The digital transition is doing much to improve the culture of data, particularly in an industrial context such as Italy’s, traditionally disinclined to innovation that does not have an immediate and tangible productive feedback. Many companies today have successfully taken the first step, activating procedures and systems for data collection. Where critical issues are still felt, however, is in the next step, viz.  Turning data into value. This means in most cases processing them, analyzing them and making them readable through visualization tools.
This is possible in SAP with Business Intelligence and the many tools to implement it that the platform provides.

SAP, business intelligence and data visualization

First of all, let’s recall very quickly that Business Intelligence consists of a set of tools, methods, architectures and processes aimed at analyzing data but especially at enabling Use them to make decisions that are workable, informed , and most importantly data driven. Among the tools available to facilitate this type of decision making, no doubt data visualization and representation tools play a key role.
A recent post on the  SAP’s official blog, for example, perfectly explains why data visualization is also essential in the HR field. And, beyond the purely technical aspects of the post, one only has to look at any of the images to realize how the visualized data is immediately clearer, more understandable and immediate in transferring key information.

For this reason, even in SAP, Business Intelligence Dashboards play an increasingly fundamental role, which has led over the years to the creation of different solutions depending on the needs and size of the business.

SAP’s Business Intelligence Solutions

In this context, for the sake of brevity and clarity, we will limit ourselves to analyzing Business Intelligence solutions from the end user’s point of view. In fact, wanting to extend the reasoning, any product in the SAP BTP layer can be considered functional for BI, from data collection to analytics. But here we will focus mainly on the aspects related to visualization opportunities, particularly with regard to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence, often also known informally as “Business Objects BI,” a centralized suite of analytics and reporting tools, as we will see in a moment.

  • SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence suite is a platform on premises that provides real-time access to data, ensuring the ability to operate data while limiting the input of the IT department through many features of self-service analytics. It allows you to create reports, instant reports, interactive dashboards and data visualizations. A  SAP solution for comprehensive and effective business intelligence and enterprise reporting.
  • SAP Lumira is a tool for representing data and creating dashboards for business intelligence. This tool is also part of BusinessObjects, which allows data to be processed quickly and efficiently to build functional visualizations for analysis. In addition, the processing can be shared as Microsoft Office documents within the organization.
  • SAP Crystal Solutions is a business intelligence suite for small and medium-sized businesses that offers a set of facilitated tools for reporting and data sharing. The main difference from the other two solutions is related to performance as the number of data increases.

The benefits of business intelligence and data visualization in SAP products

Let us begin with an implicit advantage: the range of products available. As we have seen, limiting ourselves to end-user visualization tools alone, the offering is already very broad. Within Business Objects, which SAP is increasingly promoting as a 360-degree business intelligence tool, we find tools useful for all kinds of analysis. But if we also broaden our observation to the Business Technology Platform we will find tools for the analysis, storage, management and decision-making use of data at every level, with the possibility of also building specific products or functionalities for certain market segments. Going more specific, here are a few more:

Intuitive (and universal) user interface

An intuitive control system is essential when it is necessary to produce graphical output that is clear, understandable and possibly even interesting in appearance. SAP’s BI tools offer a method of input that is clear, relatively simple, and most importantly  integrated or can be integrated with the company’s existing SAP ecosystem for even easier user onboarding.

Simple and controlled sharing

As we have mentioned, many tools allow output to be generated that is compatible with traditional Office package software, or through immediate and usable internal sharing tools, either directly in the platform or through textual or visual reports. If there are special security needs, these can be managed either through permissions on databases or through management tools.

Self-service access to data and visualization

Undoubtedly the work of analysts today is more important than ever, but it is not always possible, for reasons of expediency or simply time constraints, to entrust decisions to a comprehensive and structured analysis. SAP’s Business Intelligence solutions offer several tools that allow data visualization and analysis to be created in the form of  self-service for immediate and effective access to information.

Business intelligence for every need with SAP tools

As we have seen, SAP offers all kinds of solutions for Business Intelligence, either through its own products such as SAP BusinessObjects BI or through the parameterization opportunities offered by the Business Technology Platform. Being guided in choosing the most suitable solution by an experienced partner means having effective tools for identifying and planning new business activities.

Discover all the benefits of SAP Business Intelligence for your business. Our consultants are ready to work with you to study the solutions best suited to your needs.