Find out why organizations managing large volumes of data across disparate systems are formulating enterprise data management (EDM) strategies. Understand the complete set of options now available to SAP customers for reporting (formatting, printing, Web-enablement, and customization), drill-down analytics, planning, consolidations, dashboards, and performance management.

• Learn which SAP capabilities will be phased out as you examine SAP's maintenance strategies for SAP BW 3.x and SAP NetWeaver® BI 7.x.
• See how existing data models, queries, and reports can be preserved when adopting new Business Objects capabilities.
• Get criteria to help you choose the right BI capabilities for your business users, as well as guidelines to prepare business analysts, power users, and end users.
• Understand what changes are in store for IT and BI teams and learn how best to prepare for shifting roles and responsibilities.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte

See demos of key tools — from both SAP and Business Objects. Compare functionality of the following tools, and get guidelines to pick the right tool (or combination of tools) for your specific requirements: BEx Analyzer, BEx Web Application Designer, Report Designer, Visual Composer, Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Voyager, Pioneer, and Xcelsius.

• Find out which tools and applications work in a complementary or interdependent fashion, and learn about the overlap between these tools.
• Gain awareness of what functionality will be available with a standard SAP NetWeaver BI license and what capabilities require additional licensing.
• Step through the product roadmap for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.x and SAP BW 3.x to learn where SAP will continue to support or add new functionality to these solutions and which capabilities will be replaced by Business Objects.
• Assess the prerequisites, skills, and learning curve required to leverage SAP and Business Objects solutions.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Bryan Katis, SAP

See demos and explore the capabilities and differences across SAP enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, including Business Planning and Simulation (BPS), Profit and cost management (PCM), SAP strategy management (SSM), Spend Analytics (SSA), and Supply chain performance management (SCPM). See the product roadmap for these and other solutions, such as SAP NetWeaver BI Integrated Planning and BPS, to find out which tools will continue to be supported by SAP and which will be phased out.

• Explore the options available for non-technical personnel to create their own data models and configure their own SAP-BPC applications without burdening the IT department.
• Learn how to leverage the SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator (BIA) in conjunction with SAP-BPC to achieve faster closes and consolidations.
• Examine two BI architecture options available for planning, consolidations, and strategy management — enterprise data warehouse versus data marts — and understand the benefits and tradeoffs of each.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Bryan Katis, SAP

Examine the formatting strengths and limitations of tools such as Business Explorer, Report Designer, Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Voyager, and Xcelsius. Walk through detailed examples of formatting that can be achieved with Crystal, such as using sub-reports, creating summary tables, working with groups, and designing formulas. View a step-by-step demo of how to use Crystal Reports to build a highly formatted report that includes groups, text objects, and sections.

• Delve into ways you can add interactivity to a Crystal Report — by deploying it via the Web or embedding Business Objects Xcelsius (dashboard) flash files, for example.
• Assess scenarios in which BEx might be a better tool than Crystal Reports (HINT: There’s a tradeoff between formatting and interactivity).
• Find out how you can use Crystal Reports to incorporate real-time data into Microsoft Office files, such as PowerPoint, Word, or Excel.
• Understand what casual users can do with Crystal Reports and when IT resources might be required for sophisticated tasks, like formula creation.
• Assess your options and requirements for distributing presentation-ready reports and analyses using print, SAP Information Broadcasting, Web, or SAP NetWeaver Portal.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Jenny Shah, Inforte

Understand the full range of Web capabilities that SAP and Business Objects make available for analyses, such as BEx Web Application Designer, BEx Web Analyzer, Web Intelligence, Voyager, and the soon-to-be-released Pioneer. Step through detailed demos of an analytic scenario being deployed using the different Web capabilities, and understand how and when to use each tool.

• Evaluate the benefits and tradeoffs of user-centric tools, such as Business Objects Polestar, for quickly accessing and analyzing information from multiple data sources via the Web.
• Uncover the basics of Universes — what they are and how they can be used to pull and display data from SAP or non-SAP data sources for ad hoc analysis.
• Learn how to utilize Web analysis tools in tandem with SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator (BIA) to provide users with quick, high-performing analytics on the fly.
• Find out how to deploy Web analyses to serve even your most resistant financial analysts and users who typically prefer Excel — and when, in fact, Excel is the better choice.
• Assess the Web capabilities that are designed for power users, know which require IT support, and find out why IT governance over all tools, no matter how user friendly, is essential.
• Obtain candid advice for how to get started and for optimizing your choice of Web analysis tool to work with the BI or BW content you’ve already created.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Bobby Coates, Business Objects, an SAP company

Examine the differences between dashboards and scorecards, find out why the lines between them have blurred, and learn the proper ways to leverage both. Determine whether a dashboard, cockpit, or scorecard is the right information delivery choice or whether they can oversimplify important information.

• Step through demos of how to use dashboard, cockpit, and scorecard tools, including Visual Composer and Xcelsius, for high-level metrics and drill-down analytics.
• Obtain criteria to help you decide whether your dashboard should be used strictly to deliver aggregated metrics and KPIs or as a launchpad to detailed analytics.
• Learn how to prioritize what information you must include in dashboards, scorecards, and cockpits.
• Explore multiple options for deploying dashboards, including blogs, wikis, mobile devices, widgets, or SAP NetWeaver Portal, and view a demo of how to deploy a dashboard using a BI widget.
• Determine how your dashboard design strategy may vary, depending on whether you deploy the dashboard for strategic, tactical, or operational purposes.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Bobby Coates, Business Objects, an SAP company

Understand the benefits and tradeoffs of the query tools from SAP and Business Objects. Learn how to choose the right query options to generate accurate reports every time. Review the capabilities and best ways to use BEx Query Designer to design and run queries against SAP NetWeaver BI 7.x or SAP BW 3.x.

• Learn how to use InfoCubes and BEx queries you’ve already designed and invested in with the new Business Objects front-end tools.
• Determine if and when it makes sense to rebuild any existing queries before using Business Objects.
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of how Business Objects Universes work and how they translate SAP data in BEx Queries and InfoCubes as well as non-SAP data.
• Explore your options for incorporating capabilities such as sophisticated counting or complex calculations typically impossible with BEx.
• Step through an example of how to run a Web Intelligence query against BI or third-party data that has been brought into a Universe.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Jenny Shah, Inforte

Identify critical tasks and skill sets that are a must for system architects, data modelers, and administrators including the decision to use global templates versus central instances, whether or not to use SAP NetWeaver BI content, and where to perform data integrations and transformation. Understand key architectural differences between a landscape that only includes SAP NetWeaver BI or SAP BW versus a landscape that includes a BI solution and Business Objects.

• Examine the minimum hardware requirements required to install different SAP NetWeaver BI and Business Objects applications.
• Delve into key requirements, benefits, and tradeoffs of designing your BI system using a data warehouse versus a data mart approach, and learn if and when your existing design might need to be modified.
• Step through the criteria required to make system design decisions that will ease the task of data integration down the road.
• Find out whether it is possible for SAP BW 3.x customers to add Business Objects tools to their landscape immediately or whether an upgrade to SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 is necessary.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte

Review SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP BW ETL capabilities for integrating data into reports. Determine to what extent you can connect external data sources to SAP NetWeaver BI or SAP BW without the need for custom ABAP™ programming. Gain insight into how key differences between ETL tools in SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and SAP BW 3.x will affect your data integration strategy.

• Understand how data federation differs from traditional ETL, and when you would choose one over the other.
• Find out how much data consolidation, cleansing, and quality control is possible within BI and when another tool, such as Business Objects Data Integrator or SAP NetWeaver MDM, is worth considering.
• Learn when, why, and how to leverage Data Integrator to incorporate ERP or other relational data into your reports and analyses.
• Consider whether Rapid Marts could ease external data integration challenges with out-of-the-box ETL capabilities.
• Evaluate why you should or could use Data Quality to discover, correct, and prevent data quality problems in your reports.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte

Acquire practical tips for clearly defining or restructuring analyst, user, and IT roles and responsibilities and for overcoming resistance to change as your reporting environment evolves. Identify new ways that IT teams can add value by decreasing day-to-day design and maintenance tasks and taking on the role of governance. Obtain advice for how to build an effective change management strategy that includes training, communication, enforcement, and performance measurement.

• Explore statistics you can derive from your SAP NetWeaver BI or SAP BW system that provide insight into user activity and let you know when users are running amok.
• Understand how and when a BI Competency Center can be useful and identify the skill sets and requirements for building one within your organization.
• Gain insight into ways to reach agreement on if and where to start expanding your reporting landscape to include Business Objects to minimize risk and maximize quick wins.
• Evaluate the pros and cons of a centralized versus decentralized reporting environment — one offers greater user autonomy while the other fosters a single version of the truth.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: David Dixon, Inforte

Understand how the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) suite of applications has evolved since SAP acquired OutlookSoft in 2007. Assess your options for running SAP BPC in conjunction with SAP NetWeaver BI or with Microsoft platform for business intelligence, analytics, and reporting, and weigh the pros and cons of each. Examine how SAP BPC 7.0 relies on SAP NetWeaver BI for reporting and analytics and how it differs from OutlookSoft, which relied on Microsoft components such as SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis Services, Data Transfer Services, and Reporting Services.

• Learn how to use SAP BPC Data Manager to load and transform different sources of data into your SAP BPC applications.
• Determine whether features such as context-sensitive action panes, business process flows, and financial statements could provide an easy way for non-technical end users to work with SAP BPC.
• Step through several demos of SAP BPC administration and reporting functionality.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Prakash Darji, Business Objects, an SAP company

Gain familiarity with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) reporting and planning functionality, which became available when SAP acquired OutlookSoft and Business Objects. Learn how to build report templates and input schedules. Understand how end users can use the current view to set filters for their own reports as well as utilize the BPC Action Pane for context-sensitive actions.

• Dive into detailed instructions on how end users and power users can set work states for different write back scenarios from SAP BPC to SAP NetWeaver BI InfoCubes.
• Become familiar with EvDRE, which allows you to quickly access data for reports as well as define the way users can expand or filter their dataset.
• Examine advanced SAP BPC functions, including EvGET, EvSND, and EvCOM, all of which can be used to read, write, and comment on data and come with distinct benefits and tradeoffs.
• Step through a demo of how to build a fully formatted financial report using the SAP BPC for Excel client.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Prakash Darji, Business Objects, an SAP company

Learn to leverage the reporting capabilities of SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) to support your organization’s overall closing process, consolidated financial reporting, month-end package preparation, and audit and compliance activities. See how SAP BPC can help you create validation and analysis reports to support the closing process, including inter-company reconciliation.

• Gain a better understanding of how best to generate month-end financial reports, including cash flow reports.
• Become familiar with some of the key design concepts, such as proper definition and utilization of flow and data source dimensions.
• Learn how to support inter-company reconciliation without the need to grant special access to users for reporting entities.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Kirk Anderson, SAP Canada

Many business intelligence implementations face a common challenge — the data necessary to provide an effective analysis of key organizational processes is often stored in disconnected information silos. Explore BusinessObjects capabilities for integrating data from a wide range of sources, and determine if and how this makes it possible for you to achieve a global view of enterprise information.

• Understand how the BusinessObjects Data Integrator accesses and merges data from sources that have previously been disconnected.
• Examine how BusinessObjects universes can be used to model and deploy analytics that can bring heterogeneous data sets together.
• View the options and approaches that exist in working with disparate data sources, and see how they fit into an overall enterprise information management strategy.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Ron Silberstein, SAP Labs

Explore how to integrate SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator with BusinessObjects Polestar to speed up query and reporting response times. Gain insight into the benefits you could receive, such as increased user adoption rates, improved productivity, and an extended reach of BI and analytics into your organization.

• Explore the technical underpinnings of the accelerator and hear about customer experiences deploying it.
• Find out how future integration of the accelerator with BusinessObjects Polestar will enable combined search capabilities with analytics in self-service BI based reports.
• Identify key features that have been recently added to the accelerator, such as high availability, HybridProvider, memory safeguarding, and OLAP functionality.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Ron Silberstein, SAP Labs

Learn how tools like Crystal Reports, BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, BusinessObjects Voyager, and Xcelsius can help you better distribute, report on, analyze, and visualize the data residing in your financial performance management applications. Determine whether BusinessObjects Data Integrator and BusinessObjects Data Quality Management can help you ensure that information presented in reports and dashboards is accurate, integrated, and timely.

• Gain insight into how these tools provide trusted data for business transaction processing, business intelligence, data warehousing, data migration, and master data management.
• Obtain advice on how to perform ad hoc analyses, create highly formatted reports, and generate interactive dashboards based on your performance management applications.
• Walk through a live demo of an end-to-end scenario showing how you can combine your BusinessObjects business intelligence tools with your financial performance management applications to optimize your organization’s financial performance.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Sean Johnson, Business Objects, an SAP company

Get a firsthand account of how Molson Canada and Molson-Coors were able to take advantage of SAP NetWeaver BI reporting tools like Web Application Designer and Yahoo! widgets with minimal implementation timelines. Examine the company’s strategy for quickly implementing the new front-end reporting tools, such as Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, and Business Objects Web Intelligence, now available through Business Objects, an SAP company.

• Learn how the company uses widgets and cockpits to give senior managers faster and more accurate and complete information to make critical business decisions.
• Learn how Molson Canada and Molson-Coors uses SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator for real-time data acquisition and rapid data retrieval for analytical users.
• Draw from the company’s experiences to understand why you should rely on patches and upgrades to keep your system up to date and how this can make it easier to begin taking advantage of newly available functionality.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Katrina Coyle, Molson Coors Brewing Company

See how Apotex, a large pharmaceutical company, uses SAP NetWeaver BI and BusinessObjects tools and applications to facilitate end-user reporting, dashboards, and guided analyses. Find out how Apotex created a financial dashboard using ETL, MultiProvider, and aggregate functionality in SAP NetWeaver BI, along with BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder, Xcelsius, LiveOffice, and BusinessObjects Web Intelligence to derive greater insight into the company’s business operations and financial performance metrics.

• Get a firsthand account of how and why Apotex uses both SAP and Business Objects in a complementary fashion for tasks like presenting information to stakeholders in an easy-to-consume format.
• Understand how you can learn from Apotex’s experience as you consider, plan, or implement your own joint SAP and Business Objects business intelligence strategy.
• Gain insight into how to avoid costly mistakes that can arise from lack of data governance, lack of data consistency between systems, and overloading data marts with too much transactional information.

Releases covered: SAP BW 3.5, SAP | NetWeaver 7.0, and SAP | NetWeaver 7.1, XI 3.0
Session presented by: Dr. John Mayer, Apotex