Which SAP module? Business Intelligence (BI)

Imagine being the CEO of a small company that has just sold $3,000,000 dollars worth of products. Good times have come and they are here to stay. Now you are hoping to replicate or better yet top that success in the next year. What do you do? Use the same tactics as this year? Wrong. There is no guarantee that the same tactics used this year will provide you with the same tactics next year.

So what do you do? You analyze the data you have gathered this year, find out which areas of your business has been profitable and focus on them. The areas in which have been lagging will be improved upon or if they can’t be helped, thrown out altogether to be replaced by new vision.

Problem is you have terabytes of data spread amongst different platforms to look at. how do you make sense of it all?

Enter Business Intelligence.

What is business intelligence?

This is the practical solution that any business intelligence software should solve. SAP offers their software which is part of the Netweaver technology. SAP Business intelligence is just one among others like SAP Enterprise Portal and Web Application Server.

The features of SAP business intelligence are

1. Extraction of data from various platforms and importing them into one business warehouse database
2. Store this information in structures that are effective and easy to access
3. Access the data and present it as a visual representation that is more user-friendly
4. Present analysis tools that can be used to explore the data.

The benefits of using such software are not limited to

1. Making sound decisions from better analysis of large chunks of data
2. Able to take targeted actions

What background do I need to be a Business Intelligence consultant?

On the soft side, I recommend you have good analytical skills. Knowledge of databases will be very advantageous also. But in general, if you have a passion for modeling and understanding how business decisions are made, this is a good module to invest your career in.

SAP Business Intelligence is one of the new technologies that SAP rolled out as part of the Netweaver suite and boasts of about 12,000 installations. As more and more, companies embrace the cutting edge of SAP technology, then the demand for consultants in the field will only increase.

Demand

From the images below courtesy of itjobswatch.co.uk, the demand for SAP BI consultants has been rising steadily. There has been a sharp drop this year but hey, what hasn’t dropped this year. We all know the economy hasn’t been too great, to put it mildly. But in the words of Warren Buffet, you invest when there is blood on the streets. Invest in your education now so when the market picks up, you are better positioned to take up those jobs.

P.S I am starting a SAP Business intelligence course this weekend and I will posting my notes to people that are subscribed to my mailing list. If you want to also get the notes of the course for free, then enter you email address in the form on the right and there you will get in direct to your inbox

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Is SAP right for me?

What are my chances of getting a good SAP job?

The good news is you are not alone. A lot of people have the same questions as well. What is even better news? I have written a series of articles that answer these questions and many more on SAP Unveiled.

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