SAP to Revolutionize Business Intelligence With New Solution that Delivers Insight at the Speed of Thought
SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer to Provide an Intuitive Way for Business Users to Gain Instant Visibility Across the Enterprise
Employees Will Have the Power to Understand Their Business and Make the Right Decisions to Succeed in Today’s Economic Challenges
Traditionally, too few people have had intuitive and immediate access to the information required to make sound business decisions.
SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) has announced the launch of SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer, groundbreaking new software that will solve this dilemma. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer brings together search and navigation capabilities from the SAP® BusinessObjects™ portfolio with SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse Accelerator (SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator) software, enabling customers to navigate mountains of business data at the speed of thought and giving them a clear view across their organizations. Another milestone in the company’s successful acquisition and integration of Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will deliver the most significant and largest combination of SAP and Business Objects technology to date.
In this volatile economy, it is critical for business users to have the insight they need to answer “on-the-fly” questions, gain a more immediate understanding of their business and have instant access to relevant information. Using an intuitive search box as its interface, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is designed to allow people to enter key words in order to find the data they need to answer critical business questions—no special training or special skills required. Once business users retrieve the relevant information, they will be able to navigate through that data and drill down into specific areas for further investigation. As a result, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will empower any employee with the clarity and insight to act more quickly and make smarter, more effective business decisions.
“We have been beta testing SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and are amazed at how intuitive the software is and how quickly it returns results,” said Katrina Coyle, global information manager, Molson Coors. “Employees have already learned things about their data and our business that they didn’t know previously. With visualizations, like the interactive ‘heat’ maps, results leap off the page. One of our business users was able to identify a brand not sold in other regions using only one click, which is the blink of an eye compared to the former lengthy process. Everyone who has worked with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer has appreciated that it is fast and user-friendly, with results that can be easily shared and put to use immediately. We see great potential for this tool to provide all of our employees with better visibility into our business.”
Bringing Business Intelligence to Everyone
Obstacles to accessing accurate and timely information can have a lasting impact on the performance and bottom line of an organization. Studies1 have shown that the majority of business users make decisions based on “gut feel” and do not have access to the data they need to do their jobs, resulting in lost productivity, less agility in the marketplace and flawed decision-making. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will solve this problem by making data available to employees who do not use traditional business intelligence (BI) tools, providing them with intuitive software that allows them to explore large amounts of data quickly.
The new software is designed to combine intuitive information search and exploration capabilities from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio with the high performance and scalability of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator software. Together, the software will empower business users to navigate massive amounts of data in seconds, by leveraging indexed data from SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator. Similar to the ease and speed of Internet search, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will allow employees to use familiar business language to find relevant information. Business users will also be able to use visualization features to select and generate charts or reports that best represents the information, which can then be shared with colleagues.
Giving business users an intuitive feel of such vast amounts of data lets them discover answers to questions they may not have been able to articulate. For example, a sales executive may get a report indicating that quarterly results were good, but he or she may want to determine areas for improvement. Now sales executives will be able to investigate growth across the regions, profitability per product line or account executives’ performance. They can quickly turn a hunch into a data-driven assessment of their business and strategies moving forward.
Helping IT Organizations to Improve Efficiency
SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will also support improved efficiency for IT organizations. Previously, business users would submit requests for corporate data, such as customized reports, to the IT department. The new software will provide self-service access to information, freeing up IT time and resources to work on more strategic projects. SAP will work with its partners including IBM, HP, Dell and Fujitsu Technology Solutions to help make SAP BusinessObjects Explorer faster and easier way to deploy by combining and optimizing hardware and software solutions.
SAP partners Intel and Adobe have contributed enabling technology to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. Intel has co-engineered the in-memory processing capabilities of SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator to optimize it with the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series. Adobe has provided its Adobe® Flash® Platform to enable enterprise developers to create compelling Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for end users. To learn more about how SAP partners are supporting SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, please visit the accompanying quote sheet in the SAP Newsroom.
“No longer will critical business information be elusive—SAP BusinessObjects Explorer represents the next generation of BI in which any business user can find the data needed to contribute to his or her organization’s success,” said Marge Breya, executive vice president and general manager, Intelligence Platform Group and SAP NetWeaver Solution Management, SAP AG. “This new software provides a clear line of sight and enables customers to achieve transparency in every corner of their business. Moving forward, solutions like SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will help businesses develop a new generation of informed executives, who will drive companies globally toward a path of greater transparency, growth and competitiveness.”
