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Former Member


Part 2 Executive Summary.  Think of this as more your elevator speech/10 minute chat on what you are doing and why.  This is not what you give to your Executive Lead team.  That is a later subject.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.    Introduction and Purpose

1.1    Purpose

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The goal of the Business Intelligence (BI) Strategy is to provide information as a service to the YO...

·         Solve the problem of fragmented data which includes multiple department-specific data marts and stove piped “islands” of data

·         Improve data quality and conformity by aligning different projects and groups that use similar data, and enhance overall efficiency of data analysis

·         Create a customer-centric/self reporting approach to information delivery for customers inside and outside the organization (extended enterprise), and reduce business users’ dependency on IT

The Business Intelligence Strategy encompasses the development of a Global Business Intelligence environment to support the strategic, tactical, and operational reporting requirements of YOUR COMPANY at global and divisional levels.

·         Analyzes the current level of BI maturity of the organization and identifies the major corporate goals that drive the use of business intelligence and roadblocks

·         Defines an overall BI roadmap for the organization that aligns current priorities with overall corporate goals

·         Implements a standard project evaluation and approval process to ensure on-going alignment between project goals and corporate BI strategy

·         Outlines the process for implementing the global Business Intelligence vision

·         Provides a comprehensive approach on how to settle and deploy a BI COE

The current BI landscape and data model at YOUR COMPANY has limited reporting capabilities within the global line of business (LOB) and cross-LOB reporting. Operational detail either is not available or is inefficient due to data latency; strategic insight is not reliable due to the existence of several versions of truth. Limited decision making has forced the user community to identify alternatives, usually turning into silo custom solutions and manual data marts. The lack of an enterprise-wide BI Strategy that sets the vision and common framework, and the inexistence of a distributed BI COE that enforces governance and standards, and the company’s rapid growth through acquisitions, have decisively contributed to create an information gap.

The proposed BI solution will deliver a normalized Semantic Data Layer by leveraging the BusinessObjects (BOBJ) federated reporting toolset. The model uses Industry BI templates and modelling best practices to effectively close the information gap and align strategic objectives with operational needs. It provides an intuitive and standardized analysis framework and fast response throughout the query run time model with an emphasis on empowering business community.

The BI Strategy will cater to both regional and global audiences and support top-down aggregated global reporting as well as granular divisional analysis.  The regional SAP BI reporting will be based on an adjustable common template and a standardized model which can accommodate local requirements as well as support the aggregation required for global reporting.

Adoption of the BI framework by the user community, business sponsorship and ownership, and deployment of a distributed BI COE are essential factors for the success of the BI Strategy.

1.    Introduction and Purpose

YOUR COMPANY is a leading provider of xxxxx,xxxxx and xxxx to worldwide xxxxx industries focused on continuously raising the performance of our customers, employees, investors, and communities.

YOUR COMPANY comprises of nn Strategic Business Units (xxxxx, xxxxx and xxxxxxxxxx); and nn distinct Divisions, some of those operating in multiple countries.

YOUR COMPANY has undertaken an initiative to develop a Global Business Intelligence Strategy.  This strategy will propose a BI infrastructure that will provide business information in a timely, predictable, useable, and accurate manner.

The existing Information Systems (IS) environment is being challenged by demands for more sophisticated analysis, faster turnaround, improved accessibility, and enhanced quality. To meet this challenge, the Business Intelligence team recognizes that the BI architecture must be sufficiently nimble to adapt to changing business requirements and yet be built on proven engineered principles to guarantee an evolving information asset for YOUR COMPANY as a whole.

To that end, this document provides an overview of the BI and data warehouse architecture. It serves to formalize the overall strategy, approach, and conceptual architecture that are necessary to meet YOUR COMPANY’s reporting and analytical requirements.

The YOUR PROJECT BI Team actively planned and contributed to the content of this document. Members are outlined in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1: BI Strategy Contributors

Name

Position

Your Name

YOUR COMPANY SR MANAGER, BI

Your Team Member

YOUR COMPANY Data Architect

Your Team Member

YOUR COMPANY Technical Architect

Your Team Member

YOUR COMPANY Master Data Mangement

Your Team Member

YOUR COMPANY Front End Architect

Your Team Member

YOUR PARTNER….

YOUR COMPANY is currently running a single, highly customized instance of SAP worldwide. Each YOUR COMPANY group, division and country has modified SAP to best fit the way they are accustomed to doing business, and BI (known as BW at YOUR COMPANY) is not an exception. Such transformation has taken place without a common framework. With the acquisition of YOUR ACQUISITION by YOUR DIVISION, YOUR COMPANY has the choice of running Your Division on one of YOUR COMPANY’s existing designs / templates of SAP or using SAP’s latest version with industry standard templates and leading practices. YOUR COMPANY has formalized a BI Team as part of the YOUR PROJECT initiative to propose a best practice template that will be used globally. The BI Strategy document outlines this template as a core pillar on building a common information framework.

As a consequence of the “YOUR PROJECT” transformation, the current technical landscape will be modified to include a new instance of SAP ECC and SAP NetWeaver BW. The project will deploy initially one division and one Strategic Business Unit in the new landscape, with the aim of progressively migrating the remaining divisions and decommission the current SAP structures.  The project milestone for Phase 1 is set on MMM YYYY. 

The current architectural design is illustrated within the remainder of this document.

It is proposed that the regional views containing the largevolumes of data will be delivered for detailed analytics and operational reporting, with a global BW environment containing a subset of the regional BI data for aggregated global reporting.  In order to support this, a future state Application Landscape; Data Model Standards and Guiding Principles and BI Roadmap have also been proposed.

1.1    Purpose

The key objectives of this document are as follows:

·         Provide a formal vision for the overall strategy necessary to meet the reporting and analytical requirements of YOUR COMPANY

·         Define the data and technical architectures involved

·         Provide a high-level roadmap to deploy the BI Strategy

As it stands, this document gives an overview of the current state of the BI architecture, the transition phase, and the desired end state for the BI architecture and related issues in the current dynamic IS environment.

It is important to note that this is a living document and will continue being updated throughout the detailed blueprinting phase. Subsequently, the BI COE (a proposed organization) will own the deliverable, supporting the company’s vision and information strategic objectives, aligning those with the business operational needs. The YOUR PROJECT BI Team will seek initial approval from the Program Leadership. The BI Strategy will be formally published at intervals in line with the project plan milestones.

Key Deliverables

Chapter 2 – Reporting Gaps and Risks

Chapter 3 – BI Vision

Chapter 4 - Current BI Application Landscape

Chapter 4 - Future State BI Application Landscape

Chapter 4 - Future State Data Model Standards and Guiding Principles

Chapter 4 – Global Design Template

Chapter 4 – BI Master Data Considerations

Chapter 5 – Frontend Reporting Strategy

Chapter 6 – Implementation Guidelines and BI Roadmap

Chapter 7 – BI Center of Excellence (Shared Services)

The SAP BusinessObjects product list licensed is listed in appendix D.

 

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