SAP Extends the Power of SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer to Tap into All Data

SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer Software Helps Companies Obtain Deeper Insight and Clarity into Their Business Challenges and Opportunities

Sydney, Australia - November 02, 2009 - In May 2009, SAP unveiled SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer software, a breakthrough solution that enables business users to explore vast amounts of information and find relevant answers in seconds. In November, SAP will usher in the next wave of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version, which delivers business insight on any data set through an intuitive Web-based interface anyone can use. With instant visibility into all the information needed to do their jobs, users can easily tackle tough questions and identify the root causes of business issues while navigating their business data at the speed of thought. Today, companies like Consol, Kraft Foods and OraSure Technologies are looking to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to solve key questions using a new approach. The announcement was made at SAP® TechEd 2009, held October 27-29 in Vienna, Austria.

Despite an explosion of data in the last few years, most business users still lack the information and insight they need to move beyond a “gut feel” approach to decision-making to a fact-based approach that yields more consistently effective results. The second wave of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, accelerated version, introduces the ability to accelerate any data source beyond SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW). Based on the packaging of SAP® BusinessObjects™ Accelerator software, any company, whether or not it is running SAP applications, will be able to use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to visualise and act upon its business data.

The new capabilities can help organisations in many ways:

Sales and marketing units can gain a better understanding of key campaigns, product profitability and forecasting information, including third-party data and data from marketing databases in the cloud.
Operations can explore inventory levels, deriving insight from their enterprise data warehouse and/or data provided by their extended business network, their supply chain for SKU management, stock-out planning, product recall and traceability management.
Finance professionals can deliver revenue, cost and profitability insights to constituents in a safe, secure way, exposing a ‘single version of the detailed truth’ within the organisation.

Providing Quick Access to Relevant Information

Consol Glass (Pty) Ltd, the leading Southern African glass container packaging manufacturer, plans to use SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to reduce the time and cost of access to business data, expanding the type and number of users in addition to analysing its business quickly and accurately.

“We chose SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to help more business users easily identify the most relevant pieces of information in our data store,” said Johan du Plessis, IT director, Consol Glass. “Our challenge is that we have a large business intelligence platform and needed a way to access information quickly and without a heavy degree of IT involvement. We are looking to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to provide more business people with the decision-quality information they need to get their jobs done.”

Kraft Foods, maker of the world’s favourite food brands, is working to bring quick business insight to a greater number of employees.

“With a company as large as ours, it is inevitable that we would have an enormous amount of data,” said Laura Topel, senior director, Information Systems, Kraft Foods. “We are testing SAP BusinessObjects Explorer based on its ability to be a key enabler to our BI strategy of fostering superior decisions and driving business value by providing the right information to the right individuals at the right time. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can make information more broadly and easily accessible across the entire organisation. Potential users need simplicity and ease of use in their BI; we believe that this tool would help our business users quickly discover and visualise key relationships between information.”

OraSure Technologies, a leader of point-of-care, oral fluid diagnostics, is using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to provide line-of-business executives with their own real-time analytical capabilities.

“In the past, the analytics I needed were custom reports with limited detail,” said P. Michael Formica, executive vice president of Operations with OraSure Technologies. “With SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, my team, the user community and I can perform our own analyses, identify potential variances in our distributor supply chains and take immediate corrective action based on data internal and external to SAP. As a result, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer helps OraSure Technologies act faster to positively impact our bottom line.”

Teradata and SAP are delivering the availability of an Intel-based Teradata blade architecture for running SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse Accelerator software as well as SAP Business Objects Explorer — which supports capabilities ranging from enterprise data warehousing persistence to in-memory acceleration and intuitive search and navigation. This will give Teradata and SAP customers the opportunity to standardise on a single hardware platform across their existing investments.

To extend SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to even more hardware platforms, SAP also announced plans to collaborate with Cisco. Cisco Unified Computing System combines industry-leading Intel processors, 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified fabrics and expanded memory capabilities to offer stronger scalability for SAP applications. (See the initial announcement from SAP: “SAP to Revolutionise Business Intelligence With New Solution that Delivers Insight at the Speed of Thought.”)

“With SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, you get answers in seconds, even if you don’t know what question to ask,” said Rajeev Mitroo, General Manager, Business User & Platform, SAP Australia and New Zealand. “That implies you start asking questions out of curiosity, which opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. New trends, new ideas, new opportunities begin to emerge immediately. The significance of this solution is that it is not only a breakthrough in data-exploration technology, it is also the catalyst for a cultural shift in the enterprise, empowering every worker to make informed decisions, which cumulatively and dramatically strengthens the effectiveness of the organisation as a whole.”

SAP® TechEd 2009 in Phoenix, Vienna, Shanghai and Bangalore

More than 12,000 SAP customers, partners and technical experts convened at SAP® TechEd 2009, the company’s largest ecosystem education event, to gain the inspiration and skills needed to maximise impact on their organisations at a time when companies need both skilled professionals and agile, efficient IT solutions that can efficiently adapt to change. Now in its 13th year, SAP TechEd 2009 was held in Phoenix from October 13-16; in Vienna, Austria, on October 27-29; and will be held in Shanghai, China, on November 11-12 and Bangalore, India, on November 18-20. For more information, please visit www.sapteched.com. Join the conversation via Twitter at #sapteched09.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software*. Today, more than 82,000 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP® applications—from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small businesses and midsize companies to suite offerings for global organisations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.”

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.

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