BI Insights | 5x Technology

How SAP Business Objects Training Will Improve Dashboard Reporting and Design

Written by Jeffrey Yefsky | 8/23/17 8:56 PM

To get clarity on your business, you need data and tools to decipher that data. Competitive companies require these tools to gain an edge in the marketplace, grow revenue, profitability and improve productivity. Only expert tools and solutions like SAP BusinessObjects and Business Intelligence can help companies take this leap.

Additionally, BusinessObjects training can help a company gain ultimate insight into internal data, contribute to making strategic decisions, improve financial performance, empower individual staff to make important choices and reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

The primary purpose of the tool is to help individual employees to access critical corporate data and then use it to discover new insights into the company's operations. It allows new formats, navigation, and analysis of the data, which can then rapidly be shared throughout the firm.

Before those goals are met, staff must first train on the system by learning about reporting, management tools, dashboards, visualization, queries, searching and aggregating the analysis. They can then implement these techniques to help their organizations grow and thrive.

Benefits of SAP BusinessObjects Training

SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence software is an industry leading tool that has proven its value over time. Users have used it to manage enterprise reporting requirements. That includes everything from random query and analysis to in-depth data visualization on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

The tool can search both relational or multi-dimensional databases which means almost no data set will be too complicated to manage. Everything is on a single business intelligence platform to make the most effective business decisions.

Here are a few key factors:

Information Clarity and Insight

Perhaps the key to all of the business intelligence tools is the ability to gain more insight into the status of your company based on new or existing data sets. Learning how to understand and take advantage of these relational and multi-dimensional databases can have huge implications for business. The more employees are trained on these tools; the more people will be able to make independent, individual decisions to make the most of their business.

Imagine a retail company trying to determine what products to sell on which days in different geographic regions with diverse communities and demographic profiles. For example, the easy conclusion knows to move umbrellas to the front of the store when it rains. But perhaps an individual store manager or regional district manager can dive deeper into the data. They may notice that black pants also sell well on days when it rains in stores that are similar to theirs demographically with a similar climate. Of course, this could just be a random correlation, but it could also be a key to increasing revenue.

Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Corporate executives are constantly concerned with the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of any new solution. Tools that require incredible amounts of maintenance, storage capacity, infrastructure and support staff may cancel out the benefits that they claim to provide. In contrast, SAP BusinessObjects is a solution that reduces the total BI expenses into one single tool. It integrates across different platforms and geographies in a low-cost, scalable way. It has extremely high uptime and an award winning service oriented architecture (SOA) that will please both regular staff members and experienced IT staff.

Effectively Streamline Business Intelligence Operations

Of course, implementing a Business Intelligence system that makes operations more cluttered and inefficient would defeat the purpose. In fact, SAP BusinessObjects BI has shown to do the opposite. Ths system improves the user request process so that IT has to spend less time and energy focusing on new requests or data compatibility. Users can make much more advanced queries while freeing up the IT staff to focus on projects that better utilize their expertise. This streamlines the BI process for the company.

Maintain Long Term Operational Sustainability and Financial Growth

The real purpose of using BI products is to create long-term value for the company that enhances sustainability and financial performance. BusinessObjects is specially designed to help executives identify KPIs that enable businesses to meet those goals. Businesses can strive for long-term excellence by implementing the key insights found in the tool.

Reporting

There are several key curricula on reporting that new staff implementing BusinessObjects should be aware of. In particular, there are courses on Report Design and Advanced Report Design. These are three days classes taught by advanced lecturers to help staff get up and running. They include topics such as Understanding BusinessObjects, Creating Dimension Objects, Creating Measure Objects, Resolving Loops, Resolving SQL Traps, Creating Derived Tables and Managing Universes.

With all of these topics, a staff person can go from having basic programming knowledge (including SQL), into a knowledgeable BusinessObjectspractioner in no time. The core ability to organize and report experience can be covered in a matter of days.

Design

Additionally, staff can enroll in a curriculum on design for BusinessObjects. This second order level of knowledge creates experts that can initiate a business intelligence related question, then subsequently create the conditions to create the answer. Courses include Universe Design and Advanced Universe, Information Design Tool and Advanced Information Design Tool.

Topics in these three day courses include Creating the Data Foundation, Creating the Business Layer, Applying Restrictions, Using Values and Parameters, Using Navigation Paths and Managing Universes. The staff that attends these courses can help companies derive solutions to difficult problems using this comprehensive BI tool.

Conclusion

SAP BusinessObjects has proven to be an essential tool of the new age of business intelligence. Companies that do not adopt tactics to understand and exploit their internal data will inevitably fall behind. Training courses that provide staff with the ability to analyze, report and design innovative business intelligence solutions result in empowered staff, productivity increases and ultimately a much more powerful business.

If you're facing digital transformation and data integration challenges, download this SAP BusinessObjects resource today.