Business Intelligence PortalSAP Integrated Solution

Insights and Practical ExampleBy Ahmed Rami Elsherif

Introduction

An Intranet Portal is an internal corporate web site that integrates people, processes, and information within the enterprise, using internet based technology to facilitate communication and access to information.

A Business Intelligence Portal is a portal that reads the enterprise raw data from its different transactional databases and systems, a groups, presents and transforms it into information and knowledge useful for the decision making process.

Portal Challenges and Examples•Provide Access to data by all stakeholder in company’s value chain, as in the general portal design.

•Integrate data from diverse sources, as in the Balance Sheet Consolidation example.

•Present information in the format appropriate for each stakeholders, as in the Executive Presentations and Margin Analysis examples.

•Guarantee Performance, Availability, Serviceability, and Security, as in the infrastructure design.

Executive Information Portal

Restricted Information managed by user access profile

Public Information available for all Intranet users e.g. chart of

accounts, organgrams, contacts, etc…

Information by company, segment, or

consolidated.

Balance sheet Consolidation

Scripts to Read accounting datafrom different systems

Scripts to generate Consolidated

Financial Statements.

Varies

Flat Table

UsersStructure

Rules

SAP – RFC BAPI

In House Syst.- SQL Query

Other systems –Web Services

Costume aggregation of information by company

or segmentCostume structuring of

financial statements (local rules, USGAAP, Fiscal Entities, etc..)

Costume elimination rules for intercompany

accounts.Drill down analysis

Executive Presentations

Accounting

BSIS

SKAT

Controlling

COVPCOSPCOSS

Sales

VBRKVBRPKONVLIPS

Materials

EKKOEKPOMAKT

Script toRead SAP andWrite Flat Table

Scripts for executive presentations

SAP

Other Modules

Varies

Flat Table

UsersIndicators

Menus

Presentations by company,segment or consolidated.

Graphics combining, executed, budgeted and

projected values.

Costume hyperlinks to other information

Costume Key Performance

Indicators

One click, Two click navigation

Margin Analysis

BSEG

GL Line Items

BSIS

GL Index

VBRK

Invoice Header

KONV

Invoice Condition

s

VBRP

Invoice Lines

LIPS

Delivery Items

MARGIN

MonthYearConceptAccountProfit CenterProductVolumeValue USValue BS

Script toRead SAP Write Flat Table

Scripts to present margin

Multi Unit Analysis (Margin,Sales,Taxes,Costs)

Graphical and numerical

presentation with drill downs Analysis

.

Infrastructure Design

WEB NavigatorSAP R/3

Certification Server

SSL

SSL

WEB Server

PORTAL SCRIPTS & DB

Portal Server

Oracle

Other Applications

Third Party SystemsTCP/IP

XML

WS

Other Protocols

Portal Advantages

User friendly, costume design screens without extraneous fields.

Minimal training, support and maintenance time for end users.

Knowledge of how to navigate in different enterprise systems is not required.

Data is created/read transparently and securely in real-time in/out of enterprise systems.

Uniform procedures and presentation of information a cross the enterprise.

Conclusion

A proposed formula to estimate the value of information in the enterprise is:

The Value of Information ~ Users2 X Business Area

BI Portals are very effective, direct means of increasing both variables of that formula reason for which companies have to pay close attention to their analysis, design, development and implementation.