SAP Business Warehouse Reviews

We have end-to-end SAP. Therefore, we have the operations system, which is ECC6, which is the ERP. This is used for day-to-day data consolidating of purchase orders, finances, etc. We have 16 business lines. 

When the data comes, we need the reports for the management and we need consolidated and aggregated data. For that, we use Business Warehouse. NetWeaver is a platform, however, on top of it, you use different products. Therefore, on top of NetWeaver, we have BW overlayed for aggregated data for its management. It can be displayed as necessary in data visualization tools, like Business Objects, Excel, Tableau, Power BI, etc. 

The main purpose of our BW is to consolidate data and show the trends for the last, I would estimate, ten years.

BW is our bread and butter. We use it every day for reporting, for analysis, data consolidation and aggregation, drag and drop queries, etc.

There are a lot of things that could be improved especially in terms of data cleansing, data management, data lineage, etc. The solution needs to offer more flexibility in terms of formulas and the query designer. 

The solution has very limited options, so we have to mix and match some functionality formulas we create in Business Warehouse. The rest of the formulas and functionality we try to deliver on the front end via direct objects. Therefore, there's a lot of improvement needed. 

My understanding is that they are going to discontinue Business Warehouse so that they can push HANA, including Native HANA, S4 HANA, and BW/4HANA.

This platform has reached its limitation. In order for SAP to improve it, they have to provide a new product, which they have: BW/4HANA. 

BW/HANA is much better than the native standard Business Warehouse. It has new options, new functionality, is faster, has pre-built processes, etc. It has all the data processes from a different company's best practices, and they give it to you by default, just out of the box. This is what Business Warehouse should have been, and it's good they are pushing HANA instead of BW.

I've been using the solution for six years.

In terms of stability, comparatively, the solution is quite stable.

The solution isn't that scalable. It depends on a lot of factors like what the budget of the company is. If it's scalable in terms of hardware, then we'll have to acquire new hardware and new costs start to pile up. We are not scaling it. If we go overboard with the size, then we just try to reduce the size. We haven't ever tried to scale it. We don't want to spend more to do so.

We are very unhappy with technical support. First of all, they send their sales agents or pre-sales agents and most of them who don't know the solution as a properly trained tech would. We have an on-site SAP representative who is supposed to help us with our high priority and production issues, and they're not satisfactory to say the least.

I cannot recall if we previously used another solution or what it was. Before SAP, the company was using a third-party tool on Oracle or some other SQL database. We have been running SAP for the last 10 years, and I joined the company in the past six years. I wasn't here when SAP was originally implemented.

Initial set up is pretty easy. You just install it and connect it to ECC. The tables are already there as well as the business content. If your company has a lot of customized processes, then you have to adjust a few things. 

Otherwise, if it's a fairly new company, then you just have to connect ECC and the data will start coming in. You can do batch jobs and create aggregation. The initial implementation is fairly easy in that scenario. 

Our solution is strictly on-premises due to our company policy to not place anything on the cloud. 

Consultants with technical experience are helpful. They need to understand the processes, as well, however, because designing is the key. Designing right from the start is the very important if you want the product to work for you. 

There are multiple teams within our company. In my team, we are only concerned with BW and BO. With other teams, there are probably many other instances where someone that is using the solution is connected to other data sources and may be providing the data to the suppliers outside SAP using the portal. I don't know much about it because I'm not involved in this process.

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

We have several reports that run on SAP Business Warehouse for various modules. We have some sales, finance, and supply chain reports. These are mainly the reports we work on, plus a couple of dashboards under layered development.

The most valuable feature of SAP Business Warehouse is transformation, where I extract data from different sources, particularly the raw data. Then I do some transformations and store that in a format that allows me to do reporting easily. The transformation feature in SAP Business Warehouse is the most useful.

I also like that the solution has some reporting features.

SAP Business Warehouse has a few areas for improvement. One is that it takes more work to get the data, including reporting on that data, because some coding is required, and a significant level of transformation is needed.

I also find the performance reporting function of SAP Business Warehouse challenging, so that's another area for improvement.

What I want to see in SAP Business Warehouse in the future is for it to be more user-friendly than Microsoft Power BI. I also found Microsoft Power BI more flexible and quicker to learn than SAP Business Warehouse. Making some developments on Microsoft Power BI also requires less effort and no technical expertise. In contrast, SAP Business Warehouse requires some technical expertise, so I want that improved in the future.

I've been working with SAP Business Warehouse for almost seventeen years now.

SAP Business Warehouse is a stable product.

SAP Business Warehouse is easy to scale. My company has several licenses, so the product is scalable.

Regarding SAP Business Warehouse technical support, if your system is live and it's been running for a long time, the support team should have processes in place and good background knowledge on how to fix issues.

If it's a new implementation, then it's understandable that the support team needed more time to understand and fix the system. Still, if it's an old system, then the SAP Business Warehouse technical team should have much knowledge of it.

You can't hire support staff with insufficient experience or just two to three years of experience because that would be difficult for him. Still, it would be easy to fix issues for support staff with a good experience with SAP Business Warehouse.

I started my career with SAP Business Warehouse and didn't use any other product.

In the earlier days of my career, I implemented SAP Business Warehouse. I did one in Australia, one in South Africa, and three in India. Whether the implementation was easy or complex depends. If you have complex requirements, then your implementation will be complicated. Otherwise, implementation would be simple.

One implementation was a bit complex, and the process took almost nine months, but that was for an implementation where you didn't use all features simultaneously. Instead, you implemented the features one by one. Going live completely took nine months.

My team went phase by phase with the SAP Business Warehouse deployment. The first step was going live with the sales module that contained different sales reports. Next was the material management, and the final stage was the core modules going live. However, for any module that needed complex modeling, that went last. Initially, my team gave the basic reports to users, but the customized reports would take some time.

An in-house team implemented SAP Business Warehouse.

I was never involved in the pricing of SAP Business Warehouse because the sales team handles that. Still, as far as the information I have, SAP licensing is a bit expensive compared to other products in the market.

I work with SAP, so I have experience with SAP Business Warehouse.

I'm using version 7.5 of SAP Business Warehouse.

My company has approximately two hundred fifty users of SAP Business Warehouse. Three people maintain the solution.

I recommend SAP Business Warehouse to people and companies using SAP ERP systems. Still, if your company has more presence in other databases, such as SQL, Azure, and other ERP systems, I would not suggest SAP Business Warehouse because the solution is friendlier when connected to SAP systems. For non-SAP systems, you'll need to exert more effort to bring the data in when you use SAP Business Warehouse.

My rating for the solution is seven out of ten.

My company is a customer of SAP.

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.

We already were having a lot of transaction data in the SAP R3 system. We were doing the extraction, transformation, and loading process every time, ETL from SAP R3 to SAP BW and leveraging it to develop and design certain static reports. They were static in nature; they were not really very beautiful or very impactful reports, but they were used by our senior management. They are still being used by our senior management.

The solution has improved our organization because we used to have a finance department. Payroll is a routine affair there, so some reports were required by the finance department for expediting their reconciliation which could be used in the closing of bank, closing of the books in the organization. We have helped them use the tools in that manner. There were also things like our generation was real-time captured in the transaction system. We tried to fetch the data from the transaction system and tried to aggregate the data in this BW system and help the management with the data at the click of a mouse.

The most valuable feature is the new version of Business Explorer Analyzer. That is a very good version because there are a lot of analytical features of Excel also. Additionally, in the SAP BW cockpit, there are features for real-time data acquisition, so RDA. That is a good feature.

One area that could be improved is the Business Explorer still needs to be developer-friendly also.

Another improvement would be to develop certain connectors to get hold of the external data. That aspect also needs to be strengthened. It needs to be reinforced because there were issues when we were integrating the SAP BW system with a source system, which is other than the SAP R3 system. The dependency that is currently there between SAP R3 and SAP BW, needs to be enhanced, augmented.

In the next release, my suggestion would be to have user-friendly interfaces and performance issues be addressed.

I been using the solution for eight to ten years.

We have 1,000 plus users in the organization.

With the technical support, the response has been pretty good from the SAP side. They do respond and they're very courteous. Technical support doesn't make you go around things. They try to find a solution and they reach out to you in time. That is very important because quick service is also very important.

The client tools of SAP BW are very straightforward. I don't have any issues with the installation part. Installation is quite friendly, quite speedy.

In the initial phases of deployment, we had an integrator, then we switched over to the consultants. The integration partner was Siemens at that time when Business Warehouse was launched, and then gradually, we took third-party consultants only when there was a need.

My advice when considering this solution is that a proper planning strategy is a must for going on a journey with a reporting and analytics solution. From my experience, I can tell you that organizations just venture in for a reporting, analytics solution without even framing a proper strategy as to what they would like to see as the end result and how they would like to approach it. That is the only thing that is important. Otherwise, the journey is smooth with SAP products. But you need to be clear in your head, and planning really takes the majority of the time. If you have twelve months, then I think you should plan for four months, so that the last eight months are a smooth journey for you.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

The product is very stable. It has a straightforward maintenance process with essential support services.

They should reduce the product’s installation package size for easier downloading.

We have been working with SAP Business Warehouse for 20 years as a partner.

I rate the product’s stability a nine out of ten. There is room for improvement.

We have three customers and 1000 end users for SAP Business Warehouse. I rate its scalability an eight or nine.

The technical support services are good.

The product is straightforward to install and deploy. It takes two to three weeks to complete the process. I install it for the customers and forward it to application executives for data warehousing. The number of executives required for deployment depends on the organization’s size. It requires approximately one to ten people, depending on the project requirements.

I recommend SAP Business Warehouse to others and rate it an eight out of ten. It has a well-documented and straightforward installation process.

AP BW is our main data storing platform that houses all transactional systems data. Every department has some or the other analytical service running on to our business warehouse.

The most useful feature has been he ability to feed data into multiple systems in various formats. SAP BW can open its data to any kind of system over the gateway services including to portals or applications that need to consume and complete data analysis. 

The way the data is stored is kind of rigid in SAP BW as a product. It could be more flexible so that when we are designing a solution, we can design our own data structures and try to improve performance. 

In a future release, we would like to have the capability of running big data solutions and integration with the other databases, like Hadoop.

We have been using this solution since 2006. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The customer support is wonderful. If your technical team is stuck somewhere, they are there to help.

Positive

This is not a straight out of the box product. It is a product that needs a lot of brainstorming along with the business users to find out what they need so that the build is department specific.

SAP's licensing structure is a little bit complicated and is linked to your revenue. This does not apply to smaller business. Overall, the pricing is not fixed and is expensive. As your revenue grows, so does your operational licensing cost. This needs to be factored in when calculating cost. 

I would not recommend it to organizations that are starting out because it demands a huge number of people to run and maintain it. I would recommend it for medium organizations with a lot of data. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

It's a customized solution for the company's reporting needs.

The real-time information is great. Many reports take a long time, and we can save the data if we have a backlog of information to assess. The Real-time InfoCube is quite useful in terms of getting information fast when we need it. 

The preparation is basically useful. We are using it via integrated BI, BWIP, Business Warehouse, and Integrated Planning. Based on that, we are able to get good information on plans. 

We can integrate analysis into our planning. 

It has good integration with the Analysis Office.

We're able to create different queries and get reports based on what we specifically need. 

I'm not sure if our issue is related to BW or the Analysis Office. However, we're having performance issues in terms of time. It takes a long time to generate the report. Maybe it's the queries that have been developed in-house. I'm not sure. 

People are getting frustrated as they have to spend lots of time - 10 minutes to 15 minutes - generating the report. Maybe they are getting real-time data. However, it is time-consuming in the generation of the report.

They should allow for power users. If SAP really wants to have some insights related to their software's applicability, adaptability, and some areas of let's say, future expansion or future new development, then they should think of taking the opinion of the actual end users.

They should offer up smaller components for smaller companies to make it more affordable and accessible for more companies.

I've been using the solution since 2017.

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. 

We have lots of users using the BW-based reports. That's around 500 people. However, we don't have many actual users on the solution itself. 

Technical support from SAP is being provided by our technical teams. There have been issues that our own team has dealt with directly.

We are using the SAP Business Warehouse as well as the Commercial Project Management model of SAP. 

We are also using Analysis Office Integration with SAP.

I have worked with two systems related to BW. One that is an elegant JBA, which is all right. They have products that are BW related. It was also a nice product, actually.

The upside to working with this solution is that it is basically integrated with directly SAP.

I'm not involved in the initial setup.

It is very costly. I can't speak to the exact costs, however. Only larger companies can afford SAP.

The maintenance costs are very high as well. 

I am not the one who is using the different transaction codes of BW since rights are provided to a minimal amount of technical personnel. Those who are going to prepare the cubes or make some queries or something like that would use it. Based on that queries, we are getting reports.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We have used SAP Business Warehouse to monitor and manage supporter donations and campaigns.

SAP Business Warehouse could improve by having more out-of-the-box use cases to cover more business types or operations.

I have been using SAP Business Warehouse for more than 10 years.

The stability of SAP Business Warehouse has been good. When we are doing charity work we do not do many transactions. The performance has been within the limits of the solution. We are not doing millions of transitions to see an impact on the stability.

SAP Business Warehouse is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 10 to 12 people using the solution in the community and once the campaign report is generated the entire business start to use the solution. We have approximately 200 people in the whole business.

The technical support is good, we have never had a problem with them.

There are two groups of people that do the implementation and support of SAP Business Warehouse. One group is for the build phase, the other group is for the support phase. There will be a handshake between these two groups, on how to go live. In the build phase, there are approximately seven to eight people are available for support, we agreed to not exceed more than four. However, this seven will be continuing for longer for deployment and new developments. 

Anything on the support side, if they find any challenge, they can easily reach for a phone and receive input from the builder team to resolve them quickly.

The two clients that have been using SAP Business Warehouse have found that it does not quite fit their use case. However, there is not any CRM or ERP that fits their needs specifically. In the charity use case, they have found challenges.

I rate SAP Business Warehouse a ten out of ten.