SAP Business Warehouse Reviews

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.

All the data that we enter we can put into SAP in any module. We have an HR module, a finance module, an insurance module, and an investment module. All this data is being fed into the SAP CT production system, which is how we primarily use it. Also, we have some custom reports that are developed by our development team and these reports are used by all departments.

The fact that it can integrate with Microsoft Excel is the solution's most valuable feature.

The solution has functionality that makes it easy for end-users to readily extract data directly from Business Warehouse into Excel and carry on their analysis on their own.

It would be helpful if we could interface with BW itself, instead of piggybacking on Excel. If it could have its own interface where you can build dashboards and reports and where high-level power users can start building things, that would be helpful. Right now, only developers can build reports on BW. They need to begin to open it up to power users. The solution needs a broad-based interface.

More integration with Microsoft Office products (not just Excel) would be helpful.

The company has been using Business Warehouse since 2010.

Business Warehouse is stable but my concerns surround the complexity of the solution. When some things go wrong, it becomes extremely unreliable. If everything is running smoothly and there are no problems then it's a very stable system.

Currently, the scalability isn't possible right now right now with its current architecture. That's why it's important that SAP has come up with its HANA solution and SAP Analytics on Cloud, where it's much easier to scale as necessary.

We're a company of 600 people and about 50% of the company uses the solution. The solution is used daily for reporting for the organization.

We contacted technical support in the past when we needed their help on a few issues.  It's a complicated system. Whenever our internal IT team was stuck on developing any reports we contacted SAP nearly every day.

Largely, we didn't have problems with technical support, but over the last two years, we were getting replies mentioning that we would be phased out of support and would need a new license. It's been a bit of a bumpy relationship in the last little while.

We didn't use a different third party solution previously. However, we did have some internal custom solutions that we used, not fully, but in some departments.

The set-up of the solution was very complicated. I believe SAP has a new offering on HANA that may be easier, but we have still not adopted that due to cost concerns.

Deployment took about one and a half years.

Consultants had to come in with their content and explain everything and helped by calculating the BW content. The BW developers had to understand all the build documents. That took a lot of time because SAP's architecture is very complicated for general users to understand.

It took about 35 to 40 people to handle the implementation across the organization. There were about five people from each department because Business Warehouse is something that's set-up for all departments and all the systems that all departments use.

We have three to four people from our internal IT department that handle maintenance. We also have a support structure with an external third-party vendor who assists with our maintenance support. Roughly, in total, we have six to ten people handling ongoing maintenance.

The company used consultants and integrators from the vendors to assist with the implementation of the solution. 

We had a team for coordinating with the implementation partner, they coordinated with the vendor and also the business departments to understand what was required.

The implementation was completely done by the implementation partner proposed by the vendor.

The pricing is fairly high for the solution.

We were looking for an enterprise-wide solution. In terms of an enterprise-wide ERP solution, SAP was the only available at that time in 2010. It was able to provide us with all the modules in one place, which was what we required.

We don't use any Data Quality or Identity Manager. Our company doesn't deal with customers directly as it is not open to the public. Our clients are mainly insurance companies. We will normally limit the amounts of data, so we don't have those components but we do have Business Warehouse where we pull in reports of incidents.

Recently, we were upgrading versions. We were on SAP BW version 4.7, and we have moved on to BW 6.0. Right now, we access Business Warehouse through an Excel add-on called BEx Analyzer which is also a product of SAP.

At this time, I wouldn't recommend the solution as the product support will be phased out by SAP. If others are interested in an SAP solution I would go for SAP Analytics Cloud.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Note: My opinion here is NOT specifically focused on SAP BW. It is based on overall experience I have on SAP software. As we know BW user always involve in different SAP modules for data extraction, transformation and load process for analytical reports. From this I have learned so much on how SAP software is being used in my organization and hopping that it's worth sharing with thers.

Some of the most valuable features are:

SAP ECC Finance – AP module

• Payroll and Procurement
• Human Capital – Organizational Management
• PA and Benefits
• BW/BO – SAP Webi

Finance and Human Capital modules are the core departments that support the overall organization and we run SAP ECC system in this area.

HR module – Starting from the process of hiring the employees and their benefits, all of this happens within the SAP system.

FI module – All the budgeting, fund management and payroll functions take place in the SAP Finance module.

SRM – The procurement process such as to create a purchase order for schools and departments, also takes place in this system.

It has helped our financial transactions and the HR-related functions to communicate across our organization. All our processes such as funds management, grant, payroll transactions are processed automatically through this system and BW helps to collect the data for analytic needs of the department users and board members.

We are an educational organization. Our core value is to concentrate on the children’s education and their well-being. Sometimes, we find ourselves moving away from the core value. The reason for this could be that the business process is not simple or clear enough for the administrator to do their daily tasks. It could also be that the software is complicated or not capable/scalable to do certain tasks/new functions or maybe there are no right skill sets/human capital in the right place. All these are key factors that play a big role to achieve the overall goal of our organization.

With the SAP ECC upgrade, we are hoping that it will streamline the existing business process and provide opportunity for new functions, increase the user performance and satisfaction and lower the overall costs which can be used for the children’s education.

Our system is old. After the system upgrade, it will open opportunities to explore so many new functions in the FI and HCM modules that could be very valuable to our organization.

The upgrade will allow improvement in the below-mentioned three areas and there are many more that we have yet to discover.

• Business Functionality
  • Implementing the SRM’s procurement function for the public sector such as the supplier registration, strategic sourcing, contract management, plant maintenance and MRP. The key features that we would like to achieve are a simple interface for the user and supplier, support on both the supplier and buyer-end solutions, future enhancement capabilities and cost saving benefits.
  • Travel Management - To support travel-related functions and lower the travel costs.
  • Human Capital - To allow integration between SuccessFactors and SAP ECC. It needs to allow reporting capabilities using BI/BOBJ modules.

• Technical support
  • It will maximize the system performance and allow continuous support and enhancement of new functions. Hence, there will be reductions in the overall support cost.
  • Take advantage of updated Solution Manager functionalities.

• UX - demand (Screen Personas and SAP Fiori)
  • The current SAP ECC version does not support SAP Screen Personas or SAP Fiori.
  • With the help of these UX capabilities, we would like to simplify the user experience, increase user performance and reduce the manual process/errors.

I have been using this product since 2005.

We have a handful of experts to administrate the overall working of the SAP system; it is stable.

In order to address known issues in SAP System, SAP release SAP notes that has issue details and instruction to fix the issue or workaround solutions. If it is relevant to our SAP system, we review the SAP Notes and follow the instruction to correct the issue.

It could be changes in code or apply recommended patches and should fix the issue but if it goes wrong all these activities could deteriorate or defect the system and it could lead to catastrophic system failure.

As of today, we do not have any system failure and we received very minimum user complaints regarding errors. Taking this evaluation, I would say our SAP system has no stability issues.

We are running an older version. It is doing what we need it to do but there is some limitation due to its version.

SAP has been providing support that we need based on the severity of issue that we face. Sometime, it is not the way we need but it is same across any other software vendor.

Since I have joined this organization, they have always been using the SAP solution.

Licensing is expensive but you will get the value for it.

SAP offers so many solutions based on the type and size of the company.
I would advise to always use best practices, establish strong project governance, define the scope of the project, maintain a project plan, etc.

The most useful feature is definitely the speed.

I think it's natural that we have BW on HANA because the developer has SAP systems. At the end of the day, it provides the integration we need out of the box. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

The problem with BW, and the factor that differentiated it from the original BW, is that you only get limited functionality with your runtime license. So, you have to pay extra for extracting data.

I would like to see a more comprehensive package in the future. SAP did that, but when you go to BW on HANA, and then you want to go to BW4HANA, that's basically two migrations. BW4HANA does offer everything that we're lacking in BW on HANA, but two million migrations in five years isn't really salable to the business.

The solution is also very pricey. 

I think that there should definitely be more integration. Whatever they make available in BW4, they should make it available in BW on HANA. But SAP has clearly stated that they are not doing any development on this. They are concentrating on BW4 and the DWC.

I have been working with this solution for 15 years.

We did have problems with stability, but it wasn't the software; it was the hardware. Everything is in memory, and there are a lot of memory modules, and some of them just gave up. The issue is with SAP itself. Apart from that, I think it's reliable. 

This is a tough question because, especially with HANA, you have to buy physical memory modules. It's not like you just put in one additional hard drive and then everything is fine. I'm not happy with the scalability.

We have a really good technical consultant from our SAP agency here in Hungary, and I'm very happy with him. The problem is that there is only one of him, and he has 10-15 customers. For the support that is provided to us here, I would rate it 4.5 out of 5 because of the availability.

The problem with SAP is that when you create a ticket on their site, it normally takes two to three weeks to go through, which is why we go to our consultant.

The direct technical support could definitely be faster. I would rate the standard support 3 out of 5.

For setup, you definitely need tutorial planning and a second set of eyes—even a third set of eyes—when it comes to code checking and things like that.

I would rate setup 3.5 out of 5.

It's quite pricey. SAP changed its pricing policy, so they give you one engine and then you have to buy everything next to it, like MSS, the BPC licenses, and everything else. So what you see on the bill at first is not exactly what you will pay, to say the least.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

For a company that's looking to implement BW on HANA, my advice is to go for it. But at the same time, also look out for the DWC, Data Warehouse Cloud, which currently comes with BW Bridge. I think the two together can basically cover all needs when it comes to integration.

SAP Business Warehouse is a data repository; a data warehouse for business intelligence applications. Companies can use it in a variety of ways. Our clients that work with SAP use Business Warehouse for staging, consolidation, and treatment of data between SAP and the business intelligence application.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration with SAP ERP.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution scales well.

The stability is good.

It's a product that is at the end of life so they will not improve it anymore.

It's a product that needs experience and needs knowledgeable users. You don't typically find experienced consultants, especially in Brazil. While it's not hard to maintain, it's hard to find people that could help you with it.

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale well. There aren't any issues if a company would like to expand it. 

Technical support is very good. We were very satisfied with their level of support when we needed it. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not too complex. 

You need two experienced technicians to handle the deployment process. 

I don't have any details on the ROI. It's hard to gauge exact numbers as the ROI doesn't depend only on SAP Business Warehouse; it depends on all the components, including the BI and the IP.

I'm an independent consultant. I have no direct relationship with SAP, with the vendor.

It's an application that is being migrated to HANA. I would recommend only the HANA version right now.

I would advise those considering this or a similar solution that they need to hire an experienced consultant, or to study the technical details of the project before starting using it.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. 

We use SAP Business Warehouse to host the data. We are hosting financial services data.

I like that it integrates to open-source.

SAP Business Warehouse could integrate better with other ETL tools.

There is some complexity to the setup. It would be helpful if the setup could be simplified.

I would like to see more MLOps capabilities included.

I have been using SAP Business Warehouse for one year.

We are using a previous version.

We did not experience any bugs or glitches with SAP Business Warehouse. It's a stable product.

SAP Business Warehouse is scalable, but you need to understand the product well.  It requires some expertise.

We have five people in our organization who use this solution.

Technical support is good. They were able to assist us in some specific issues we were experiencing.

I have some experience with Snowflake.

We did not previously use another solution, this was a new implementation.

The initial setup can be a bit complex. It's not easy, but not overly complex, It's medium.

It's moderately expensive, but definitely has its branding and price value for it.

SAP Business Warehouse is a good option if you are interested in memory analytics including HANA.

I would rate SAP Business Warehouse an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for reporting.

The deployment model we are using is on-premises.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the advanced structuring of data capabilities. You can get different structures of data to suit your needs.

The advanced structuring can be complicated and the interface is not very intuitive.

I know this is already available, but what I would have wanted to see in the next release is the Time-Dependent Hierarchies.

I would like to have the interface improved and made to be more intuitive.

This solution is stable and it's very good.

This solution is scalable and very good.

Currently, we have five hundred users.

I am in maintenance, so I have not contacted technical support.

I can't say how many times we have had to contact support. 

Business Warehouse is stable. Normally we don't have any issues with it.

Previously we did not use any other solution. We are just using SAP Business Warehouse.

The initial setup was done by a professional company, it was outsourced.

We have two people to maintain this solution.

My advice regarding this solution would be to invest in professional training for future users.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Getting high volume data is most valuable for us. It is really fast and it has great integration with SAP ERP or a non-sap system.

For example, only sales and distribution has approximately 150-200 mio transactional data for each year. As a result, we mention that we have approximately 400-500 mio transactional data for all our ERP system. It’s not possible to analyze that data without using Business Warehouse. Besides all those pluses, SAP BW provides us with real time analyzes for non-system.

The big minuses are its not being user friendly. The user interface and it’s reporting tool called BEx have room for improvement. SAP Global always promotes Business Objects for visualizing.

We have been using SAP BW for four years and also we had been using an old version called SAP BW 7.0 between 2008 and 2011.

Sometimes we do have stability issues, but if we evaluate the entire system, it provides more stability than its not being stable. Big stability issues are about getting dumps without any reasons and integration with Business Objects.

We have had absolutely no scalability issues. If a developer or product owner considers their data volume, BW never encounter any scalability problems.

I rate technical support so highly because of its being an old product.

We have never used any other business warehouse program except using an older version.

Setup is sometimes complex, sometimes not. For example, LIS structures are initially highly complex; you have to drop setup tables and re-fill it again. But other structures do not use setup tables and are more straightforward.

Every product owner has to be careful to evaluate the number of users. First of all, pricing is really high when compared with other business warehouse applications. Product owners also have to consider consultancy. Consultancy is more expensive than ERP consultancy.

Actually, we did not evaluate any other product because we were using SAP ERP.

Absolutely avoid non-standard structures. SAP BW is a highly established application that brings us many standard functions.