Business Intelligence Strategy

There are a number of common misperceptions around data warehouse implementations in general and SAP BW implementations in particular:

• Misperception 1: Data warehouse implementations are IT projects— Yes, of course, IT plays a major role in data warehouse implementations. The real value of a data warehouse, however, can only be achieved if its drivers are in line with the business strategy and priorities of the organization and if strong business sponsors support the data warehouse initiative. Many issues along the way of a data warehouse implementation are organizational, political, or business-process related, and many of these issues surface as a result of a data warehouse project. An IT-driven project tends to find technical solutions for what really needs to be solved on the business side.

• Misperception 2: “Quick-win” iterative implementations will lead to a successful data warehouse— Quick wins help to create trust in the capabilities of a new software package but are very dangerous because they fuel the expectation that all new requirements will be available with the same speed. They effectively just migrate the departmental, isolated, stovepipe solutions to a central system — without realizing the value of a truly coordinated solution: reduced redundancy, increased consistency, and lower long-term cost. While an EDW initiative can use quick wins for internal project marketing purposes, it really needs to pursue a platform approach that focuses on building an integrated solution.

• Misperception 3: Business Content is a proper solution to accommodate all BI demands— Business content does provide a tremendous value to any SAP BW implementation, especially on the data-extraction side but also with closed-loop analytic applications. However, it does not cover all requirements, does not currently support a true data warehouse approach, and is not integrated across all business processes or industries. For many business processes, there is no competitive advantage in just following standard solutions. Many projects will, therefore, choose to not just activate the Business Content and use it as it is.

• Misperception 4: Governance can be introduced later— It can be very tough and expensive to introduce a development framework after a number of applications have been developed and are used productively. These existing applications will have to be migrated to new standards, and team structures and responsibilities will have to be changed. A lot of resistance will be put up against this. Still, introducing a framework too late is better than not having one at all.

• Misperception 5: Operations is not so important— Even the most successful implementation survives just a short period of time if no one ensures that data is being loaded and made available on time with a defined quality, that query runtimes are within the range of reasonable expectations, and that maintenance activities do not adversely affect the system.