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

Introduction

While we have seen only a few IT shops that rely exclusively on SAP software, the percentage of business processing conducted via SAP software has steadily increased. More and more corporations have successfully implemented SAP. These organizations may have started their projects in isolated divisions, but over the past decade, larger portions of the business are being run on SAP software. We see many organizations adopting IT philosophies that have SAP software as the default solution. It is not uncommon to hear a CFO comment, “You better have a very good reason not to use the SAP software we already paid for.” These organizations have moved beyond automating and integrating business processes and want to optimize their business performance, reduce the slack in their supply chains, and realize the potential value of their customer relationships.

Parallel to the ERP and business process reengineering evolution was the evolution of informational processing, now commonly referred to as business intelligence. The explosive growth in data captured by organizations (in part because of the rapid adoption of Internet technologies) has made available an increasing amount of business information. This, combined with the increased pace in the way business is conducted, has created significant demand for efficient decision-making processes. The data warehouse was conceived to enable such processes.

SAP has brought to market NetWeaver software that has created a tremendous ...