Microsoft BI strategies in companies using SAP

I have been working on the implementation of business intelligence solutions for companies using SAP for over 10 years. Especially last year, these companies showed a massive interest for comprehensive Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions.

I have experienced this kind of thinking “outside the SAP box” from this group of users a couple of times before. The first wave I know about came with MIS ALEA (now Infor PM10), which launched the first truly “simple” business intelligence solution onto the broad market. More waves followed with Qliktec and lately with Tableau.

The past decade’s boom of the MS SQL Server (Analysis Server), however, does not change the fact that the perception of portal and front end is what generates awareness and thus actual comprehensive use, and this turned out quite poorly in Microsoft’s case until a few years ago. Admittedly, it feels like Microsoft SharePoint and Excel have been around forever and, at some point, there were also the Performance Point Services – well… By now, the range of business intelligence front ends and portals in the Microsoft Store has become much more sophisticated. I have tried to categorise the most frequently-used application classes – portal, dashboard, reporting and analysis – of Microsoft’s own products in a chart.

I make no claim to correctness or completeness of the representation. The potential use can be presented in a much more complicated way if desired.

Before I turn to the topic of potential Microsoft Business Intelligence in SAP companies, let me first conduct a brief subjective review of the use of SAP’s own BI tools among companies using SAP. Some companies ascribe almost religious significance to the question of use or non-use of third-party products.

As far as my experience goes, companies using SAP can broadly be divided into three groups based on their business intelligence strategy:

• The puristic SAP enthusiasts who neither intend to nor will taint their installation with any third-party software.
• On the other end, there are the user companies which are constantly annoyed with their SAP ERP solution, the SAP refuseniks who avoid any further extension (e.g., SAP BI components) like the plague.
• In between is the largest group: the pragmatists.

Off the top of my head, I guess that the distribution to the groups corresponds to a conventional Gaussian distribution curve.

On this basis, I currently see three main strategies among SAP users regarding future business intelligence architectures:

• A pure SAP strategy from database to front end and portal for all application classes and users.
• A mixed strategy: SAP is used for company-wide application classes. Third-party providers (e.g., Microsoft) are considered or used in the medium term particularly for specialist department solutions and non-company-wide application classes.
• A re-engineering strategy: This is where existing business intelligence enterprise architectures (SAP, Oracle, etc.) are under high scrutiny and, in the course of this, very likely to be compared to Microsoft Enterprise architectures.

Meanwhile, with the second and third strategy, Microsoft has a really strong case beyond the use of the pure SQL database. Though, the ongoing hype about Microsoft Power BI reminds me of the Qliktec enthusiasm mentioned above prevailing until a few years ago.

Currently, the separation of large parts of the BI functions from Excel to Microsoft Power BI, the consolidation of data extraction and modelling (in Power Query) into a new consolidated tool for reporting and dashboarding – allowing on-premise, mobility and cloud operation at the same time – go down well with users and potential users alike.

There are certainly business intelligence vendors that provide better solutions than Microsoft and SAP combined, nevertheless, decision-makers in major companies (with SAP customers being in the front row) have an affinity for large suppliers with a comprehensive solution portfolio. Since Microsoft is meeting these two criteria expertly, we can expect exciting developments in this market segment.

Also published by e3 magazine, September 2016.

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