Convincing Reasons to Move to Web Intelligence SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK SDN sdn.sap.com | BPX bpx.sap.com | BOC - boc.sap.

com 2009 SAP AG 35 Free-hand SQLA workaround is to build a universe with a derived table or to modify the SQL that is generated by the Querypanel. SAP Business Objects has plans to implement free-hand SQL in the future.Visual Basic Add-inIn Desktop Intelligence this is used for different purposes, for instance for scripting a schedule or for specialcalculations. Most of the functionality can be replaced by the standard scheduling in XI or is availablethrough extension points in XI 3.1 SP2.TemplatesSeveral workarounds exist: Open a report with the required formatting and use Save as to save the report under a new name. Modify the file defaultconfig.xml to change the default appearance of all reports. Create a default document. Open the document and change the data source in the Query Properties tabto any domain of objects.Conditional HideDesktop Intelligence contains an option in the table properties to hide a block, based on a condition. This isnot available in Web Intelligence.To build this functionality in Web Intelligence: Build a variable containing the filter condition. Add a block filter or section filter based on the new variable. In specific situations you also need to modify the option Show when empty, which is turned on by default. More details and examples about workarounds can be found in the presentation Drop your Objections toWeb Intelligence, by Henri Theuwissen at the GBN conference in Dallas 2009. (Related Content section at the end of this document)

Convincing Reasons to Move to Web Intelligence SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK SDN sdn.sap.com | BPX bpx.sap.com | BOC - boc.sap.com 2009 SAP AG 36 Migration and Conversion Before starting the migration and conversion from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence companies mustconsider two questions: Do we still need all existing reports? Should we rebuild some reports instead of converting them?An immediate payback for the migration and conversion cost is the reduced maintenance cost due to: Fewer documents in the new environment Documents in the new environment with the same functionality or extended functionality as before butwith less complexity. Scope The migration and conversion from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence is simplified by the ReportConversion Tool. With every new release or new service pack, additional Desktop Intelligence features areimplemented in Web Intelligence, closing the gap. The Report Conversion Tool is also enhanced with everynew release or service pack to convert these features, resulting in a higher successful conversion ratio. Therate of successfully converted documents depends on the features that are used in a document. It is obviousthat when a document contains features that are not yet available in Web Intelligence, the document cannotbe converted. Feedback from several customers shows

that in some companies, up to 90% of the existingreports are converted without any additional interaction. Most common converting problems are in the area of layout. The Report Conversion Tool assigns a status to each report (Fully C onverted, PartiallyConverted, Not Converted) and builds a log with information why a report was n ot completely converted.The decision to migrate documents from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence offers the ideal opportunityto undertake a full review of the existing documents. Most companies create an inventory of all existingdocuments and check whether the documents are still required.Almost every company has documents that can be categorized as: Sleeping documents: documents that exist but have not been refreshed for a long time. Who works withoutdated information? Semi-active documents: documents that are refreshed through a batch process, but nobody queriesthese documents. Redundant documents: documents containing information that is also provided in other documents. Active documents: documents that are refreshed and/or interacted with; documents that are modified orrepurposed.The migration and conversion effort can be shortened significantly by cleaning the set of corporatedocuments, and by migrating and converting only the active documents. A large international bank analyzed the documents in the repository before starting the migration andconversion process and decided that only 60% of the production documents should be converted. A company in the health care sector had to convert 80% of their documents. A company in the finance and insurance sector decided that the users were responsible for the migrationand conversion of documents in their Inbox and personal folders. Less than 50% of the documents wereconverted. Training The training cost to teach Web Intelligence to existing Desktop Intelligence is very limited: DesktopIntelligence users already know 80 % of the tasks and concepts.

Convincing Reasons to Move to Web Intelligence SAP COMMUNITY NETWORK SDN sdn.sap.com | BPX bpx.sap.com | BOC - boc.sap.com 2009 SAP AG 37 Most, if not all, successful conversion projects I have knowledge of, have training as part of their conversionplan. The training scope varies, and can range from a simple set of PowerPoint slides, downloadable from acorporate portal, to recorded or live training session. What they all have in common is early and on-goingcommunication with the users who are affected by the change.For more information on conversion training, please refer to the companion paper, titled Managing theConversion from Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence . Convert or Rebuild People will always have requests that cannot be answered in an easy way. They manage to build the desiredresult using workarounds or complex treatment. To illustrate this, consider the following example. Request: Show the products that add up to 75 % of the total revenue. Within Desktop Intelligence such a request is not easy: Ranking provides the possibility to show the top n products or the top frequency percentages but the above request has no clue of the number of products inthe result. To build the solution in Desktop Intelligence, several steps are required: Define / calculate the overall total revenue. Calculate 75% of the total revenue (that is the reference point for the result). Sort the table on descending revenue. Calculate the running sum of revenue. Add a variable with value 1 or 0, indicating whether the running sum of revenue is below or above the75% value. Due to the way ranking is implemented in Desktop Intelligence, ranking must be created on a dimension

and not on a measure. The impact of this is that when defining a rank on the dimension Product, based on the measure defined before (with the values 0 or 1), the result is not correct. To build a correct result, add a new dimension variable, derived from the measure Revenue. Define ranking on this new dimension variable to show only the top 1. Hide the new dimension variable.Within Web Intelligence, the Ranking window contains an option to build this request, no additional variables,or complex calculations are required. So the migration of a Desktop Intelligence report could be done as is(with the complex processing) or the Web Intelligence document can be re-created, using the new features.It will have a positive impact on the performance of the report refresh, but more important, the maintenanceof the document is simplified. Ranking Cumulative Percentage