasks and activities oriented toward business process optimization and control. Process support can manifest itself in SAP BW in such ways as predefined analysis paths that lead to a decision or any type of planning, simulation, and risk assessment. Process support should close the gap between analysis and execution.
2. Separation of function — The analytic application must be able to stand separate from any operational transaction system. Of course, any analytic application is heavily dependent on transactional systems for information and must have a closed-loop backflow to feed its results, but there must be a clear demarcation between the systems.
3. Time-oriented, integrated data — These are essential characteristics for any data warehouse or data mart that must always have a time dimension and the capability of integrating data from multiple internal and external sources.

Based on Henry Morris’ definition, SAP NetWeaver is the ideal platform on which to build analytic applications, providing separation of function and time-oriented, integrated data. However, there are shades of gray as to what scenarios constitute enough process support to be considered an analytic application.

For example, does a Web application with drill-down to mySAP ERP constitute a ...