I’ll be presenting at Decoded Fashion next week at the Lincoln Center in New York:

“The first Fashion and Technology Forum Series connecting the world’s best startups and most noteworthy technologies to the Fashion, Beauty and Retail industries to accelerate innovation and increase the bottom line.”

It promises to be fascinating, with a wide range of sessions on different aspects of using technology in the fashion business, including leading-edge topics such as “Secrets from Social Curation Pros” and “Consumer-Powered Design”.

The speaker list is a who’s who of hot technology startups, and I’m especially interested in hearing the keynote from David Karp, CEO/Founder of Tumblr and Mashable’s Associate Editor Lauren Indvik, and hearing from Amy Cole of very-much-in-the-news Instagram (I’m a huge fan of both photo platforms).

Panel: Crystal Approach into Consumer Behavior

I’ll be moderating a panel session entitled Crystal Ball Approach into Consumer Behavior, discussing the use of analytics and business intelligence technology in the industry:

“ In the new social era, consumers no longer abide by set fashion rules and define their own style and trends. Real-time fashion analytics is a powerful tool to predict consumers’ real desires today and tomorrow.”

I have three panelists with deep experience of analytics in the fashion industry:

Lilly Berelovich, President, Fashion Snoops: Lilly Berelovich is the Co-Founder of Fashion Snoops, one of the first online trend services ever launched to become a renowned global research and advisory company. Lilly leads brands like Disney, Hang Ten, Sears, Wal-mart, and Warner Bros in the areas of licensing, branding, merchandising, and design. [Video profile here: First Comes Fashion]

Geoff Watts, Co-Founder, EditD. Geoff’s background in big data began way before the term “big data” was even coined. Because we process more data at EDITD than anyone else in the fashion business, his experience is essential. Geoff invents amazing tools from new technology with a great team of people, and he’s on a mission to make EDITD into the definitive real-time resource for the industry. [Here’s a great example of the company’s work: http://editd.com/reports/2011-a-year-in-fashion/]

Rohan Deuskar, CEO/Co-Founder, Stylitics. Rohan Deuskar is the CEO and Co-founder of Stylitics, a consumer insights company that gives consumers an intelligent and engaging platform to manage their clothing choices and share them with brands and friends. Rohan attended The Wharton School where he gained his MBA, and in the process also started Stylitics. Prior to Wharton, Rohan was Director of Innovation for Vibes Media. [Check out the Campus edition of the Stylitics site to find out the “Most Stylish Campus in America”]

How Analytics Can Help the Fashion World

From my initial discussions with the panelists, it’s clear that the fashion industry is going through the same type of technology revolution as other business sectors:

1. There has been massive changes in the amount of data available and what can be done with it – and many organizations are still aware of the new possibilities
2. The industry is slowly shifting from a batch-based, date-oriented supply chain to something more flexible, iterative, and data-driven, taking account of the new real-time opportunities
3. The consumer is becoming an integral part of the business processes, not just an end-consumer of it, helping shape industry directions and product designs
4. The biggest barriers to change and business value are cultural and organizational rather than technological

Looking down the list of sessions at the event, analytics is at the heart of almost all the fashion industry developments, including:

Retail optimization. Better analytics can directly help profitability. Better analytics can help optimize every aspect of the fashion business, including the supply chain, customer segmentation, spotting hot items, avoiding stockouts, monitoring profitability, etc. Companies like Burberry have reduced costs by over $150 million by driving down stock inventory levels thanks to data coming from their SAP systems.  And analytics is essential to answer more strategic questions such as “what’s the right tradeoff between profitability, customer loyalty, and brand value?” and “how can we optimize the depth and timing of markdowns in order boost sales?”  There have been recent changes to underlying analytics technology, including in-memory computing systems like SAP HANA that mean that companies can do this with large amounts of very detailed data in near-real time. SAP has a range of specific fashion industry solutions available.

Fashion trends. Peering into the future of upcoming fabrics and colors is a huge part of the industry dynamic. New “big data” techniques mean that massive amounts of structured (numbers) and unstructured (text, pictures, video…) data can now be gathered and combined to get an aggregate view of the key trends.

Social fashion. It’s now possible to analyze all the public information now available about fashion on the internet and using it to track brand trends and sentiment. And fashion-oriented social communities are emerging that let like-minded people share information about their fashion interests. This becomes a real-time source of analytics data for consumers and brands alike, and social network analysis can reveal who are the key influencers.

Customization and iteration. Rather than the traditional cycle (design collection/sell collection), it’s now possible to create more “analytics first” fashion.  Companies can move to a more iterative, analytics-based. customized approach, where clothes are made in smaller batches based on the particular desires of an individual or community. Retailers can then iterate designs by monitoring sales in real time, making constant changes and tests to improve sales and profitability.

Mobile, sensors, and monitoring. Location-based promotions can now be created using mobile applications. Research and pilot programs involving sensors, RFID chips, and related technologies are evolving. Large-scale retailers like Walmart are looking to optimize inventory tracking by embedding RFID chips in jeans and underwear. Vendors of expensive items (shoes, handbags, etc.) are increasingly interested in using embedded chips to thwart counterfeiters. This has interesting implications for privacy (imagine a customer buying shoes in a store, then setting off a profiling algorithm at the entrance each time they visit…), and as the RSA web site points out, the key aspect of this is creating the database…

Session Outline

During the session itself, we’ll be discussing the following topics:

• The changes in the industry and what is now possible with new analytic technologies and solution
• How companies overwhelmed with the choices can make sensible decisions about how to get started
• Barriers to moving forward effectively with analytics
• Some of the more exciting future trends

I hope you can join us, but if not, you can get a glimpse of the sessions by following the @decodedfashion hashtag.

Fun Fashion Analytics Bonus

I couldn’t resist mentioning this wonderful piece of fashion analytics from the Economist, illustrating “size inflation” in the UK (the US trends are very similar). Sorry to break it to you, but if you’ve been wearing the same size clothing for the last ten years, you’re actually 4+ inches thicker around the waist. And no, men don’t get off any better:

“Studies in America and Britain have found that some brands of men’s trousers labelled “waist 36 inches”, say, are in fact up to five inches bigger.”

 

 

 

 

An excellent article in Health Data Management by Greg Gillespie gives some wonderful examples of the power of analytics to improve health outcomes, looking at data from some of the 2,000+ clinical trials that Cleveland Clinic is currently running.

I strongly encourage you to read the original article (also available in pdf format), but here are summaries of the three use cases highlighted: hand-washing analytics, central-line analytics, and blood-transfusion analytics.

Data Transparency and Hand-Washing Compliance

Cleveland Clinic uses SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius) to display information, change behavior, and avoid infections:

Cleveland Clinic has developed a program where staff from compliance anonymously watch workers in different departments and record whether they do in fact follow hand hygiene guidelines. Their findings are uploaded into Cleveland Clinic’s enterprise analytics system and are accessible via a dashboard tab.

Four years ago, the system was showing a 40 percent compliance rate with hand hygiene guidelines. Now the compliance rate is staying well over 90 percent, staving off a significant number of hospital-acquired infections and other complications arising from hygiene issues.

“That’s the critical value of data transparency—you can show people what they’re really doing as opposed to what they think they’re doing, and we can show it on a department, unit-by-unit or individual practitioner level,” says Steve Davis M.D. “I’ve found that when you put that kind of information in front of physicians, their competitive streak really comes out. No one likes to get a ‘C’ on their report card, and if you don’t have data everyone assumes they’re getting an ‘A.’ When they find out they’re not, then they get moving.”

[By coincidence, a post in the Decision Factor blog also takes up the theme of hand-washing this week, arguing that data cleansing is the single most important means of avoiding bad decisions. ]

Reducing Infections While Saving Money

By carefully collecting and analyzing data, Cleveland Clinic has been able to reduce infection rates, spend less on equipment, and avoid costs of up to $30,000 per affected patient:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that nearly 250,000 of the bloodstream infections occur annually from procedural issues associated with inserting and maintaining central lines—tubes inserted near the heart or a large blood vessel that are used to give fluids, antibiotics, medical treatments such as chemotherapy, and liquid food.

Overhauling the health system’s approach to central-line infections had a significant financial return in addition to the clinical benefits.

Before clinical and business analytics were applied, each individual unit was responsible for ordering their own lines, which meant that more than 30 different lines (and more than 90 different PICC lines, another type of tube) were being used across Cleveland Clinic, which was not only financially inefficient but also clinically dangerous.

By streamlining the purchasing to one vendor, the equipment and maintenance costs dropped significantly. And standardizing the clinical processes resulted in major cost avoidance—it’s estimated by the Health Research & Educational trust that central-line infections add upwards of $30,000 in treatment costs per afflicted patient.

Best-Practice Blood Transfusions

A blood transfusion dashboard helps identify physicians that haven’t kept up with the latest information in health best practice, improve the supply of blood, and reduces costs:

Andrew Proctor, administrative director of medical operations for Cleveland Clinic has developed a blood utilization dashboard that enables department heads and others to drill down to a physician level how much blood is being used for transfusions.

Standard industry practice used call for ordering transfusions if a patient’s hemoglobin count was below 10 after surgery or due to critical illness, But about a decade ago, says Davis, medical research showed convincingly that blood transfusions given at those hemoglobin values, and even significantly lower, in nearly all cases did more harm than good, providing few benefits and increasing the risks of nosocomial infections.

“Blood transfusions is another area where physician behavior has changed slower than the evidence, and our data is helping drive that behavioral change by enabling us to determine where blood utilization still goes against best practices, and addressing the issue on a unit or individual physician basis,” Davis says.

The result has been a significant reduction in blood utilization, which equates to a significant reductions in costs associated with maintaining the blood supply, and an improvement in patient outcomes.

Health Data + Analysis Saves Lives

I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible using analytics. New developments in big data mobile, cloud, analytic, and collaborative technology are combining to create new ways of improving health care.

Examples include the new SAP Collaborative E-Care Management application that connects patients, care providers and their families through medical monitoring software and mobile devices to better manage their health with individualized treatment plans:

And the pioneering work being done in conjunction with Charité, Europe’s largest teaching hospital, to enable mobile access to health data anytime, anywhere, including the SAP HANA-based Oncolyzer cancer-research application.

For more information, visit the Healthcare area of SAP.com

The real trend this year is not the technology. It’s about helping business people make better decisions, and actually change the way companies do business. Analytics has always been about transforming business, but the recent huge changes in analytic technology have created interesting new opportunities for business innovation.

Most organizations are now starting to understand the technical opportunities, but many struggle to apply those new opportunities to their business processes. This blog post attempts to explain what’s going on in the analytics market and give concrete examples of how other companies have implemented the new technologies in “game-changing” ways (sorry kittens).

Wrenching Change and A Foggy Outlook

The chart below illustrates the wrenching effects of recent financial problems on the world gross domestic product: companies today have to be ready to react to unprecedentedly fast changes to their economic environment.

And the economic environment is fraught with extreme uncertainty. This year, the people who run the world will change, and so will many of the policies of the countries they manage. Financial markets have still not completely stabilized, notably with the future of the Euro still not assured.

Companies have reacted to this uncertainty by slashing costs and accumulating cash, and now need to start investing that cash into future development. Since interest rates are low and the business outlook is still uncertain, many of them are using the money for new technology that can help them prepare for the future.

In particular, companies want better visibility about what’s going on in their market, and increased organizational agility in order to be able to deal with change fast. It’s like driving in the fog without a map – in order to survive, you should invest in better visibility, brakes, and steering to be able to spot and avoid fast-moving objects looming out of the fog.

Analytics provides these capabilities: business intelligence to peer into the road ahead, risk-management to provide fast alerts to new obstacles, and flexible financial planning systems to help swerve around them.

Analytics: Hotter Than Ever

Companies are investing heavily in analytics:

• Analytics is the #1 top technology priority for both CIOs and CFOs, according to Gartner
• Nucleus Research recently released a report showing that organizations get $10.66 of value for every $1 invested in analytics
• IDC has increased growth forecasts faced with stronger-than-expected figures for recent years
• IDC analyst Dan Vesset: “After three decades, the business analytics market is finally reaching the mainstream” and “There are few growth inhibitors in the foreseeable future”
• At the recent BI Gartner Summit in London, Gartner’s Dan Sommer announced an early estimate of 10%+ growth in analytics during 2011, outpacing general IT growth.

Fast-Moving Technology

Analytics technology has been changing fast. On the back end, new technologies have come together to provide what Gartner calls “extreme data performance”. These include in-memory, column data stores, in-database calculations, massively parallel architectures, complex event processing, Big Data / NoSQL / Hadoop, and cloud architectures.

The combination of these technologies provides a opportunity to access massive amounts of a greater variety of data, faster, and more flexibly. The key opportunity is that these new platforms “collapse the stack” so that organizations can implement and update analytic projects much faster than ever before.

And on the front end, various technologies are coming together to provide unprecedented levels of context-based “actionable insights”, including self-service data discovery, advanced visualization including maps, mobile analytics, predictive analytics, collaborative decision-support. They help provide more action-oriented interfaces optimized for the context of the users, both inside and outside the organization.

These technology advances are clearly important, and we’re going to continue to see great improvements this year. The new opportunities have reached a tipping point similar to the rise of digital cameras vs. analog photography – and you don’t want to leave it too late to make the change, like Kodak, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection!

However, the real opportunity is using these new possibilities not only to improve analytics but fundamentally rethink key business processes.

High Resolution Management

University researchers have pointed out that today’s management techniques are based on the limitations of information scarcity:

“How many times has someone in your company uttered, “We don’t have that level of accuracy in the information, so we have to make aggregated estimates”? Under the current paradigm, it is sometimes impossible to drill down and understand what is happening at a highly detailed level.”

They coined the term “High Resolution Management” to describe what becomes possible with the new technology opportunities:

“We contend that these technologies will change drastically how management makes decisions. Why? Because with access to the finest granularities of information, management will be able to move freely from macro to micro levels and will be able to measure, plan and act accordingly. With increased resolution come more options to drill down, eliminate inefficiencies and cut costs.”

Lets take a look at three different types of High Resolution Management opportunity, letting companies:

• Remove bottlenecks
• Rethink business
• Flip business models

Remove Bottlenecks

Better technology always means business opportunity, but the new analytic platforms are rapidly eliminating some of the key bottlenecks that have prevented organizations from getting value from their data:

Faster, more flexible data access. Companies like Red Bull have been able to speed up and simplify their data warehousing environments. Using the HANA in-memory database, the company can now load detailed data twenty-five times faster into their data warehouse, and they were able to eliminate several levels of data staging, increasing the flexibility of the solution.

Data volumes and complexity. Companies like Colgate-Palmolive, Provimi, and Danone 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. That has now changed. For example, according to Colgate-Palmolive CIO Tom Greene:

“We will be able to run analytics at a local level on specific brands and locations, and at the lowest level of detail in real time”

And Danone can now measure the carbon emissions of 35,000 different products, with new systems that:

“collect, measure, and analyze data across the entire product life-cycle, from sourcing through production, transport, retail, distribution, consumption, and end of cycle”

New forms of data: ‘unstructured’ data such as text has long been difficult to effectively analyze and incorporate into mainstream corporate analytics. The new systems make it much easier for companies like Medtronic to access and analyze the large amount of complaints and feedback data they receive about their products, combine it with other data sources, and provide it to business users with dynamic interfaces:

New interfaces and users. Companies like Altron have been able to get the data to their users where they needed it. As Debra-Lynn Marais, Group Information Manager explains:

“The days of our users and execs being in the office have gone. They work from home or on the road. We had to develop a solution that gets information out to where our people are. Everything we do is mobile first. In addition, it’s less cumbersome and cheaper to buy and use a tablet than any other form.”

Rethink Business

Many companies are going beyond “just” improving their existing analytic capabilities, using analytics in new ways to change the way they do business. Instead of analytics being something that is used to monitor and eventually improve a business process, analytics is becoming a more fundamental part 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. For example, online grocer Fresh Direct, instead of just understanding what problems happened yesterday, can now understand what problems will happen in the next few hours, so they can actually fix them before a customer is impacted:

“FreshDirect has an operations center 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 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.”

Integrated Risk Assessments. Among other products, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt produces educational books. Schools pass orders in June or July after the end of the school year, and then expect delivery for the start of the next school year in September. Getting books printed during the summer is expensive, as many publishers compete for the limited supply of printers available.

To avoid these extra costs, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt uses using sophisticated, risk-based forecasting. The company prints books in January or February, when printing is much cheaper. In order to minimize of excess inventory, it has carefully analyzed all the causes of previous forecasts, and now takes account of all the different things that influence book obsolescence.

Before, the buying team just ordered based on the volume forecast from sales. Now they have much greater context for their decisions. For example, if there’s a vote coming up on schools funding that may result in the canceling of a math adoption program for the year, they can decide to hold back on those purchases until the outlook is clearer. The fast, more accurate forecasting mechanism has saved them tens of millions of dollars, and they have more of the products their customers want.

New Customer Services. International grocery chain Casino is rolling out a new mobile shopping application for its customers. It provides data from its enterprise systems directly to its customers, resulting in increased shopping convenience and increased customer loyalty.

German healthcare provider AOK (“the good health organization”) is committed to helping its members avoid illnesses in the first place. It is planning to introduce a new, market-differentiating service: personalized healthcare advice for each customer, with tools that:

“Conduct real-time analyses of the tremendous amounts of medical data we receive, recognize potential health risks, assemble various preventive care programs and respond to those risks appropriately and ahead of time.”

As an added bonus, they also believe that this tailored prevention program will result in significant cost reductions by preventing expensive unneeded treatments.

BC Hydro is saving $70 million dollars a year through the installation of new smart electricity meters, using SAP systems, and offering new services to commercial customers based on the new data possibilities. Companies like Centrica are planning to use SAP’s Smart Data Analytics, giving them deep understanding into consumer consumption.

Flip Business Models

The really interesting opportunity for businesses is where companies have managed to use analytics to fundamentally flip the way their businesses work: instead of analytics being part of a process, it “becomes the business model”.

Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour workweek, is an interesting example of this. He didn’t do what most authors do: write a book, and then figure out how to publicize it. He used an analytics-first approach: he bought Google Ads, with mockups of book covers, with a variety of titles of books that he might be interested in writing – and then wrote the book that got the most clickthroughs! This is one step beyond using analytics such as focus-groups, which are typically there to validate existing products. The next generation of products and services are being created “on the fly” based on an analysis-first approach.

The clothing brand Zara shook up fashion retailing with “analytics first” – instead of having a designer creating clothes and then trying to sell them six months later, they realized new manufacturing techniques meant they could create clothes “in the moment”. They could observe what people were wearing in the street, quickly make small batches of variations on that theme, and get them into the stores. If they sold well they made more, if they didn’t sell they discounted quickly. Instead of a season-oriented, “batch” business, they switched to a flow-oriented business, using new technology capabilities.

The new analytic platforms mean that this analytics-first approach is available to many more businesses than in the past. For example, T-Mobile is in the process of transforming the way they attract customers. Instead of laboriously creating a range of rate plans, promoting them, and analyzing the results, they now use analytics to automatically create hundreds of more complex, personalized rate plans. They then throw them out into the market, monitor in real time, and quickly cull any that aren’t successful. It’s a way of doing business that would have been inconceivable in the past, and a lot more common in the future.

Conclusion

2012 is the year to rethink your analytic technology to take account of new opportunities:

• On the back end, for extreme data performance
• On the front end, for actionable insights

And it’s time to rethink your business:

• Remove today’s bottlenecks to successful analytics caused by data volumes, data variety, or data access
• Rethink business processes by embedding real-time decisions
• Create new products and services that could only exist because of today’s analytic power

Organizations are using this technology to change the way they do business. If you run an analytics project, you are in the forefront of these changes – it’s your job to help explain to the rest of the business how these technologies should be changing their existing processes. Good luck!

___________________________________________________

If you’re interested in slides that go along with this article, please see this post about the recent Gartner BI Summit in London that includes a download of my presentation at the conference.

I’ll be an official “social ambassador” for analytics at SAPPHIRE NOW from Madrid next week. This blog attempts to summarize the main analytics-related activities during the two days of SAPPHIRE NOW – but note that this year, SAPPHIRE NOW attendees also have access to all SAP TechEd sessions that are going on at the same time, making it even harder than usual to choose from the dizzying array of possible sessions (the SAP TechEd sessions are technology-focused, and include more networking sessions with IT peers, while the SAPPHIRE NOW sessions focus on the business aspects and include more customer sessions).

For the rest of this post, I’ll focus on SAPPHIRE NOW. There are four main campuses, staffed by SAP experts available to answer any questions you may have:

For this post, I’ll concentrate on activities in the Business Analytics Campus, but note that if you’re interested in mobile BI, analytics integrated with SAP, or the latest in in-memory systems, you may also want to check out the contents of the other three campus areas (as an example, “How Pfizer Uses Mobile Business Analytics from SAP” is on Wednesday afternoon). There are also analytics-related, “TED-like” sessions in the Spotlight theater (which will be recorded and available after the event)

Business Analytics Campus

There are an amazing 87 analytics-related, information-packed sessions scheduled over the two days – use the personal agenda builder to pick which ones you’d like to attend, and leave time to visit the analytics discussion tables (meet and discuss with SAP experts), the demo pods (working versions of the latest analytics software, including HANA, BusinessObjects 4.0, and EPM 10), and the exhibitor area.

Personally, I’ll be concentrating on the customer presentations and panel sessions, so here’s a recap of them below – to see the scheduled times, see the full list of sessions later in this post.

Customer Presentations

Bowers and Wilkins: Transform how you do business by “mobilizing” decision making. Mobile BI is the new reality for companies who want to transform how they make decisions today.  Learn how customers are making fact-based decisions wherever they are with built-for-mobile BI.  Discover how you can impact your business’ performance with reporting, analysis, dashboards and visualization delivered real-time to any mobile device.

Novartis: Our journey to Integrated Business Intelligence. Learn how Novartis Pharma is consolidating its BI environment worldwide from seven instances of SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) and transitioning to one single source of truth, introducing SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 7.5 to enable a complete new level in business decision making capabilities.

Altron: Meet Growing Information Demands with SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Innovations. Due to business conditions and increasing demands for information access, BI teams now face steeper requirements for information integrity, burgeoning data volumes, and demand for analytics across lines of business. Meanwhile end users clamor for simpler, faster mobile access to information. Hear how innovations in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 can help.

Charite: Turn “Big Data” into Business Value with Real-Time BI. Increasing expectations of BI users for access to big data, coupled with rapid response times and rising need for intuitive end-user experience, put pressure on BI professionals. Hear how Charite, a large German university hospital supports its operations and research demands by leveraging in-memory technology with SAP BusinessObjects solutions.

All for One Drives Rapid Decisions and Project Delivery with SAP StreamWork. Learn about All for One Midmarket AG, a one-stop shop for outsourcing services and application management. Hear how the company increased customer interaction, streamlined its project management and delivery, and enabled faster, improved decision making with the cloud-based social collaboration solution, the SAP StreamWork application.

Tecan: Automating Internal Controls with SAP BusinessObjects GRC Solution. Hear how Tecan, a leader in life sciences supply, has implemented an automated internal controls system with SAP BusinessObjects governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions. Learn how Tecan has revolutionized manual processes and achieved stronger and more reliable controls with the SAP BusinessObjects Process Control 10.0 application.

Why Medtronic Chose SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver BW to Stay Competitive. Hear Medtronic Inc., a global leader in medical technology, explain its recent deployment of the SAP HANA platform and the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) component. Learn how SAP HANA allows the company to better analyze business operations, lower total cost of ownership, and speed time to market. – Implementation/Technology Partner: Cisco

How Pfizer Uses Mobile Business Analytics from SAP. This discussion will help you learn firsthand how Pfizer Inc. embraced mobile analytics as part of its enterprise strategy. Hear about what the company learned and where it’s going. (Mobility Campus)

BASF: Secure Supply Chain with SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services. BASF runs the SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services application, including global trade compliance and trade preference management. The company recently implemented new features, including Excise Movement and Control System and integration to the SAP Event Management application, to proactively monitor and manage a first-class supply chain.

Integrated Financial Reporting and Planning with SAP Software at Statoil. Hear about Statoil’s successful integrated financial reporting and group planning. The company will share its implementation experiences with business intelligence and the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application, which helped increase quality and efficiency in producing internal and external financial reports.

Why AOK Chose SAP HANA for Real-Time Analytics. Hear why Allgemeinen Orts Krankenkassen (AOK), the largest health insurance organization in Germany, chose the SAP HANA platform for real-time analytics and data warehousing. Learn about AOK’s short- and long-term use cases for SAP HANA, including plans to supercharge the organization’s landscape for the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component. – Implementation/Technology Partner: Dell

Get the Inside Story on Deloitte’s Implementation of SAP HANA. Find out how key stakeholder support was gained and how a large amount of structured and unstructured data was deployed at Deloitte. See the impact the SAP HANA platform has on the company’s front-end reports, including a reduction in data load time from 48 hours to 12 minutes and report run time from 30 minutes to milliseconds. – Implementation/Technology Partner: Deloitte

Logista: Managing Access Risk with SAP BusinessObjects Access Control. Hear how Logista, a leading logistics group, uses the SAP BusinessObjects Access Control application to address compliance challenges, reduce access-related audit findings, and achieve compliant role provisioning. Hear how, with an automated solution, Logista increases business ownership while reducing the cost and effort of access risk management.

Panel Discussions

BI Customer Panel: Featuring Shell and Celesio, and hosted by Adam Binnie (GM & Global VP Business Intelligence Solutions). How do you get the most from your business intelligence solutions? What should you look for when finding the right BI solutions? Many factors come into play regardless what industry you are from. Hear from companies explain how the SAP BusinessObjects solutions helped their users make smarter and faster decisions.

BI Product Panel: Where BI Takes Us Today: Featuring Adam Binnie (GM & Global VP Business Intelligence Solutions), Timo Elliott (Analytics Evangelist) and Thierry Donnadieu (Head of Business Analytics EMEA consulting). As businesses strive to find efficient ways to deliver attractive offerings to customers, how can yours do the same? BI solutions help businesses identify profitable products, services, processes and even customers. What BI innovations are SAP delivering that makes companies successful? Hear from SAP product leaders to learn how BI can help your business reach new heights.

Data Warehousing Customer Panel: Providing Instant Access to Big Data: Customers discuss experiences leveraging data warehousing solutions from SAP to solve challenges stemming from managing and providing real-time access to large volumes of data. Understand the role that can be played by the SAP HANA platform; the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component, which is powered by SAP HANA; and Sybase IQ software.

Information Governance Customer Panel: We Deliver Quality and Trusted Information to Our Business: Find Out How. With corporate decisions relying on the quality of data, and the volume of data doubling every 18 months, it’s vital for companies to firm up their corporate information governance. But who does, and why do they do it? Hear from Vodafone Group plc, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, and Alliander about how they deliver functional data management models. – Software Solution Partner: OpenText

EPM Product Panel: Helping Ensure Quick Time to Value with SAP BusinessObjects EPM Solutions. Implementing solutions that enable better control of growth and profitability remains a priority. But today implementations need to help ensure rapid time to value. Hear project managers who have led successful implementations of SAP BusinessObjects enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions discuss their approaches and experiences.

HANA Product Panel: Getting Started with an SAP HANA Platform Implementation. Join the SAP business analytics services team and our customers to get an overview of the latest and greatest in the world of the SAP HANA platform. Learn how SAP HANA has already helped numerous customers. This session will provide you with a clear understanding of the solution, road map, deployment options, and considerations.

Innovation Panel: Innovative Use of Business Analytics for Your Industry and Line of Business. Hear how SAP customers are benefitting from key innovations in business analytics – such as the SAP HANA platform, mobility, cloud services, and collaboration – for solving critical business issues. Hear them discuss their business challenges and their experience in selecting, implementing, and using business analytics to derive business value.

BI Value Panel: How We Drive Value from Business Intelligence. How do you get the most from your business intelligence (BI) solutions? What should you look for when trying to find the right BI solutions? Many factors come into play regardless of what industry you are from. Hear from three companies about how SAP BusinessObjects solutions helped their users make smarter and faster decisions.

Midmarket BI Panel: Unleashing the Power of Business Analytics for Midsize Companies. Join this panel of midsize companies to learn their real-life stories. Hear what they did to deploy SAP BusinessObjects analytic applications, and learn how they are using the solutions to gain actionable insights – including best practices – that otherwise have been invisible to them.

Full Schedule

Here’s the full schedule of sessions that touch on Business Analytics over the two days of SAPPHIRE NOW, grouped by time slot, so you can more easily see the painful choices involved. Use the agenda builders for SAP TechEd and SAPPHIRE NOW to see more about the sessions, and to create your own list of activities that you can then email or download.  I’ve put in bold the ones I hope to attend myself – see you there!

Tuesday 9th November

SAP TechEd starts a day earlier than SAPPHIRE NOW, packed with detailed, technical information about analytics, and a keynote from Vishal Sikka, SAP Executive Board Member leading technology and innovation– see the SAP TechEd agenda for more information (Vishal presents to the SAPPHIRE NOW audience on Thursday morning).

Wednesday 10th November

Wed., 09:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. General Session – SAP Executive Keynote Speaker: Jim Hagemann Snabe, Co-CEO of SAP

• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31336 Strategies for Enterprise Business Intelligence Success: Do You Have One?, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31377 What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31601 Drive Rapid Decisions with Collaborative BI Using SAP StreamWork, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B32755 Using Business Analytics in Your Finance Department, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B32762 Next-Generation Analytic Applications for Industry and Line of Business, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.,B31335 Where BI Takes Us Today, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.,B31392 How Do Your GRC Programs Measure Up?, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 2

Lunch

• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31337 Embedding Analytics into SAP Business Suite Applications, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31367 Understanding the Road Map for SAP HANA with SAP NetWeaver BW, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31376 What’s New in Treasury and Risk Management, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31600 Deliver Your Collaboration Strategy with SAP StreamWork, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B32753 Budgeting, Planning, and Consolidation for SMEs, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B32781 Increase Competitiveness Through Better Customer Insight, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:20 p.m.,B31332 Meet Growing Information Demands with SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 01:00 p.m. – 01:20 p.m.,B31390 Tecan: Automating Internal Controls with SAP BusinessObjects GRC Solutions, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Wed., 01:30 p.m. – 01:50 p.m.,B31349 Information Governance from the Ground Up: How to Make It Real, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 01:30 p.m. – 01:50 p.m.,B31598 All for One Drives Rapid Decisions and Project Delivery with SAP StreamWork, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31338 Transition from SAP Business Explorer to SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31353 Why Information Governance Is Important Now, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31380 What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management 10.0, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31397 Managing Risk in Today’s Business Environments, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B32747 Making Business Intelligence Work for You, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B32760 Analytics in Corporate Functions: Know, Decide, and Act With Confidence, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:20 p.m.,B32750 Release 4.0 of SAP BusinessObjects Edge Solutions Give SMEs the “Edge”, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Wed., 02:00 p.m. – 02:20 p.m.,B34204 Outinnovate Your Competition with Business Analytics Solutions from SAP, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1

• Wed., 02:30 p.m. – 02:50 p.m.,B31374 Release 10.0 of SAP BusinessObjects EPM Solutions, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 02:30 p.m. – 02:50 p.m.,B33948 How SAP HANA Makes Businesses Run in Real Time, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31343 Explore Data Anywhere with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31354 Managing the Quality of Your Data from Within SAP Business Suite, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31379 What’s New in Consolidation Solutions from SAP, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31393 Today’s User-Access Balancing Act: Risk Versus Cost of Managing Access, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B32770 Big Data: Big In-Memory Computing Opportunities, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B32782 Advanced Analytics and Performance Management in the Public Sector, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:30 p.m.,B31364 Providing Instant Access to Big Data, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:30 p.m.,B32765 A New Day in the Life of Your Organization: How Business Analytics Can Help, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Wed., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,M24847 How Pfizer Uses Mobile Business Analytics from SAP, 45-Minute Microforum, Mobility Microforum 201

• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B31341 Manage More with the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B31357 How Does EIM Fit Within Your Enterprise Architecture?, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B31378 What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management 10.0, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B31398 Integrating Identity Management with Access Risk Management Solutions, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B32748 Why Data Strategy Is Critical for Implementation of BI and SAP HANA, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B32780 Using Business Analytics to Manage Risk for Your Industry, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Wed., 04:00 p.m. – 04:20 p.m.,B31362 Why Medtronic Chose SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver BW to Stay Competitive, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1*

* [I’ll be presenting “The Future of Work” in the Spotlight theatre: it will be recorded and available for viewing after SAPPHIRE

• Wed., 04:30 p.m. – 04:50 p.m.,B33927 BASF: Secure Supply Chain with SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 05:00 p.m. – 05:20 p.m.,B31331 Novartis: Our Journey to Integrated Business Intelligence, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Wed., 05:30 p.m. – 05:50 p.m.,B31333 Turn “Big Data” into Business Value with Real-Time BI, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Wed., 05:30 p.m. – 05:50 p.m.,B32745 Combining the Power of SAP HANA with Predictive Analytics, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1

Day 2 Thursday 11th November

9:00 am to 10:30 am Keynote presentation – Vishal Sikka, SAP Executive Board Member leading technology and innovation

• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31340 Gain Business Insight with SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31358 Enterprise Information Management with the Right Data Migration Strategy, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31382 Understanding SAP Solutions for Cost and Profitability Analysis, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B31395 Navigating Your Risk, Compliance, and Controls Programs, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B32759 Learn How Collaboration and Analytics Are Changing Supply Chain Management, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,B32771 Future of Analytics: Are You Ready for In-Memory Computing and Mobility?, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.,B31352 We Deliver Quality and Trusted Information to Our Business: Find Out How, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Thu., 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.,B31375 Helping Ensure Quick Time to Value with SAP BusinessObjects EPM Solutions, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 1

Lunch

• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31339 Information Access with the Semantic Layer of SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31366 Value Drivers: Understanding Business Benefits Derived from SAP HANA, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31383 The Financial Closing Cockpit, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B31394 The Next Step in Your Control and Compliance Programs: Automated Controls, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B32754 SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite: Complementary Solutions to SAP Software, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:45 p.m.,B32763 Stay Competitive 24×7 with Analytics on Your Mobile, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:20 p.m.,B31371 Integrated Financial Reporting and Planning with SAP Software at Statoil, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Thu., 01:00 p.m. – 01:20 p.m.,B32751 Helping Midsize Companies Plan, Budget, and Forecast Amid Constant Change, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Thu., 01:30 p.m. – 01:50 p.m.,B31330 Transform How You Do Business by Mobilizing Decision Making, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Thu., 01:30 p.m. – 01:50 p.m.,B32776 Get the Inside Story on Deloitte’s Implementation of SAP HANA, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31342 Maximize Analysis Potential with SAP BusinessObjects Analysis Software, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31365 SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.3: Update and Impact of SAP HANA, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31381 Going the Last Mile of Finance with New Disclosure Management Software, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 320
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B31396 What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services 10.0, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 313
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B32749 Forecast Accuracy: Maximizing the Usefulness of Business Planning, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:45 p.m.,B32784 Predictive Analytics and SAP In-Memory Computing for CP and Retail, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:30 p.m.,B32746 Getting Started with an SAP HANA Platform Implementation, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Thu., 02:00 p.m. – 02:30 p.m.,B32779 Innovative Use of Business Analytics for Your Industry and Line of Business, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 1

• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31344 Empower Your Workforce with Mobile Analytics, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 303
• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B31368 Leveraging Sybase IQ for Better Business Performance, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B32769 Analytics on the Go: What’s Your Mobile Strategy?, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 300
• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:45 p.m.,B32783 What Does Predictive Analytics Mean for Product and Service Creation?, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:20 p.m.,B31363 Why AOK Chose SAP HANA for Real-Time Analytics, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Thu., 03:00 p.m. – 03:20 p.m.,B32778 Next-Generation Analytic Apps for Your Industry and Line of Business, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Thu., 03:30 p.m. – 03:50 p.m.,B32758 Business Analytics for Your Operations, Procurement, and Supply Chain, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2
• Thu., 03:30 p.m. – 03:50 p.m.,B33779 Logista: Managing Access Risk with SAP BusinessObjects Access Control, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1

• Thu., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B31356 Driving Business Value with Holistic Lifecycle Management of Information, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 310
• Thu., 04:00 p.m. – 04:45 p.m.,B32761 Drive Effective Sales and Marketing Decisions with Analytics from SAP CRM, 45-Minute Microforum, Business Analytics Microforum 325
• Thu., 04:00 p.m. – 04:20 p.m.,B31350 Empower Business Users to Bring Data Quality to the Next Level, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Thu., 04:00 p.m. – 04:20 p.m.,B32757 Improve Profitability by Leveraging Better Business Analytics for CRM, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Thu., 04:30 p.m. – 04:50 p.m.,B31351 Best Practices for a Successful Enterprise Information Management Project, 20-Minute Presentation, Business Analytics Theater 2

• Thu., 05:00 p.m. – 05:30 p.m.,B31334 How We Drive Value from Business Intelligence, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 1
• Thu., 05:00 p.m. – 05:30 p.m.,B32752 Unleashing the Power of Business Analytics for Midsize Companies, 30-Minute Panel Discussion, Business Analytics Theater 2

Finally, here’s a quick guide to getting the most out of the event from a social point of view:

______________________________________________

Photo of the Feria de Madrid by marcp_dmoz on Flickr

It’s a stormy and sunny day here in Orlando, Florida, for the  2011 ASUG SAP BusinessObjects User Conference in the Dolphin Hotel (ASUG members and conference attendees can see videos and download conference materials at http://www.asugonline.com/)

Bridgette Chambers, CEO of the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) (@bchambersASUG on Twitter), kicked things to the packed room off by reminiscing about how much relations have improved since the SAP and BusinessObjects user groups came together for the first time at the ASUG BusinessObjects conference four years ago.

She cheered up many in the crowd by announcing the extension of the ASUG Valueship for another year (complimentary membership for North American BusinessObjects customers).

She explained that next year’s joint SAP BusinessObjects User Conference and SAP Analytics conference will again be in Orlando, 9th-12th September (book the date!), and urged everybody to take a more active part in the user group.

Steve Lucas, Global GM of SAP Business Analytics delivered the main keynote (@nstevenlucas on Twitter). After an intro worthy of a standup comedian (explaining that the “get 20%” signs on stage were just props, not a promise of future discounts: “SAP is still SAP”) , he explained that membership of the usergroup leads to concrete benefits: “I talk a lot to customers, and I can tell you that BusinessObjects customers are happier when they’re a member of ASUG”.

He went on to emphasize that SAP had delivered on the promises from last year’s user conference: BI 4.0, SAP HANA, BI Mobile, and Line of Business solutions all went production in the course of the year — and gave out his email (steve.lucas@sap.com) to anybody who needed his help.

The focus of the presentation was BI 4.0. Steve: “What’s New in BI 4.0? Everything!”

He then went on to elaborate the key themes of the release:

Openness

“When did being open get passé?!” asked Steve: “Open is still cool. Being open is powerful.” He explained that the ability to access ANY data is one of the key strengths of BusinessObjects: “We are freakin’ open. We can report off of smoke signals.”

He illustrated the point showing off the real-time integration capabilities with a retail demo. “Here’s the ‘traditional’ dashboard that shows you your sales by store, that looks so good that your CEO would love it, even if he didn’t understand it”:

“But let’s see what you can do with real real-time data”. As he grabbed a pair of jeans, a security camera tracked the movement and added extrapolated information such as an estimate of gender and age (this is a real retail solution from a partner).

As Steve chose a pair of Jeans, a “conversion” was registered in the dashboard at the top of the screen:

Geographic location

Steve was joined up on stage by Jason Rose, VP of BI solution marketing (@rosejason on Twitter),, showing a demo of the integration between SAP and Google Maps: “not just what and when: where!”. Jason did a great demo of the third-party GMaps Plugin for Dashboards by Ryan Goodman of Centigon Solutions that allows you to draw areas on the screen that you’d like to analyze further.

Social

Jason then did a demonstration of sentiment analysis on a twitter stream, using Text Analysis and Dashboards: “social data shouldn’t be yet another silo with a specific solution” (you can take a look at the technology yourself at the experience SAP web site).

Mobile

Stephanie Buscemi, Group VP of Marketing, Business Analytics, did a world premiere demo of the next version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer including offline explorationand the new “Exploration Views” prototyped by the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation center (available first half of next year). Stephanie also showed the latest BusinessObjects Mobile BI product that allows you to access Web Intelligence reports on an iPad.

Hana

Fred Samson came up on stage to demonstrate affinity analysis using SAP Dashboards on top of a HANA datasource — real-time access to 3 Terabytes of retail data, with sub-second response times.

Collaborative

My personal favorite of the show: Jack Miller, GVP for SAP Streamwork and BI OnDemand talked about collaborative business intelligence, with BI information included in a StreamWork “Activity”, and StreamWork feeds appearing directly within the BI portal.

Steve finished up with a summary of why he believes SAP BusinessObjects provides the most complete suite of analytic products available today on the market

There are more photos available on flickr, and a recording of the full keynote will be available within 24 hours on the http://www.asugonline.com/ web site.

It was the SAP World Tour in Sopot, Poland last week, and I had the honor of presenting a keynote session on business analytics.

The three-day event kicked off with a evening on a tall ship in nearby Gdynia, with traditional nautical music and evening entertainment including hitting a large nail into a stump of wood(?!).

The opening “run better” presentation was done as a panel discussion with Grzegorz Rogali?ski, the SAP country manager, and Tomasz Niebylski, head of presales, and hosted by a local TV journalist.

As always, here are my slides in both Adobe PDF and Microsoft PowerPoint format:

And here are some other photos from the event:

The launch of BI 4.0 in Paris was one of the most interesting I’ve attended. It took place in the Salle Gaveau theatre in Paris on the afternoon of May 9th. In front of a packed crowd, journalist and editor Frédéric Simmottel of O1 Informatique welcomed everybody to the event.

He invited Laurent Leenhardt, director of Business Analytics in France, up on stage to discuss the agenda and outline the main themes of the show.

Next came a round-table interview with Hervé Couturier, R&D director for SAP, responsible for Business Analytics and SAP Research Labs, Eric Poutrin, in charge of BI strategy for Air France, and Laurent Gaultier, the BI director for Accenture France.

Air France explained that the company “sell a real time product and needs fast, simple to use, actionable info in the hands of operational managers”, emphasizing that data quality is essential, and that the KLM merger had been a great opportunity to work on a single vision for the group.

Two other videos followed. The first featured Bernard Liautaud, founder of BusinessObjects and now member of VC company Balderton Capital, and now on the SAP Supervisory Board, congratulating everybody on this first big release since the acquisition:

The second featured vignettes of BusinessObjects developers (a large part of the analytics development is done in the SAP BusinessObjects offices in Levallois, just outside of Paris) discussing what they liked about the new version (in French):

Next came the demonstration section, hosted by Vincent Taufflieb

First up was Christelle Romac demonstrating EIM 4.0

Here’s the video of the demo (sorry, no soundtrack):

Then Florian Hamon did an end-to-end demonstration of BI 4.0

Here’s a video of the demonstration (sorry, no soundtrack):

Then I talked about HANA (In-memory analytics), StreamWork (collaborative decision making), and Mobile BI

Here’s a copy of my slides, in Adobe PDF and PowerPoint format

Finally, Chahab Nastar of SAP Research showed some of the exciting new software.

First,text analytics (available now as part of EIM 4.0):

And then some prototypes that extend the technology, using it to let users ask questions, make it available on a mobile phone, with voice-to-text, etc:

He finished off with a short video of the new Dashi prototype that uses HTML5 to let people add and edit charts using simple gestures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K07YlU9dPY

The event ended with a cocktail and performance by artist Roberto d’Olbia

Here’s a selection of photos from the event, on Flickr

Article from Silicon.fr: SAP lance B0 4.0 en fanfare

I attended some of the Business Analytics track sessions at SAPPHIRE NOW online, available for free at sapphirenow.com (registration required). Here’s some summaries and highlights of the sessions I attended. Note, these notes are necessarily incomplete, and don’t necessarily summarize the presenters thoughts correctly – if something looks interesting, please check out the original presentation — I’ll add the links as the become available!.

Dell Global Enterprise Business Intelligence

“DELL Enterprise Business Intelligence 2.0 is a transformational initiative that provides the global BI reporting framework at DELL to improve business value by lowering the total cost of ownership. Learn about DELL’s journey and how SAP BusinessObjects became the foundation to enable sales operational reporting to achieve Dell’s operating mission”

Mike Lampa of Dell presented the session.

The company worked on optimizing its Enterprise Business Intelligence architecture:

But then realized that they had to balance the needs of operational users. They had acquired several companies, and users needed to do deep analysis in individual applications. When they tried to use the shared server farm, the lights started to dim – not optimized for high-volume operational analytics. So they also provided some optimized operational reporting for specific needs:

Going forward, the focus is about business process engineering, and using statistical/predictive modeling to determine what external influences affect Dell’s efficiency, and then deliver that back to the end-user, and build collaboration between the analytics and operational groups, to make information more actionable:

Integrating SAP BusinessObjects Solutions into Your SAP Software Landscape

Learn how Monsanto took BI to a new strategic level by bringing SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence solutions into its existing SAP software landscape. See the strategic vision and understand the road map for bringing self-service BI solutions from SAP into your organization. Learn key best practices for your own successful BI implementation.

Doris Dixon, Enterprise Service Business Reporting Lead, Monsanto Co.  and Thierry Audas, Senior Product Specialist for SAP

We Invested a lot of money in Business Intelligence and BW, but we didn’t leverage it as well as we should have done. We had folks all over the globe creating their own data warehouses, and looking at new tools. Because we didn’t have a central strategy, each region had their own strategy. BW wasn’t as user-friendly as we wanted to be, sadly. We needed a way to centralize and rationalized. We started with some research into best practice. We decided we needed more simplicity and a centralized, scaleable, fault-tolerant, single tool set with a broad spectrum of functionality.

In particular, we needed something that would connect to BW, but also provide autonomy, since the different teams needed to be able to access their own data.

We went for a three phase strategy to get to where we wanted to be. We knew we wanted to get to “competitive advantage”, but the infrastructure wasn’t there.

My key advice is this: you need to know where you’re going – but don’t do a big bang. Things change so much, need to be able to change along the way. BW accelerator was the one thing that turned our audience – doubled our users, queries, everything. If you can get your report in seconds rather than hours, it makes a big difference.

We cleaned up the environment, and eliminated something like a thousand reports — and not one person asked about it. Instead, we gave people access to the data so that they could create their own reports – but we do provide certified reports, about things that are important to the business. And we weren’t planning on this, but we ended up reduced the amount we spent on BI, by simplifying and getting rid of five or six other tools, and saving the maintenance costs.

In the future, there are some things we need to do, for example we need to continue with data acceleration in order to stay ahead of demand. We’re also going to implement SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. We hadn’t planned on doing it quite this early, but because of the explosion of self service, we have to do it before the second phase.

In general, BI is about agility. But too much agility leads to problems to do with accuracy and stability. But we needed to move away from a too-rigorous BW installation and introduce more agility, self-service.

HANA is a real part of where we want to go in the future

You can’t really “do data quality” – it’s too big a problem. We’re focusing on the first-tier, essential data, and the quality of that, and then figuring out the second-tier – customer retention and planning. Historically, people have been using spreadsheet. They know what “the answer should be” based on their experience, but these are fast-moving markets, and the answers are really no longer that obvious.

Looking forward, we see real value in simulations and predictive analytics, and because of the explosion of data, and the explosion of the need, we need to think about how we’re going to handle technologies like in-memory in our landscape.

Innovations in Business Intelligence

This session will explore the potential of SAP In-Memory Appliance software (SAP HANA), combined with the next generation of SAP BusinessObjects analytic applications, Aurora, and mobile capabilities through Sybase, to improve self-service for the end user and deliver increased productivity and efficiency within the data warehousing industry.

Hettie Tabor, Global Lead, SAP Business User, Accenture

I’ve been working with SAP and business intelligence for the last 25 years or so, and it’s an industry I’m passionate about. There’s been a lot of consolidation in the last few years, a rapidly changing landscape. Here’s what we’re hearing from our customers.

And here are the key trends we see: in-memory, mobile, pivot-like access, predictive

Mobility is provided through Sybase, and the BusinessObjects mobile Web Intelligence later this year, and predictive modeling through the Predictive Workbench product.

I mentioned that in-memory is really revolutionary. It started with products like BW accelerator – we have customers where introducing it lead to 100x-plus performance, although it wasn’t always cheap. In the future, the industry is moving to full in-memory data warehouses. This is happening a lot faster than most people think. There’s SAP HANA, but we’ll also see offers this year from Microsoft, IBM, etc. We’re all used to the old methods, and we will need new data modeling skills, such as columnar data models, the need to keep the data flowing, etc.

Hettie gave a great overview of where SAP has been, and where it is going in terms of infrastructure and tools – and ended with a nice “hi to the web audience”

SAP Runs SAP: Enterprise Mobility

SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann discusses how SAP has mobilized its business. Learn how SAP formulated its internal mobility strategy, how we executed this strategy, what challenges we faced, and what benefits we’ve delivered to our lines of business.

Between sessions, I switched over to catch Oliver Bussman (@sapcio on twitter) discussing how SAP provides mobile data to SAP employees, with a demonstration of the new SAP Exploration Views prototype running on an iPad 2.

Transform Forecasting and Budgeting with SAP BusinessObjects EPM Solutions

Enduring economic uncertainty has made agile planning and forecasting a top priority. Hear about the Coca-Cola Company’s vision for transforming budgeting, and learn how the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application, part of SAP BusinessObjects enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, helps improve organizational agility.

David Williams of SAP kicked off the session.

He talked about agile planning with SAP BusinessObjects EPM solutions. What are the goals and challenges?

What do people find hard today? An Aberdeen study

What does “dynamically account for change?” mean – it means the ability to do rapid reforecasts, being able to do variance reports, doing scenario planning. And it means managers being accountable for their plans.

A best practices report by Aberdeen came up with several common characteristics for best-in-class performance:

This week sees the launch of the new version of SAP BusinessObjects EPM 10

David then game some customer examples and invited Jerome Amand, Finance Transformation Manager for  The Coca-Cola Co. up on stage.

He talked about his journey, working for finance for the last two years, supported by Deloitte and SAP. The company is undergoing a financial transformation with three core global initiatives.

in this session, I’m going to focus on the second one: integrated performance management.

EPM has big enabler, but the real effort has been in the process redesign, to a more efficient and effective process. We’ve spent a lot of time on change management.

We’re focused on three things – integrated framework, integrated financial statements, and integrated processes. We spent a lot of time looking holistically at what was planning and forecasting actually delivering and trying to achieve: “How are we going to measure success, how are we going to set targets”, etc. Once we’d decided that, we were more easily able to set in place planning. This was the most critical aspect of the project. One thing that isn’t on the slides, was that we wanted to use a full driver-based model, and did a lot of regression analysis, setting up of assumptions, etc.

Here’s the high-level timeline:

One key message: the tool was not the important thing. It took 18 months of work to start even thinking about choosing a tool, and this helped us be successful. We decided to use BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation, and set up a proof of concept. Building the solution only took from April to July – five months, pretty impressive. Of course, we had quite a lot of things already firmed up from a design and methodology point of view. We then invested a lot of time in testing – nine months, almost twice as look as the initial development. We brought people into our offices from around the world.

Lessons learned. in previous projects, we have sometimes focused too much on technology. This time, it was about change management.

This is an example of the transparency we brought into the process testing.

Leveraging Sybase Solutions for Better Business Performance

The acquisition of Sybase opens up a host of new solutions that can add substantial value in managing your IT landscapes and meeting business challenges faced by your organization in today’s competitive and volatile market. This session will introduce you to the Sybase analytics product line and outline the key value of each new solution.

Dan Lahl, Director of Marketing, SAP

Dan’s slides pretty much spoke for themselves, but spiced up with extra anecdotes about how organizations around the world use Sybase IQ for business value.

The World that Lenovo Built with In-Memory Analytics

In-memory analytics at Lenovo is revolutionizing the way the company does business. Running purely on CRM data, in-memory analytics is enabling Lenovo to adjust its business tactics immediately, especially in the high-volume markets in which Lenovo competes. And all of this on its very own Lenovo hardware device. This story shows you how.

Moderator: Lenovo is an early adopter of HANA – why?

Lenovo: The challenge: we’re in a real-time business, but we didn’t have the real-time data to support it. Today we have to move the data to another system in order to analyze it. Today, it takes a couple of hours to get data to the decision makers. With HANA, the data will be replicated instantly and available to the decision maker in seconds, even though it’s huge amounts of data.

How did you know HANA specifically was the right solution for you?

Lenovo: We’ve been looking for the right solution for a while, . We think in-memory is the right solution for us. HANA is the only solution we’ve found in the market.

SAP: SAP and Lenovo works hand in hand, sitting side by side, working on the project. Helps co-innovation. At the Lenovo booth, you can see a demo of the solution in action.

Using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, on data that has been instantly replicated to HANA.

Then the same data available on a mobile device (Android)

Moderator: “with HANA, you need real-time employees!”

How do you convince people to invest in the machines necessary to run HANA?

SAP: It simplifies the IT landscape, big return on investment compared to other solutions.

Where are you going in the future?

Lenovo: We’re looking at lots of different areas – anywhere where we can get an advantage through real-time information.

SAP: Very surprised about the performance of HANA – 400x faster for some of the queries.

Customer View: Solving Critical Business Needs with Analytic Applications

Hear visionary customers discuss the emerging role of industry and line-of-business analytic applications within their enterprise business analytics strategy. They will share their real-world perspectives and experiences on selection criteria, architectural considerations, acceleration of time to value for business users, and bottom-line benefits.

Jim Newkirk of Colgate, Don Head of Maple Leaf Foods, Greg Gough of Dean Foods

Jeff Veis of SAP

Colgate Palmolive

Spend performance management (SPM). Savings opportunities. Had built a systems using BI technology that we needed to replace, and it wasn’t very intuitive. We wanted to empower users to create their own reports, and reduce the dependency on IT – cumbersome, takes a long time to create reports that might not be what the user expects. We have over 200 procurement users live. Have lots of internal and external data.

Almost complete with our rollout globally.

Maple leaf foods. Based in Toronto. 24,000 employees.

Our cost structure was terrible. We wanted to eliminate the different ERP systems we had grown over the years

We have a very aggressive program in place – we don’t allow any customization. This has allowed more than 24 go lives in less than two years. We’re going to go for a single version of SAP for the company.

Very vanilla and inflexible. Now, going to take a pause and see how we can use tools – we’re in ramp up with BI 4.0 – to take our data to the next level.

Dean Foods

Two very different businesses. Path towards being data driven. Going to be a multi-year process. Started with a roadmap. Get agreement on KPIs, sequence to roll them out, and a technical platform. Did that in 2009. In 2010, we rolled out supply chain KPIs. Linked those metrics to the management operating structure. Did a lot of root cause analysis. Holy grail: what’s our conversion cost per gallon. Have been able to keep this flat to slightly down despite rising costs. We did this in a custom, brick-and-morter. We’re going to move to something that looks a bit more like prefab in the future.

After this, want to move to more of a packaged application. In discussions around the net profit analytics module from SAP BusinessObjects.

Donald: For us, we see a huge fit for the way we’re deploying SAP. Our success to date has been about targeting a 70% good enough level, and then we’ll optimize. So the analytic apps fit well – gets us going fast, and then we can optimize after. I’d rather take some off the shelf and do it fast, and then spend time getting more out of it. It’s bang on, it’s all about speed from our perspective.

Steve: I’d echo Donald. We’ve have 12 years of developing analytic reports with these types of applications, we can plug it in, as we’ve been used to with SAP, without having to start with a blank sheet of paper. My expectation is that we’ll be able to cover 80% or 90% of the need, and get a running start.

Don: It’s about acceleration, and also standardization. We’ve grown through M&A. If we have a standard way, that will help us.

Jeff: Challenges, as you evolve from custom build to hybrid?

Jim: the data is the data. The data has to be right. That challenge remains the same. Change management is very different, compared to developing something with/for the users.

Don: I ask one of the functional heads: “Explain to me why you’re different from the rest of the industry!” It’s about the governance.

Greg: Our concern is about conformity. Can we get our data to fit the predefined model.

Greg: so many of our custom-built applications are built around exceptions. I hope that this will set up the rule, and streamline the whole development process.

Don: to deploy a purpose-built application, I’ll be looking to use a much more agile type methodology compared to, say, waterfall.

Jim: when you start with a blank sheet of paper, it can quickly spiral out to a much larger scope. You inevitably get into “I know I told you what I wanted, but…” – this way, you set the scope from the beginning, and you’re just managing the exceptions.

Jeff Veis. Where do you think you’ll spend more and less time compared to before? How will the partnership with the business be different?

Jim: real-life example, with spend performance management. We were able to spend more time on the process, on the analytics they needed. At the end of the day, the end users can take control of their own analytics. Saves time for everybody.

Don: end up spending more time training and customer-facing. Education, training and consulting vs implementing.

Greg: it changes the dialog. “how do I operationalize this, and how quickly?”

Jim: When we implemented SPM, it forced them to think of other ways they could look at the data, to get more insight into things that they weren’t necessarily already thinking about. My expectation is that we’re going to take analytics to the next level, run the business better, and make us more efficient.

Don: This will never end. It’s a journey. Right now, looking at trade promotion effectiveness. Get it in, get them comfortable with it, then generate more need, more dialog, what-if scenarios, and get more out of it. Hana and mobility come in to our roadmap. Give you the analytics you need today, but plant a seed for the future.

Greg: In moving from pure reporting to analyzing and what-if. If I look at a product that is not making money – would could I do? If I delivered less often? Start predicting what would happen – that’s what gets me excited.

SAP In-Memory Computing: Helping Customers Overcome Big Data Problems

SAP customers discuss experiences leveraging SAP In-Memory Computing technology to solve challenges stemming from managing large volumes of data. Three customers discuss why they choose SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator software; SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software, accelerated version; and SAP In-Memory Appliance software (SAP HANA).

Daniel Kearnan, Director Marketing, SAP

Jeff Duly, Senior Enterprise Architect, Dow Corning Corp.

Kurt Hughes, General Mills

Ruben Panizza, Global IT Director, Colgate-Palmolive

Dan Kearnan moderates a panel, looking at customers of three different generations of in-memory technology: BW Accelerator, BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated, and SAP HANA.

Jeff: Dow Corning was one of the first BW customers. We’ve had it for quite a while. Took a look at the usage. 25% of the company using it on a regular basis. But on a daily basis, down to 5% of the organization. But decisions are made every day, so why is that? Employees are different. I didn’t like the BEx analyzer, didn’t like having to use Excel. As we looked at Explorer, we believed that it would . Our BI engine was running fine, but our car didn’t have any kerb appeal. It’s a bit like having a sports car – it can’t go everywhere, and sometimes I going to go off to places that look a bit muddy – at that point you can get out of Explorer and get into another tool. But if you’re not exploring, you’re never going to get that far.

Our queries went from 43 seconds down to less than 3 seconds. Some people who had been coming in at 5am to run their reports, now just come in at their regular time. We plan to roll out #SAP Explorer to everybody… since every user is a casual user of somebody’s data

Ruben: We have some pain points in our ERP reporting, and this is where we see the opportunity for the first version of HANA

Dan Kearnan: Best practices, advice to somebody moving to BW accelerator?

Kurt – I think we took us too long to get there. Hard dollar cost, soft dollar savings, but once we got it, there was a real impact. Wish we had accelerated it somehow. Definitely worth the investment, we feel.

Jeff  – first, talk a hardware partner to come in a do a test on your data. Took a day to set up and a day to put data in. Kept it for three weeks, were able to look at our own data. Second, we don’t see the point of using BW accelerator without using Explorer – we’re going to make everything available.

If you’re interested in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, you’ll find below the official key messages of today’s launch, which give a great summary of what’s important about the latest release, for customers with and without SAP ERP systems.

Big data in real-time

• Real-time analytics powered by In-memory computing
  • In-Memory Analytics (SAP HANA) – In-memory hardware appliance that is lightning fast on massively high-volumes of data. Enables business in the moment and to perform analysis on all data rather than a subset thereof.
  • IQ – Columnar analytics server designed to increase BI performance by 10x to 1000. Based on proven Sybase technology with more than 1900 customers worldwide.
• Event driven BI
  • Event Insight – Helps organizations continuously discover and understand complex business events by aggregating and distributing event details in real-time.
• 5X faster on SAP BW
  • BI Consumer Services (BICS) – Now all the BI clients will use the incredibly optimized and fast BICS connectivity to SAP BW.

Insight with confidence across business and social data

• Sentiment analysis enabling text data integration
  • Sentiment / Text analysis – Analyzes unstructured data sources like documents, email, blogs and twitter and summarizes the information into key sentiment that is surfaced throughout the content.
• Data governance and quality visibility
  • Information Steward – Empowers business and IT users with a single environment to discover, assess, define, monitor and improve the quality of their enterprise data assets.
• Easiest multi-source authoring
  • Multi-source universes – Whether it’s one source or hundreds, Universes can now include multiple sources making report authoring tremendously easier.

Instant, powerful BI in your hands

• Instant mobile BI
  • Mobility – Allow analytics to be delivered in a targeted fashion to any mobile device with stunning visual interactivity and smart search across the content. This is further enhanced by allowing all corporate data to be visible on the mobile device instantly through In-Memory analytics.
• Easy user experience for everyone
  • Simple and easy UI – BI 4.0 provides unparalleled usability for end-users, analysts and Administrators. New interactive visualizations, and menus are used consistently across the BI Suite (i.e., Web Intelligence, Explorer, Crystal, and Dashboards) ad-hoc analysis and report design are common across the BI suite with common use of the query panel and we can now support 1 to 1,000’s of data sources in a single universe.
• Embedded in your operations
  • Embedded analytics – Instantly deliver SAP BusinessObjects-based best-practice business content directly embedded in the SAP Business Suite to provide users with insights like never before.

Best fit, right size, right now

• The most deployment options
  • Amazon cloud – Deploy your BI solution using Amazon Web Service to roll solutions to anyone when needed without deploying costly hardware to do so.
  • Embedded analytics – Instantly deliver SAP BusinessObjects-based best-practice business content directly embedded in the SAP Business Suite to provide users with insights like never before. (Note, duplicated point, also under instant, powerful BI )
  • Analytic Applications – These flexible applications deliver insight and address a diverse set of industry-specific issues across disciplines including finance, sales, risk management, operations, patient care, strategic planning, customer retention, hydrocarbon operations, and military planning.
• The best cross-platform integration
  • BI and EIM Integration – With the industries only common platform for Information management and BI SAP uniquely enables users visibility from “data to dashboard” allowing both administrators and end-users to understand the full information lifecycle and evaluate the confidence level based on the source, timeliness and quality of the data they are seeing in BI.
  • Best integration and performance on SAP systems – BI 4.0 leverages native BW connectivity for unparalleled integration and speed on SAP BW. Also leverages SAP Solution manager, change /transport layer, and more.
• BI and EIM tuned to perfection
  • Optimized BI and EIM platform – Optimized for 64 bit, virtualization. New system monitoring, diagnostics and alerting to optimize deployments.
  • Best of breed EIM platform – Delivers operational ETL capabilities for data migrations and data quality both with and independent from BI projects.

Want more details? There are lots of more detailed resources available:

• BI/EIM 4.0 launch page on SAP Community Network
• What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.O
• Around 200 interactive BI 4.0 eLearning tutorials
• Check out the SAP BusinessObjects Community site
• BusinessObjects Forums, including new “Business Decision Making with BI” non-technical forum

Exploration views is exactly what its name suggests: instead of having just a single view of the data in Explorer as you have in the current product, you can set up several different views at the same time, with user-defined alerts, and the ability to define filters that act on multiple views at the same time.

Here’s a quick walk through of some of the basic functionality. For more information (and a longer, more complete explanation of the features), you should consult the Exploration Views prototype User and Admin Guide (part of the download from the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center)

You first log on to the system, then either open an existing Exploration View or create a new one:

Each view has several “sheets’”, and each sheet can contain several charts or tables of data. To create a new chart, I choose the measures, dimensions, and type of representation.

It immediately shows me the requested data set:

To create an additional chart, I simple repeat the process, dragging the chart icon from the toolbox to the right-hand window (above, below, left, or right of the existing chart), and choosing a different measure, dimension, and representation:

At any time, I can use the “Explore” link in the top right to change any aspect of a chart (data choice, formatting, etc.)

In addition to charts, I can define a table view of data, or a “filter control”. I can define a new filter control simply by dragging it to where I would like it to appear in the workspace and choosing a dimension and type:

I can also add personalized alerts by choosing one of the charts, and adding the alert details:

As I change the values chosen in the “Year” filter at the top, all the charts and alerts change to reflect this:

I can also use the top bar to access and change the global set of filters at any time, which change all the charts on the sheet by default (I can “lock” individual views so they don’t change, if necessary).

Once you have the view, you can hide the toolbox, and freely change the sizes of each pane of the window.

There are some lovely touches in the prototype – for example, it’s very easy to select a value (such as “Alberto Ascari”, above), and then simply drag it to create a new window focused on that single value (which can then be easily modified to change to a different view, include a different dimension, etc.):

Using these basic building blocks, business people can quickly provide a customized view of the data, then share it with others using the “share” button in the top right, which allows you to create a “bookmark” URL for your view and send it to others (subject to security settings).

Exploration Views is currently a prototype. SAP is taking a 2.0 approach to innovation, by providing early prototypes that can be downloaded and installed by anybody who is interested. Anybody who has feedback on the ideas and interfaces is encouraged to contact the Innovation Center team. Once the feedback has been gathered, SAP will then work out how best to include these features in future versions of the product.

I view the new Exploration Views prototype as element of the next leap forward in analytics, and it is different from existing approaches in two important ways:

1. Exploration Views is designed from the ground up to take advantage of the in-memory processing power of Explorer. As in-memory infrastructures become more widespread, there is less need to separate the “design” and “consumption” aspects of the data access. Because each change to the data view is more or less instantaneous, we can give more power to the users to customize and control their own view of the data, without having a separate, complex “design” interface.
2. Exploration Views are focused on personal customization, and should be considered a complement to existing approaches that provide a shared “dashboard” view of data.

I’ll explore these (important) themes in more detail in a future post.