SAP Business Warehouse Reviews

Our primary use case includes logging the reports on OpenTech manager. We wanted to slice and dice across the PO - whose POs, number of POs which are created, number of POs whose payment is pending, whose payment was done or the turnaround time from PO to payment cycle, etc... For all this we had to extract the data from SAP and build the cubes with the measurement and dimensions, and to slice and dice. For this, we used these cubes that provided VW. We connected it to our dashboard which is Tableau and used the dashboards for the management.

The features that I have found most valuable are its capabilities to connect to Excel and to slice and dice. But the reporting is not that interactive because of its reliance to Tableau. We have something called Excel Analysis, which we connect to the cube and do the slice and dice - so that is the best part.

The other best part, and why we moved from Microsoft to SAP BW, are the ready-made connectors where we can extract the data from, which was something that was a challenge for us to pull in SQL Microsoft Warehouse. So the delta features and Excel features are some of its advantages, which we've found. And with SAP it was easier for us to directly get the data immediately, rather than purchasing licenses and all. So although we have an additional connector for SQL extraction for the data from SAP to SQL, that connector doesn't provide us the feature of extracting delta data.

All the reports were already depending on SAP data. But anything in which we needed to combine data to their applications we were trying to pull with Microsoft Data Warehouse to those different users.

In terms of what can be improved, they already improved the features of SAP HANA, and since we are not migrated now, we are using SAP VPC and consolidation where they provide those VW's for HANA. Once we go there, we will be able to understand that differentiation point and what could be improved or could have been provided more. But as of right now we're in a very early stage so I don't see anything else that is required.

In the next release, I would like to see BW integrate the visualization with the reports which are in SAP HANA. If that gets into BW in the next release we would be happy rather than having to purchase different business objects, like for the front end, or Tableau, or other SAP products. Instead, of buying that, BW could provide us better visualization. Then we don't have to put data into other tools and build things out there.

My organization has been using SAP Business Warehouse for a year.

I have no issues with the stability as of right now. Everything boils down to the servers and the configuration. So apart from fees, no issues related to BW.

My team members who are handling SAP have been in touch with support. I would evaluate support at four out of five. We are happy with it.

The setup was straightforward.

The only thing which we needed help with, and are still struggling with, is getting to know the AW server. That really helps because we always have to be dependent on a vendor or a consultant company to help with our strategy.

If SAP could help with that, it would really help us with the hardware requirements. Because we are not on the cloud, we still struggle with the SAP and always have to be dependent on a partner to give us all the information. There are existing details about the basic configuration and requirements based on the data sizing - that calculation is available and it really helps.

For BW we use a proper software integrator to help with their part and implementing it for us. But I think their experience is very limited. But since we wanted a partner who knows Microsoft Warehouse and BI, we have connected as partners. As far as the sizing and installation, everything was done by our team within our organization. The vendor is only responsible for creating the cubes and the reports but we implement the infrastructure installation.

SAP Business Warehouse is really good. I had already used it in four prior organizations and this will be my fifth organization using it. It is pretty good as far as SAP Data is concerned. So right now, our licenses are only limited to SAP Data because it is for external data, then we need to purchase additional licenses, which we have now gone ahead with.

So that's where one of the challenges is. They have ready-made connectors for the SAP, data transfers, extractions, cube production, and all the applications. We build the data and the reports. They are trying to deliver the data as compared to extracting the data from SAP to SQL Tables and then building the same logic and producing the report. We prefer that when it comes to SAP Data.

My advice would be if you have a data block and if you really want a big solution on the reporting side of it with slicing and dicing, definitely go ahead with BW when it comes to SAP related data.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate SAP Business Warehouse an eight. 

As I said, a few things which are missing include the visualization of reports. That's where your costs and licensing become heavy. When it comes to this database compared to Microsoft Warehouse, it's an expensive solution.

Because if I already have an SQL Server, my licensing fees and the server licensing cost for installation all go drastically down.

They also give us a free reporting tool. For the data view, we need to have user-licensing and every cost gets increased, as I said. For example, we have a license for SAP Data, and for external data, we also have to purchase one more license, and again for a visualization tool. So that way, licensing costs keep increasing with BW.

I am the Group IT Manager in our company and responsible for SAP implementation. We are currently evaluating what is the best solution for us given the landscape. We are running SAP 3 release plus BW, version 7.5 and we are evaluating the adaption of BW/4HANA considering attached applications like BPC. Our focus is to migrate to the SAP solution and we're evaluating the product in terms of data warehousing.

Our primary use case is for collecting data coming from SAP implementation and fully running the solution for other companies. We have about 20 users in our company who are generally IT admins. Our difficulties relate to the way users configure these kinds of solutions. The traditional approach is to extract the data from the ERP and make extra files.

The business warehouse solutions are not SAP solutions, which means that data is already connected to the IP network connectors making the configuration of the BW system quite simple. It's more simple than other solutions available on the market. I think it's the best quality of BW.

On the existing release, I'm unsure about improvements. For sure the functionality is available in the new release. I don't know what competitors' systems of data warehousing provide. I would for sure like to see a different end solution in order to read the data and attract internal users. I'd like to see the flexibility to create reports. Having the back-end data set with the right information is the best qualification for this solution.

I'm considering migrating to the BW/4HANA solution because the language in terms of settings is very similar to the one I am currently using. We are starting to configure the BW old version solution so I don't need to invest in data analysis in order to understand the difference or to connect to a different data warehouse with this system.

Additional features that could be included would be for SAP to provide different layers of solutions. One for data warehousing, another for different end solutions on the data warehouse. 

We've been using the solution since 2014 when we began with a data set, and have expanded it over the last five years. 

Stability is okay but there are some bugs which is normal for an enterprise solution. Again, our issue now is that we didn't go ahead with the upgrade. We are now running a newer version.

We have had some issues with scalability but it's related to the fact that we didn't upgrade the solution. If you update the solution every time SAP suggests it, you have the possibility to introduce all the new features. We didn't do that and we have some issues with the connection. 

Technical support is strong and helpful.

We are a manufacturing company, also running a factory and we implemented it in the ERP. I think BW is one of the best products at the moment. There are a lot of competitors that are adding features. Specialty Suites or the FETA Gartner and Logic requirement. It's important to check all options. A company needs to take into account what business or industry they have. Most are probably considering different solutions and for banks or insurance companies, it's possible that Microsoft solutions are better. 

I would rate this product an eight out of 10. 

All the data that we enter we can put into SAP in any module. We have an HR module, a finance module, an insurance module, and an investment module. All this data is being fed into the SAP CT production system, which is how we primarily use it. Also, we have some custom reports that are developed by our development team and these reports are used by all departments.

The fact that it can integrate with Microsoft Excel is the solution's most valuable feature.

The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own.

It would be helpful if we could interface with BW itself, instead of piggybacking on Excel. If it could have its own interface where you can build dashboards and reports and where high-level power users can start building things, that would be helpful. Right now, only developers can build reports on BW. They need to begin to open it up to power users. The solution needs a broad-based interface.

More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful.

The company has been using Business Warehouse since 2010.

Business Warehouse is stable but my concerns surround the complexity of the solution. When some things go wrong, it becomes extremely unreliable. If everything is running smoothly and there are no problems then it's a very stable system.

Currently, the scalability isn't possible right now right now with its current architecture. That's why it's important that SAP has come up with its HANA solution and SAP Analytics on Cloud, where it's much easier to scale as necessary.

We're a company of 600 people and about 50% of the company uses the solution. The solution is used daily for reporting for the organization.

We contacted technical support in the past when we needed their help on a few issues.  It's a complicated system. Whenever our internal IT team was stuck on developing any reports we contacted SAP nearly every day.

Largely, we didn't have problems with technical support, but over the last two years, we were getting replies mentioning that we would be phased out of support and would need a new license. It's been a bit of a bumpy relationship in the last little while.

We didn't use a different third party solution previously. However, we did have some internal custom solutions that we used, not fully, but in some departments.

The set-up of the solution was very complicated. I believe SAP has a new offering on HANA that may be easier, but we have still not adopted that due to cost concerns.

Deployment took about one and a half years.

Consultants had to come in with their content and explain everything and helped by calculating the BW content. The BW developers had to understand all the build documents. That took a lot of time because SAP's architecture is very complicated for general users to understand.

It took about 35 to 40 people to handle the implementation across the organization. There were about five people from each department because Business Warehouse is something that's set-up for all departments and all the systems that all departments use.

We have three to four people from our internal IT department that handle maintenance. We also have a support structure with an external third-party vendor who assists with our maintenance support. Roughly, in total, we have six to ten people handling ongoing maintenance.

The company used consultants and integrators from the vendors to assist with the implementation of the solution. 

We had a team for coordinating with the implementation partner, they coordinated with the vendor and also the business departments to understand what was required.

The implementation was completely done by the implementation partner proposed by the vendor.

The pricing is fairly high for the solution.

We were looking for an enterprise-wide solution. In terms of an enterprise-wide ERP solution, SAP was the only available at that time in 2010. It was able to provide us with all the modules in one place, which was what we required.

We don't use any Data Quality or Identity Manager. Our company doesn't deal with customers directly as it is not open to the public. Our clients are mainly insurance companies. We will normally limit the amounts of data, so we don't have those components but we do have Business Warehouse where we pull in reports of incidents.

Recently, we were upgrading versions. We were on SAP BW version 4.7, and we have moved on to BW 6.0. Right now, we access Business Warehouse through an Excel add-on called BEx Analyzer which is also a product of SAP.

At this time, I wouldn't recommend the solution as the product support will be phased out by SAP. If others are interested in an SAP solution I would go for SAP Analytics Cloud.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the business warehouse.

The warehouse is the solution's most valuable feature.

The visualization should be improved, as well as the dashboards and advanced analytics. It needs to have a better interface.

The solution could offer better connectivity with other databases.

I've been using the solution for 15 years.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is very scalable. It's one of the advantages of the tool. Right now we have about 500 users on the solution.

Technical support has been relatively helpful in the past.

We previously used Oracle BI. We switched to SAP because the solution is more comfortable to work with.

The initial setup was complex.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're an SAP partner.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for reporting.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs.

The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive.

I know this is already available, but what I would have wanted to see in the next release is the Time-Dependent Hierarchies.

I would like to have the interface improved and made to be more intuitive.

This solution is stable and it's very good.

This solution is scalable and very good.

Currently, we have five hundred users.

I am in maintenance, so I have not contacted technical support.

I can't say how many times we have had to contact support. 

Business Warehouse is stable. Normally we don't have any issues with it.

Previously we did not use any other solution. We are just using SAP Business Warehouse.

The initial setup was done by a professional company, it was outsourced.

We have two people to maintain this solution.

My advice regarding this solution would be to invest in professional training for future users.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It's fast for building solutions, but once you have built them it's not that easy to get the answers you want. Many of our users are downloading files to Excel and tools like it and creating their reports there. I don't like it, so we're thinking about a reporting solution that works better than SAP BW.

The key element in this solution is its rapid response. If you have a question about prices, buyers, customers, providers, or services, you need the answer in a minute or two. That's the key benefit for us that a solution like BW gives us.

We are currently in a basic stage of analytics and the first goal we have is to make sure the numbers are correct. BW has some features that help you to build factors and ETL in such a way that it's easy to get to correct responses. That's the number one condition that you have to have in an analytic solution.

One of our requirements is the ability to easily get answers regarding trends and exceptions. In BW, it is not that easy to get such information. I expect better trend and exception detection, better pattern detection. When I think about the next generation of analytics solutions, I think of a powerful data mining solution with the data that we have now.

It works well enough. We don't have a lot of stability problems. That is not the problem for us. Reporting is the problem for us.

Scalability is good for us. We don't have scalability problems because, with the line of servers that we are using now, we can scale in a factor of 100 and still have no problems with it.

We haven't used technical support in about two years so I don't think I can give a fair answer to this question.

We were using another world-class ERP solution. When we switched to the SAP solution, we were thinking we had to have rapid solution-building tools for SAP. It was very easy to think the SAP solutions, such as business content solutions, could be used to build analytic solutions for us. We were using Cognos at that time, but we stop using it because it was hard to build solutions with SAP as the data source.

We take into account the prestige and longterm relations with the vendor during our selection process.

The initial setup was good enough. I wouldn't say straightforward, because we took about a month to set up the server, processes, tools, and the software. For me, one month does not signify a straightforward process. Maybe it's because we are using iSeries from IBM and it's not a very popular architecture. So in part, it was our fault too because we are using that line of servers.

We had Oracle and SAP on our short list, because we had a lot to build in a short time. We figured that with those vendors we would find enough human capital and knowledge to solve the problems that we might have. Of the two providers that we had on our shortlist, we got the best answers from SAP. Oracle wasn't good enough for us.

I rate this solution a seven out of 10. You can start quickly but, when you have to get a little more detailed, when you have to change something, when you have to solve problems, it's not that easy. It's easy to start but evolving is not that easy.

To make it a 10 out of 10, SAP would have to have better tools for reporting. There is a lot of focus on boards and graphics and those kinds of features, but they are tools for newcomers. You don't have machine-learning tools that you can easily connect to your data. You have to download the data to a CSV or a text file, and then you have to analyze it with something like R or SPSS.

My advice is that SAP will give you a fast start, but in two to four years you will have to go fishing for another solution for sophisticated users who will not get enough from the SAP tool.

Getting high volume data is most valuable for us. It is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-sap system.

For example, only sales and distribution has approximately 150-200 mio transactional data for each year. As a result, we mention that we have approximately 400-500 mio transactional data for all our ERP system. It’s not possible to analyze that data without using Business Warehouse. Besides all those pluses, SAP BW provides us with real time analyzes for non-system.

The big minuses are its not being user friendly. The user interface and it’s reporting tool called BEx have room for improvement. SAP Global always promotes Business Objects for visualizing.

We have been using SAP BW for four years and also we had been using an old version called SAP BW 7.0 between 2008 and 2011.

Sometimes we do have stability issues, but if we evaluate the entire system, it provides more stability than its not being stable. Big stability issues are about getting dumps without any reasons and integration with Business Objects.

We have had absolutely no scalability issues. If a developer or product owner considers their data volume, BW never encounter any scalability problems.

I rate technical support so highly because of its being an old product.

We have never used any other business warehouse program except using an older version.

Setup is sometimes complex, sometimes not. For example, LIS structures are initially highly complex; you have to drop setup tables and re-fill it again. But other structures do not use setup tables and are more straightforward.

Every product owner has to be careful to evaluate the number of users. First of all, pricing is really high when compared with other business warehouse applications. Product owners also have to consider consultancy. Consultancy is more expensive than ERP consultancy.

Actually, we did not evaluate any other product because we were using SAP ERP.

Absolutely avoid non-standard structures. SAP BW is a highly established application that brings us many standard functions.

Note: My opinion here is NOT specifically focused on SAP BW. It is based on overall experience I have on SAP software. As we know BW user always involve in different SAP modules for data extraction, transformation and load process for analytical reports. From this I have learned so much on how SAP software is being used in my organization and hopping that it's worth sharing with thers.

Some of the most valuable features are:

SAP ECC Finance – AP module

• Payroll and Procurement
• Human Capital – Organizational Management
• PA and Benefits
• BW/BO – SAP Webi

Finance and Human Capital modules are the core departments that support the overall organization and we run SAP ECC system in this area.

HR module – Starting from the process of hiring the employees and their benefits, all of this happens within the SAP system.

FI module – All the budgeting, fund management and payroll functions take place in the SAP Finance module.

SRM – The procurement process such as to create a purchase order for schools and departments, also takes place in this system.

It has helped our financial transactions and the HR-related functions to communicate across our organization. All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members.

We are an educational organization. Our core value is to concentrate on the children’s education and their well-being. Sometimes, we find ourselves moving away from the core value. The reason for this could be that the business process is not simple or clear enough for the administrator to do their daily tasks. It could also be that the software is complicated or not capable/scalable to do certain tasks/new functions or maybe there are no right skill sets/human capital in the right place. All these are key factors that play a big role to achieve the overall goal of our organization.

With the SAP ECC upgrade, we are hoping that it will streamline the existing business process and provide opportunity for new functions, increase the user performance and satisfaction and lower the overall costs which can be used for the children’s education.

Our system is old. After the system upgrade, it will open opportunities to explore so many new functions in the FI and HCM modules that could be very valuable to our organization.

The upgrade will allow improvement in the below-mentioned three areas and there are many more that we have yet to discover.

• Business Functionality
  • Implementing the SRM’s procurement function for the public sector such as the supplier registration, strategic sourcing, contract management, plant maintenance and MRP. The key features that we would like to achieve are a simple interface for the user and supplier, support on both the supplier and buyer-end solutions, future enhancement capabilities and cost saving benefits.
  • Travel Management - To support travel-related functions and lower the travel costs.
  • Human Capital - To allow integration between SuccessFactors and SAP ECC. It needs to allow reporting capabilities using BI/BOBJ modules.

• Technical support
  • It will maximize the system performance and allow continuous support and enhancement of new functions. Hence, there will be reductions in the overall support cost.
  • Take advantage of updated Solution Manager functionalities.

• UX - demand (Screen Personas and SAP Fiori)
  • The current SAP ECC version does not support SAP Screen Personas or SAP Fiori.
  • With the help of these UX capabilities, we would like to simplify the user experience, increase user performance and reduce the manual process/errors.

I have been using this product since 2005.

We have a handful of experts to administrate the overall working of the SAP system; it is stable.

In order to address known issues in SAP System, SAP release SAP notes that has issue details and instruction to fix the issue or workaround solutions. If it is relevant to our SAP system, we review the SAP Notes and follow the instruction to correct the issue.

It could be changes in code or apply recommended patches and should fix the issue but if it goes wrong all these activities could deteriorate or defect the system and it could lead to catastrophic system failure.

As of today, we do not have any system failure and we received very minimum user complaints regarding errors. Taking this evaluation, I would say our SAP system has no stability issues.

We are running an older version. It is doing what we need it to do but there is some limitation due to its version.

SAP has been providing support that we need based on the severity of issue that we face. Sometime, it is not the way we need but it is same across any other software vendor.

Since I have joined this organization, they have always been using the SAP solution.

Licensing is expensive but you will get the value for it.

SAP offers so many solutions based on the type and size of the company.
I would advise to always use best practices, establish strong project governance, define the scope of the project, maintain a project plan, etc.