Business Intelligence Portal Insights and Practical Example

1. Business Intelligence Portal
SAP Integrated Solution
Insights and Practical Example
By Ahmed Rami Elsherif

2. Introduction
An Intranet Portal is an internal corporate web site that
integrates people, processes, and information within
the enterprise, using internet based technology to
facilitate communication and access to information.
A Business Intelligence Portal is a portal that reads the
enterprise raw data from its different transactional
databases and systems, a groups, presents and
transforms it into information and knowledge useful for
the decision making process.

3. Portal Challenges and Examples
•Provide Access to data by all stakeholder in company’s value
chain, as in the general portal design.
•Integrate data from diverse sources, as in the Balance Sheet
Consolidation example.
•Present information in the format appropriate for each
stakeholders, as in the Executive Presentations and Margin
Analysis examples.
•Guarantee Performance, Availability, Serviceability, and Security,
as in the infrastructure design.

4. Executive Information Portal
Restricted
Information
managed by user
access profile
Public Information available for
all Intranet users e.g. chart of
accounts, organgrams, contacts,
etc…
Information by
company, segment, or
consolidated.

5. Balance sheet Consolidation
Scripts to Read
accounting data
from different
systems
Scripts to generate
Consolidated
Financial Statements.
Varies
Users
Structure
Flat Table
Rules
SAP – RFC BAPI
In House Syst.
- SQL Query
Other systems –
Web Services
Costume aggregation of
information by company
or segment
Costume structuring of
financial statements
(local rules, USGAAP,
Fiscal Entities, etc..)
Costume elimination
rules for intercompany
accounts.
Drill down analysis

6. Executive Presentations
Accountin
g
Controllin
g
COVP
COSP
COSS
BSIS
SKAT
Sales
One click, Two click
Materials
VBRK
VBRP
KONV
LIPS
EKKO
EKPO
MAKT
Script to
Read SAP and
Write Flat Table
Costume hyperlinks to
other information
Scripts for executive
presentations
SAP
Other
Modules
Varies
Users
Indicators
Flat Table
Menus
Presentations by
company,segment
or consolidated.
Graphics combining,
executed, budgeted and
projected values.
Costume Key
Performance
navigation
Indicators

7. Margin Analysis
BSEG
BSIS
GL Line
Items
GL Index
VBRK
KONV
Invoice
Header
Invoice
Condition
s
VBRP
LIPS
Invoice
Lines
Delivery
Items
Script to
Read SAP
Write Flat Table
MARGIN
Month
Year
Concept
Account
Profit Center
Product
Volume
Value US
Value BS
Scripts to present
margin
Multi Unit Analysis
(Margin,Sales,Taxes,Costs)
Graphical and
numerical
presentation with
drill downs Analysis
.

8. Infrastructure Design
WEB Navigator
SAP R/3
SSL
Certification Server
Portal Server
SSL
WEB Server
PORTAL SCRIPTS & DB
Oracle
Other Applications
Third Party Systems
TCP/IP
XML
WS
Other Protocols

9. Portal Advantages
 User friendly, costume design screens without
extraneous fields.
 Minimal training, support and maintenance time for
end users.
 Knowledge of how to navigate in different enterprise
systems is not required.
 Data is created/read transparently and securely in
real-time in/out of enterprise systems.
 Uniform procedures and presentation of information
a cross the enterprise.

10. Conclusion
A proposed formula to estimate the value of
information in the enterprise is:
The Value of Information ~ Users2 X Business Area
BI Portals are very effective, direct means of
increasing both variables of that formula
reason for which companies have to pay close
attention to their analysis, design,
development and implementation.