Tool Selection

What’s in a Name? Your guide to SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Product Names.

Friday, January 28, 2011

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What’s in a Name? Your guide to SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Product Names.

Throughout the lifecycle of a popular product or organization, you can expect names to evolve and change. Since the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP, however, this has become a much bigger problem. SAP likes to use “descriptive names” for their products, so they pick names that generically describe what the product does. It seems like they went down that path for some products (i.e. Xcelsius) but reverted back to the original product names for others (i.e. Web Intelligence). What we’re left with is a collection of names that may or may not mean something to us.

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Top 5 Misconceptions About Business Objects Universes

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

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Top 5 Misconceptions About Business Objects Universes

I recently published the post 5 Reasons Why You Should Use an SAP BusinessObjects Universe to highlight some of the core benefits you’ll see when implementing the semantic layer for you organization.  The post was derived from speaking with organizations new to the Business Objects world about the benefits of leveraging the semantic layer. Throughout [...]

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5 Reasons Why You Should Use SAP BusinessObjects Universes

Monday, September 27, 2010

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5 Reasons Why You Should Use SAP BusinessObjects Universes

In meeting with organizations who are new to SAP BusinessObjects or who are legacy Crystal Reports users, we are often asked the question “Why should I use a Business Objects Universe?”.  To organizations who have worked with universes for a period of time, the advantages and value proposition are clear.  But for organizations who are [...]

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Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

Monday, April 5, 2010

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Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work (part 1): Our People Aren’t Smart Enough

I recently posted an article titled “Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work In Some Organizations”. In that article, I listed some of the major concerns that I hear from potential clients when the subject of ad hoc reporting is broached. As promised, I will be addressing each of those concerns and showing how they can be overcome. Today, we begin with the first one: “Our people aren’t smart enough to create their own reports”

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Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work in Some Organizations

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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Five Reasons Why Ad Hoc Reporting Won’t Work in Some Organizations

Over the past ten years, I’ve been a part of literally hundreds of SAP BusinessObjects client demos. I’m always struck, however, when we reach the ad hoc portion of the demo and begin talking about WebIntelligence. While the end-users in the room get excited about having the ability to create their own reports and analysis without waiting on the IT department, we usually get a lot of push-back from the managers and executives in the room.

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