{"id":12136,"date":"2010-07-17T20:35:07","date_gmt":"2010-07-17T19:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=1899"},"modified":"2021-08-17T08:58:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T06:58:36","slug":"what-i-learned-about-bi-at-sap-world-tour-uk-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/what-i-learned-about-bi-at-sap-world-tour-uk-2010.html","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned about BI at SAP World Tour UK 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The SAP World Tour touched down at the ICC in Birmingham<\/a> in the UK on July 8th, part of a program covering 80+ cities across the globe<\/a>. Business intelligence was featured heavily throughout the day: during the keynotes, on the show floor, in several innovation sessions<\/a>, and a dedicated afternoon BI track<\/a>. This post gives an overview of the day, discusses the content of sessions in the BI track, and includes links to all the presentation materials used.<\/p>\n

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Tim Noble, the UK Managing Director, kicked the day off with a review of the current trends affecting technology and the economy as a whole, and reiterating SAP\u2019s high-level strategic themes of On-Premise, On-Demand, On-Device, and Orchestration. If you\u2019re interested in hearing more about this, check out the keynote videos from the SAPPHIRE NOW web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Sanjay Poonen, SAP\u2019s head of business user and line of business solutions, came up to present on the theme of customer-centric innovation, illustrated with customers who had used information to change the way they did business.<\/p>\n

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The Guest Speaker for the event was Jonathan Neale, the Managing Director of the McLaren racing team (sponsored by SAP, among others), who gave a wonderful presentation explaining how his organization worked to increase their performance. He drew many parallels between the challenges of Formula 1 racing and the rest of the business world.<\/p>\n

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For example, the team relies heavily on analytics to increase the driver performance, including real-time telemetry and benchmarking of the two drivers on the team, to ensure the best possible numbers at each point of the course:<\/p>\n

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Video and GPS is used to work out the best line to take through each bend:<\/p>\n

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And, just like in the business world, experience and intuition is important, and must be added into the analysis \u2013 in this case, the drivers\u2019 hand-written notes about how they felt about the car\u2019s handling at different points around the course:<\/p>\n

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After lunch, the afternoon breakout sessions started, including a dedicated BI track, devoted to the BusinessObjects BI and EIM set of products.<\/p>\n

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I kicked off the afternoon with a \u201cmini-keynote\u201d presentation on the Business Intelligence Future: Simple, Seamless, Social, and Strategic<\/p>\n

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Next up was a well-received end-to-end data-to-dashboard \u201cdemo fest\u201d by Ian Henry and Barry Dodds (which I unfortunately missed because of journalist meetings \u2013 I hope to be able to follow up with their content at a later date).<\/p>\n

Then Richard Neale talked about The Powers of Pervasion<\/a>: the benefits of pervasive BI, and how to achieve it.<\/p>\n

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Interesting statistics included: the benefits of widespread BI adoption, including improving the time required to gather information and to make decisions:<\/p>\n

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Organisations with pervasive BI saw an average 24% increase in operating profit:<\/p>\n

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The importance of self-service delivery of information as part of pervasive BI deployments:<\/p>\n

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The best ways to improve and encourage BI usage:<\/p>\n

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Recommended resources included several analyst white papers and the books \u201cCompeting on Analytics\u201d and \u201cAnalytics at Work\u201d by Thomas Davenport et al.<\/p>\n

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Richard also outlined SAP\u2019s four-step process for developing a solid BI strategy, with a series of interactive \u201cplaybooks\u201d that help you guide through the process:<\/p>\n

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Next came Dean Farrow, talking about the BI innovations in the XI 3.1 service packs 1 and 2<\/a>, which contain more new features than you may have realized.<\/p>\n

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Highlights in SP2 include:<\/p>\n

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Highlights in SP3 include:<\/p>\n

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Carl Streatfield followed up with an in-depth explanation of the BusinessObjects onDemand offerings<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"image\" Carl explained the many benefits of BI OnDemand<\/a>:<\/p>\n