SAP BI/BW/BusinessObjects

concepts, technology, and

best practices

Narrow Your Search for SAP BW Front-ends

by Carsten Bange, Managing Director, BARC and Jörg Narr, Business Intelligence Analyst, BARC • March 1,
2003

In addition to the various SAP front-ends (e.g., BEx Analyzer, SEM, Enterprise Portal), third-party
options are available that offer different capabilities. Evaluating these third-party front-ends can be a
time-consuming task. To make that task easier, the authors of this article present summarized

findings of a detailed research report that compares 12 SAP-certified third-party front-ends and

shows how they match up against SAP's own front-end options.

SAP provides several front-ends for BW that extend its business intelligence (BI) capabilities. Within the
Business Explorer (BEx) suite are BEx Query Designer (for creating reports and conducting interactive
analysis), BEx Analyzer (an Excel add-on for ad-hoc reporting and OLAP-analysis), and the BEx Web
Application Designer (for developing Web-based analytical applications from standard reporting to ad-hoc
analysis). Additional offerings are SAP SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management), a compilation of analytical
applications (planning, performance management, and legal consolidation), and SAP Enterprise Portal.

However, this range of front-ends and applications does not meet all possible business analysis and
reporting needs. To fill this gap, SAP has certified the products of 15 third-party front-end vendors to
access SAP BW. For companies that want to extend BW's analytical capabilities, choosing which of these
applications will best suit their needs can be time-consuming.

Business Application Research Center (BARC), an independent research organization focused on the
business intelligence market, has tested 12 of the 15 SAP-certified third-party front-ends for BW. What
follows is a tool classification and short characterization of each vendor according to its strengths and
weaknesses. The goal of this article is to help you narrow down your search for a BW front-end. This
information is part of a comprehensive report from BARC titled “Front-Ends for SAP BW.” (See the sidebar
“About BARC and the BARC Report, Front Ends for SAP BW.”)

BARC thoroughly tested 12 of the 15 front-ends on SAP's official certification list (as of February 2003)
against an SAP BW 3.0B system in the BARC test laboratories. Table 1 lists the tested tools. Not tested
were msE/Point Out due to its focus on logistics, and Viador because the company stopped support for SAP
BW. During the testing, humanIT went bankrupt and was therefore excluded as well.
Vendor Products Web site
Actuate e.Reporting Suite www.actuate.com
arcplan Information Services inSight, dynaSight www.arcplan.com
Brio Intelligence www.brio.com
Business Objects BusinessObjects www.businessobjects.com
Cognos PowerPlay, Visualizer www.cognos.com
Comshare / Codec Decision, BWeb www.comshare.com
Crystal Decisions Crystal Reports www.crystaldecisions.com
Information Builders WebFOCUS www.informationbuilders.com
MIK MIK-ONE, MIK-XLReports www.mik.com
MIS onVision, ALEA www.mis-ag.com
SAS Enterprise Guide www.sas.com
Tonbeller Qubon www.tonbeller.com
Table 1 Certified front-ends for SAP BW evaluated in the BARC report

Classification of User Needs

All other vendors were tested against a detailed catalog of more than 50 criteria, grouped into these
categories:

• Vendor and general product types

• System architecture

• Administration and authorization

• Data presentation and analysis

• Web functionality

Categorizing SAP BW front-end offerings helps you match your needs to specific products. BARC uses a five
-category classification schema for these front-ends. Each category represents a varying degree of freedom
of analysis, ranging from display of predefined content in management information systems to undirected
analysis and employment of complex statistical methods in data mining. In general, higher flexibility of
analysis corresponds with a higher complexity in usage, as Figure 1 shows. Table 2 puts each SAP and
third-party tool in its appropriate category.
Figure 1 Bl front-end categories

If you need... You might look at...

SAP front-end Third-party front-end
arcplan inSight/dynaSight
Brio Intelligence
MIS application BEx Web Application
Cognos Visualizer
building Designer
Comshare Decision / Codec BWeb
MIS OnVision
Actuate e.Reporting Suite
Business Objects
BusinessObjects
Standard & BEx Web Application Brio Intelligence
formatted reporting Designer Crystal Reports
Information Builders WebFOCUS
MIS OnVision
Tonbeller Qubon
Business Objects BusinessQuery
Excel-based ad-hoc
Comshare Decision / Codec BWeb
reporting and OLAP BEx Analyzer
Cognos PowerPlay for Excel
analysis
MIK-XLReport
BEx Query Cognos PowerPlay
OLAP analysis Designer/BEx Web MIK-ONE
Application Designer SAS Enterprise Guide
No planning application certified (only
Planning & arcplan inSight/dynaSight allows for data
SEM BPS
simulation write-back using an interface to the SEM
BPS API)
BW's segmentation
No certification for mining data directly in
Data mining algorithm (for mySAP
SAP BW
CRM)
Table 2 Classification of SAP and third-party BW front-ends

Management information systems (MIS) deliver predefined content and functionality as analytical
applications. Top managers typically use MIS. They expect an easy-to-use application that attractively
presents key figures, and often custom-built interfaces suited to personal or corporate identity standards. A
special kind of development tool called an analytic development platform (ADP) gives organizations the
ability to deploy and adapt custom-built MIS analytic applications in a reasonable timeframe. ADPs offer all
necessary components and development support. With BW 3.x, SAP offers the BEx Web Application
Designer, which lets you build custom Web applications. Among the certified BW front-ends, only arcplan is
a long-time specialist ADP vendor. Brio, Cognos, Comshare, and MIS offer ADP functionality as well within
their product suites.

Reporting systems query data from different data sources, process this data to reports, and offer the
ability to distribute reports to a large user group inside or outside the organization. Some 70 to 80 percent
of BI application users are typically in this category. They require information pools where they can find
reports quickly and easily. The ability to format reports is often a major concern.

For standard reporting, a designer creates a reporting application that often uses specialized application
servers for report creation and distribution. For example, mobile clients are the newest media for report
display for Web portals, email, and PC applications. Ad-hoc reporting requirements demand flexible ways of
changing report contents.

For reporting, SAP offers the BEx Web Application Designer, a tool to create reports, analytical applications,
and dashboards for deployment on the Web and mobile devices. As a result of SAP's partnership with
Crystal Decisions, customers can also use ready-made reporting templates or build custom reports if they
need more sophisticated formatted reporting. As you can see in Table 2, most other certified vendors offer
reporting solutions as well. Some offer a server-based approach for mass reporting and others feature a
flexible and user-friendly interface for report design.

OLAP analysis tools are used for fast analyses of data in multi-dimensional and hierarchical structures. To
examine deviations and interesting facts in detail, specialists and trained employees carry out in-depth
analyses. This data exploration employs simple and advanced analytics to generate new information and
knowledge out of available data. Users expect:

• Easy and intuitive navigation in a multidimensional data model

• Point-and-click use of simple analysis methods such as ranking, sorting, trend and forecast
calculation, deviation analysis, and so on

• Automated or machine-supported advanced analytics such as economic and statistical methods

• Graphics to aggregate information and present results

The SAP BW tool suite has OLAP analysis capability in the form of the BEx Analyzer and Web applications.
Sophisticated support for OLAP analysis comes from Cognos, MIK, and SAS. Business Objects, Codec,
Cognos, and MIK provide analytical support using Microsoft Excel as a front-end, too.

Planning and simulation tools support an organization's financial and sales planning as well as
budgeting processes. Planning applications have their own special requirements. Specific forecasting and
simulation functions are needed to project historical data into predictions — i.e., plan values. Additionally,
the budgeting process has to be supported with workflow coordination. SAP offers such planning
functionality with the Business Planning and Simulation (SAP SEM-BPS) module in SEM. SAP offers
simulation with integration of the specialized tool PowerSim. Among the third-party vendors, only arcplan
has access to the SEM-BPS planning cache, which allows a write-back of data to BW.

Data mining uses methods from statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to find patterns in
databases. For example, a data-mining tool might use algorithms to detect segments in customer
databases, classify credit applications, or analyze buying behavior. Usually, only a few qualified specialists
within an organization use data-mining tools. SAP offers a segmentation algorithm in SAP BW (used mainly
in mySAP CRM), but extensive data-mining is done outside SAP BW with tools from IBM, SAS, or SPSS,
none of which have certified access to BW.

Third-Party Front-Ends, Pros and Cons

Using third-party front-ends for SAP BW has these advantages:

• User friendliness: Some users require an alternate look and feel to the BEx front-end options. This
can be an individually built MIS application or a tool that allows for easy report design or data
analysis.

• Standard tools: You might prefer to implement standard applications designed for reporting and
data analysis rather than build your own application or use Microsoft Excel.

• Advanced features: Sophisticated formatting, a graphical display, or analytics are the focus of
some third-party front-ends.

• Reuse of knowledge and licenses: A trained user base and support infrastructure for already
installed third-party tools can be leveraged. SAP BW can replace or complement existing data
warehouses while available front-end tools remain in use.

• Integration of additional data sources. The BEx Analyzer queries only data stored in SAP BW.
That data can come from a variety of data sources, but is consolidated in BW first. All other front-
ends have the ability to connect to many data sources directly, thus offering the ability to virtually
integrate data from multiple data warehouses, data marts, or other databases for reporting and
analysis.

However, the added functionality of third-party front-ends for SAP BW brings with it a few trade-offs. The
negatives include:

• Technical limitations: Interfaces have to be adapted, and some products do not support the full
functionality of SAP BW (for example, some might not support variables).

• Additional cost: New tools come with additional license, training, and support costs.

SAP-Certified Front-Ends at a Glance

arcplan specializes in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) development of sophisticated analytical
applications and can write back data to SAP BW using an interface to SEM BPS. SAP's BEx Web Application
Designer is catching up to arcplan's capabilities.

Actuate is, like Crystal Decisions and Information Builders, a reporting specialist for large, mass-reporting
applications on mainly relational data sources.

Brio is offering an integrated front-end suite with MIS application building, reporting and — as its weakest
area — analysis in one product.

Business Objects has easy-to-use reporting functionality, less-developed analysis capabilities, and the
tightest integration with the SAP Enterprise Portal.

Comshare Decision with the Codec BWeb interface to SAP BW integrates planning and consolidation
applications by Comshare, but offers no planning directly in SAP BW.

Cognos offers a broad range of BI products, of which only PowerPlay, a standard OLAP-analysis tool, and
Visualizer, for advanced visualizations and screen building, are certified. Many companies have experienced
Cognos users who might prefer to continue using this front-end with a BW.

Crystal Decisions is a close partner of SAP. SAP resells Crystal Reports and bundles 500 ready-made
reports with SAP BW 3.1C. Its strengths are in reporting, but not so much in analyzing data.

Information Builders specializes in Web-based standard and ad-hoc reporting. Due to high functionality,
an implementation can take extra effort.

MIK-ONE offers a unique way to graphically navigate and analyze data, but only Excel-based reporting.

MIS offers the multi-dimensional database ALEA for data mart building on top of SAP BW, and OnVision for
easy building of reporting applications.
SAS Enterprise Guide is a Windows tool with advanced statistical analytic features. The product range
makes SAS a clear competitor to mySAP Business Intelligence, so it is questionable how SAP BW sites use
both applications.

Tonbeller is a German vendor that offers standard reporting functionality and the widest platform support
with the clients on most available platforms, including mainframes.
About BARC and the BARC Report, "Front-ends for SAP BW"
The Business Application Research Center (BARC) provides unbiased support for
organizations in search of suitable IT solutions for their BI needs. BARC analysts have
been researching the BI market for more than 10 years, giving advice to more than
1,000 customers in finding the right tools and IT strategies for their business needs.
BARC acts, rates, and consults in an independent and unbiased manner — no software
vendor is connected to BARC in any way or has to pay fees to be tested in the reports.
BARC reports on tools for Business Intelligence and OLAP, planning and simulation, data
mining, and customer relationship management (CRM). It is one of the most recognized
firms in the BI field in Central Europe.

BARC also offers conferences, seminars, and support to companies looking for an
effective way of choosing the right business intelligence solution for their individual
needs.

The BARC report “Front-ends for SAP BW” offers organizations qualified support for the
selection of the appropriate front-ends certified for SAP Business Information Warehouse
(SAP BW). The report provides a general view of the BI front-end marketplace, an
explanation of the layout of BI systems in general, and an analysis of SAP's propositions
within this environment. The report describes in detail an extensive catalog of criteria for
evaluating BW front-ends, giving the reader insight to BARC's approach to tool testing.
Each tool was tested thoroughly in conjunction with a SAP BW 3.0B.

The report delivers a comprehensive description of each solution and a rating on the
software's fulfillment of each criterion, such as system architecture, administration and
authorization, data presentation and analysis, or Web functionality.

Weighted to one's own needs, the evaluation helps to effectively narrow down the broad
market of tools to a small set of suitable solutions that can be evaluated more
thoroughly. The BARC report “Front-ends for SAP BW” is 350 pages long and costs 690
euro (about US $740). For ordering information, please call +49-931-880651-0 (9 a.m.
to p.m. GMT / 3 a.m. to 12 a.m. EST) or contact BARC by email at info@barc.de.

Carsten Bange is the founder and managing director of the Business Application Research Center
(www.barc.de). Jörg Narr is a business intelligence analyst at BARC.