JOIN INFORTE AT THE REPORTING & ANALYTICS CONFERENCE 2007

Join Inforte's SAP BI experts at the SAP Reporting and Analytics Conference in Orlando, Florida on October 15-17. Our experts will offer an overview of best practices for both time-tested and leading edge SAP technologies.

Listen in as our BI experts share tips and tricks on SAP technology. View presentations from key members of Inforte's SAP BI practice. Sessions include:

When, Why and How to Upgrade from SAP BPS to SAP Netweaver BI Integrated Planning

Speaker: Paul Halley
Date: Monday, October 15th
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM EST

Description: On October 15th, Paul Halley will guide SAP Reporting and Analytics Conference attendees through available upgrade options when going from SAP Business Planning and Simulation (BPS) to SAP NetWeaver BI Integrated Planning (IP), focusing on the the key functionality differences between the two planning tools, including the new IP front end and differences in the way variances are used. Understand whether and when OutlookSoft should factor into your upgrade decision. The presentation contains a review of the available BPS-to-IP migration options, including upgrading and reconfiguring your existing application.

BPS is growing increasingly outdated, and SAP customers are asking questions:

• When is it advisable to keep existing plans in BPS and begin using IP only for new plans?
• How can I simplify the transition from BPS to IP?
• Why is it important not to over-customize BPS before the upgrade?
• What can be done if the implementation is already heavily customized?

Attendees will take home a decision tree that will help SAP customers and consultants determine when and how to transition BPS to SAP NetWeaver BI IP.

5 Tips to Improve Information Broadcasting in SAP Netweaver 7.0

Description: Albert will lead a session on establishing efficient and effective report distribution within an organization. The NetWeaver 7.0 Information Broadcaster tool helps facilitate fast report distribution based on business scenarios within an organization. Albert will demonstrate several methods to accelerate slow query performance, demonstrating possible solutions by showing how to set up Bex queries and the subsequent BEx Broadcasts in the portal to fill the OLAP Cache (for SAP Bex users) and the MDX Cache (for access by external applications) so that query read times are improved. This is helpful for organizations that deal in large volumes of data, where the data is stored in many InfoProviders or Data Store Objects, or where system resources may be limited.

Improving report distribution isn't necessarily a technical solution. It is important to consider the report recipient's role in an organization and determine what type of reporting is most suitable. Albert will discuss methods to reduce "corporate spam" and free the user to be attentive to the business processes that matter most, affecting the habits and routines of how individuals in an organization manage, access, analyze, and react to data.

From 'Best-of-Breed' to 'Best-of-Hybrids'

Description: Come hear the co-author of "Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse" share his insights and experience around developing strategies to unlock the most value from your SAP transactional systems leveraging SAP BI and specialist BI tools. David will share his visual and architecture-driven framework and approach for developing rapid cost estimates and timelines for sudden business imperatives. Using a case study for illustration, he will explain a scenario where SAP BI, specialist BI, and niche BI products as well as legacy implementations are all part of a dashboard evaluation with tactical goals and strategic implications.

David will share with the audience how traditional "best-of-breed" versus "one-stop-shop" delineations are no longer helpful in differentiating BI vendor capabilities and identifying hybrid and complementary opportunities. In its place, comparisons such as “depth” versus “breadth”, “open” versus “proprietary” and “suite” versus “platform” for evaluating impacts and risks will be introduced. In addition, he will talk about how to evaluate SAP BI in 3D (from data, user and process dimensions). There will be explicit coverage around two fundamentally different data access approaches to SAP data via specialist BI tools.

Whether your organization is an SAP shop or has SAP in its shop, attendees will learn how to rapidly perform high-impact BI evaluations or assessments with hybrid landscape considerations.