Early positioning of organizational change management during your implementation process

In reality, supporting a BI solutions in BAU mode can be challenging not only because there are no documentation or insufficient knowledge transition but there are many important points that were only known by the project consultants which  were not possible to be knowledge transferred or documented fully at the end of the project milestone.A lot of times, the issue is only discovered when the report is showing inaccurate data or process chain fails. This can happen if a working solution is not robust enough to handle different type of future changes and scenarios.Hence it is important for a professional project consultant to document and highlights areas of common maintenance required, known bugs and customized/hardcoded method applied during the implementation process. To ensure the smoothness of handover, this has to be reviewed and updated periodically during the implementation phase and not only at the stage of near completion as what most of the project practices. This is to ensure a complete understanding of the solution and a proactive working partnership between the project and the clients/support. Some of the crucial points that can be covered in this area:

• customized abap program to lookup mapping values or selection of period filtering
• deletion selection in the process chain
• process chain failure root cause
• possible enhancement area in the transformation logic (any hardcoded values that can changed or added in future)
• impact of changing a web template or query objects to the other items in same template
• shared datasources and infoobjects and the dependency 
• any customized objects sits on erp/feed system 
• which master data attributes required to be maintained when new assignment is added
• roles and authorization matrix (usually liase with S&A and Portal team)

Bye to CO-PA BW backend and welcome CO-PA HANA?

Read the full article here.

Production Support Project TCODE

The consultant is required to have access to the following transactions in R3 :

1. ST22 
2. SM37 
3. SM58 
4. SM51 
5. RSA7 
6. RSA3
7. RSA6
8. SM13
9. SE16
10. RSO2

Depending on needs:

1. SP01
2. DB02
3. SM14
4. SUIM
5. SM01

Authorizations for the following transactions are required in BW:

1. 1. RSA1 
2. 2. SM37 
3. 3. ST22 
4. 4. ST04 
5. 5. SE38 
6. 6. SE37 
7. 7. SM12 
8. 8. RSKC 
9. 9. SM51 
10. 10. RSRV 
11. 11. RSMO

Query Design Tips for Performance

• Use filters - use as many as possible to reduce amount of data need to read from source
• Use the 0infoprov in query restriction if data model is designed in a multiprovider that contain data segregated by same definition for each Infocube
• Avoid using condition and exception
• Use free characteristics - use as few as possible
• Use restricted key figure with care - generate more complex sql
• Use more than one structure with care
• Characteristics/Navigational attribute are more efficient than hierarchies
• Avoid complex queries - consider RRI to offer analysis path rather than define queries showing everything in the infoprovider
• Check the Use Selection of Structure Elements option

*While filters are evaluated by the database, conditions and exceptions are usually 
evaluated by the application server resulting in a much larger volume of data being transferred between both servers.

Some throw in for BI Whitepaper titles

1) IT Globalization impacts to BI and ERP
2) ERP convergence impacts to existing BI landscapes
3) Global template architecture and its feasibility in long run and local change management
4) The handshake relationship between BI and its feed partners - APO, SRM,CRM, ERP
5) Master Data Management gearing up towards ERP convergence
6) Reaping benefits from Consolidated Financial Reporting
7) How BI plays its role in bridging the gap between a fragmented business entities and Global Enterprise Model

Dimension attribute, navigational attribute or display attribute?

When modeling the infocube, the decision to include the infoobject in the dimension object itself or either as a navigational or display attribute is influenced by
1) slowly changing dimension/historical data view
2) cleanliness of the master data

Display attributes values are stored in the dimension table itself and it has its advantage such as data will reflect data from the historical-truth perspective.The disadvantage is the data in the infocube has to be reloaded if there is unclean or changed of master data assignment to the value of the infoobject which happen quite frequently in a global alignment environment. If the impact of truncating the infocube and reload is too high, a new infoobject that refers to the same business object may be introduce to replace the one with unclean master data. The later one may be labelled as 'no longer in use'.

Navigational attribute values are not stored in the dimension table but in the attribute table of the characteristic used in the infocube. Any changes to the attribute value assignment of the infoobject does not require the realignment of infocube. It may however require realignment of the aggregate containing the navigational attribute. If the infoobject and its attribute values are used in hierarchy , the hierarchy may required to be drop before the attribute value can be changed.

If the value is stored as a display attribute, any changes on the value of the attribute of the infoobject won't impact the data in the infocube as the display attribute is not stored as SID in the dimension table.Display attribute does not support drill down reporting and it can only be displayed in the report.

Either it's navigational or display attribute, the report will always refer to the current value in the master data and modelling the infocube with this approach does not support historical-truth.