BW Workspaces Use Cases

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BW Workspaces Use Cases

Applies to

SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.30 (BW7.30) SP05 and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator 7.20 (BWA7.20)/HANA 1.0 running as a database for SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 SP05

Summary

This article describes business use cases which have been implemented by customers with BW Workspaces. It gives an idea for which purposes BW Workspaces could be used and why the business users decided to realize their requirements on their own by using the BW Workspaces.

Author: Silvia Bratz

Company: SAP AG

Created: August 2013

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1. Introduction

In today’s business it is a challenge for the IT department to quickly react on business user’s needs when it comes to special enriched analyses of data.

Also the business users more and more want to implement their demands on their own without the contribution of the IT department to create data mash-ups in an own environment. The business users nevertheless also want to consume the data which comes from central data marts.

The solution for these requirements is the BW Workspaces implementation which offers the opportunity to combine data from architected and departmental data marts.

The following business scenarios have been implemented by the business users of companies using BW Workspaces. They give an idea for which purposes BW Workspaces could be used and why the business users decided to realize their requirements on their own using this self-service BI solution.

2. Reorganization of Business Units

2.1. Use Case Description

The controlling organization needs insight in the assignment of costs after a reorganization of the business units of the company, or to be more exact needs to know how the costs have moved from one line of business to another. In this example business units are structured by country hierarchy and the movement on country hierarchy basis has to be analyzed. The analysis period is the last fiscal year.

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2.2. Data Model

In the BW backend system two hierarchies on InfoObject profit center have been defined. The Hierarchy 1 is containing the old structure before the reorganization whereas the Hierarchy 2 is containing the new structure after the reorganization.

A local provider has been uploaded to the BW Workspace just containing two profit center fields where the 1:1 mapping of the values takes place. The profit center InfoObjects profit center has been assigned to field Profit Center 1 from the flat file and partner profit center has been assigned to the Profit Center 2 field in order to be able to use both hierarchies (as well as texts) in the query. Partner profit center is modeled as reference to profit center in order to share the same master data.

The local provider is joined with the central architected data mart in BW (containing the total expenses values) with join condition “profit center”. In the query definition the profit center with the old hierarchy is assigned to the row structure (containing value “total expenses”) and the partner profit center with the new hierarchy is assigned to the column structure

(containing value “total expenses”).

Flat File (profit center mapping)

2.3. Advantage

Time to customer

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Early Validation

With the BW Workspaces it has been possible to find out very early with less effort whether the solution meets the requirements – does the query result really show the required information?

3. Payment Forecast

3.1. Use Case Description

In today’s businesses such as e.g. the Cloud business, different payment methods apply compared to software sales. There might be sales deals where the customer pays fees first after half a year of usage or after a special event such as e.g. a go live. The question is how much does the customer pay when? In the central BW system the sales document exists containing the materials and the order value but there is no information available about the payment flow (billing plan). This would have to be extracted from the ERP system and has not yet been set up as ETL-process for this new business in the central BW system.

3.2. Data Model

A flat file from the ERP system is uploaded to a local provider.

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3.3. Advantage

Time to customer

In this case the major reason and advantage to use BW Workspaces again has been the time to internal customer. Due to resource shortage and other priorities the extraction workflow could not be set up in time. Therefore the information on payment flows has been downloaded from the ERP system to a flat file and uploaded to a BW Workspace. Also this scenario has been implemented in the central BW system after a while.

4. Project Reporting

4.1. Use Case Description

For special projects, cost data contained in internal orders are kept in the central BW system in an architected data mart. The data changes very often as costs are booked on project orders regularly in the ERP system and are extracted every 2 hours to the BW system. Additional information e.g. about the area of investment where the orders belong to, is kept in Excel files as the grouping or business case behind might change from time to time.

Before using the BW Workspaces the business users downloaded the BW data to Excel and combined this data with the “business case file” via lookups. This took quite some time and the data was out of date already after 2 hours due to the regular updates of the central data mart. In this case reporting takes place on data which changes more often in the Business

Warehouse system than the data uploaded to a local provider which changes less often. So it is about bringing less fast changing data to fast changing data. Also the local provider contains a small amount of data (approx. 3000 lines) and can be reloaded very fast.

4.2. Data Model

A join of a central architected data mart with a local provider on basis of the internal controlling order number similar to example in “chapter 3.2.” has been created. Additional information from the local file e.g. is the area of investment or the business case.

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4.3. Advantage

Separation of special data

The data loaded to the local provider has a very special content which is only interesting for very few business users, e.g. some special attributes which are only important for some users in the controlling department but not for the rest of the company. The solution therefore allows special views on master data inside a company. Furthermore new fields can be added iteratively in an own provider aside from the central architected BW data marts. This

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5. Technical Costs Analysis

5.1. Use Case Description

Information about plan and actual costs for the operation and maintenance of technical facilities are provided by the IT. Also cars are part of these facilities for which costs such as inspection, maintenance and installation of winter tires emerge. As the object “facility” is an abstract object which also implies machines etc. there is no car-specific information available in the central BW data model. The car fleet management - as exclusive consumer of this information in the company - is also interested in further vehicle details such as manufacturer, initial registration and in particular the kilometric performance. The goal is to determine the profitability (costs per travelled kilometer) of the single vehicles.

5.2. Data Model

The CompositeProvider (created by the Business User from the fleet management) consists of a BW central MultiProvider which is combined with two local providers which have been uploaded by the business user. The first local provider is connected with a left outer join condition to add vehicle details such as manufacturer, initial registration and vehicle type. Equipment number is the corresponding join criteria. The second local provider is mapped as union operation. Here, time criteria such as “fiscal year/period” are mapped and the key figure “driven km” is used in the CompositeProvider.

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5.3. Advantage

Separation of special data

Taking over key figures such as the kilometric performance of a vehicle in the central data model would swell up the data model as cars make up only a small part of the facilities. As this information is only relevant to a few business users it can be implemented separately with the BW Workspaces instead of making the central data model more complex. Also it is not

necessary to set up a costly IT project to realize the requirements.

Modeling help

The possibility to get help from the mapping proposer to map fields in a data model has been judged useful. Also the ability to copy calculated and restricted key figures from existing data models is meaningful to the business users.

Extension of data models

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BW Workspaces Use Cases