Technical White Paper and Case Study MSys BW Tools

http://www.msysinc.com

Oct 2010
Copyright 2004 Msys Inc All Rights Reserved.SAP, SAP logo, BW, and mySAP.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG Germany,

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Introduction
MSys Inc., has been developing time saving tools for SAP BW customers for the last several years. We have a dedicated team of SAP Certified Platinum consultants working on our tools. The tools are used by customers around the world and have been certified by SAP. All our tools are written in ABAP and easy to implement. Typical installation takes about 10 minutes. All our tools license allow unlimited number of users Competitively priced. Our tools work with 3.x and 7.x We give 30 day trial of any of our tools; try it before you buy it! No questions asked.

Our BW Tools
Copy Query Allows you to copy BW queries from production to development without doing a reverse transport. The query definitions are exported to a flat file and imported into Development system and the query is re-created. This allows customers to move ad-hoc queries from production to development, make changes and move back to production. Query Documentation This tool allows you to create a document from your BW query; it documents all query properties, rows, columns, key figures, variables, filters, etc. Transport Checker Tool This tool allows customers to validate the transports for any missing objects before the transports are moved to QA or production. DSO Documentation tool This tool allows you to document your DSO with all the properties like Key fields, data fields, indexes, navigational attributes, transformation. In addition to this it gives you analytics on the DSO. Multi provider validation tool This tool allows you to validate your multi provider for any missing or invalid mappings. Master Data reporting tool to report on time dependent data from info objects Custom business content Custom info providers with data for various industries.

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BW Copy Query Tool

Business Scenario
Most of the BW customers allow end users to create queries on the production system. This gives lot of flexibility to the end users without calling the IT department for new queries. It also adds some challenges. Customers want to get some queries from production into development, rename, make changes, do a formal QA and transport to production. This happens all the time. Without our tool there are only two options Reverse transport the query (Most of the companies do not allow this) Recreate the query manually error prone and time consuming; usually takes hours for each query

Our tool written in ABAP will solve this problem within minutes. All our tools support both 3.x and 7.x

Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Copies all query objets Cost effective Attractive pricing Copies in minutes vs. hours when manually doing Very mature product

Case Study
Customer Problem Large phmartuetical distributor Users create 100s of queries every week and demand that many of them be product ionized. IT department has dedicated people to recreate queries. Time consuming and error prone Solution Implement MSys Copy tool and eliminate the manual process No of queries per week 10 15 Time to copy using our tool 2 minutes Cost savings Eliminated 40 hours per week of consulting time Business Impact Queries that are exact copies of production; no errors. The turnaround time is within a day vs. a week before. More happy users __________________________________________________________________________________ MSys Inc., All rights reserved * Contact bw@msysinc.com Page 3

Query Documentation Tool

Business Scenario
A typical BW installation has many queries. Due to SOX or company/government requirements the queries must be documented and approved for auditing and regulatory purposes. The documents are also used for debugging, team meetings etc. This process (without our tool) is done manually. Typically developers take screen shots of the queries and document it. Due to the manual process, the documents are outdated (are not updated when queries are changed) and may fail audit checks. Our tool written in ABAP will solve this problem within minutes. It creates a nice looking word document containing the query definition.

Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Documents query properties, rows, columns, filters, restricted key figures, calculated key figures, variables, etc.

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Case Study
Customer Problem Defense company in Europe The company is required by government agencies to document each query in the production system. The company used one person to create documents manually. The IT department was audited many times and found violations in the query documentation. Implement MSys Documentation tool and eliminate the manual process 10 20 hours per week 2 minutes Reassign the resource from the documentation process Less audit violations; high impact documentation. Better debugging and team meeting with business users with enhanced documentation.

Solution Hours of work eliminated Time to document using our tool Cost savings Business Impact

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Transport Checker Tool

Business Scenario
Most of the developers know of the pain that we go through to transport any BW object. For example when you transport a query from development to QA the transport may fail because you did not collect all objects. You get this error only after the transport is done. To fix you do the following Collect missing objects Create paper work for change management Get approval Do the transport If you find any missing objects, repeat the whole process again.

This leads to lot of frustration and lost time in productivity. This problem impacts heavily during cut-over when you have limited time and want to transport objects successfully. Our tool written in ABAP will pro-actively solve this problem. Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Check is done BEFORE you do the actual transport Identifies all missing objects by comparing the objects collected in the transport vs. the required objects and active objects in the destination system.

Case Study
Customer Problem Large utility company The development team spends lot of time in fixing transports with missing objects; additional paper work and delays for the project. Implement MSys Transport checker tool and proactively eliminated transport related errors. Achieved 99% success rate for transports. 10 20 hours per week Reassign the resource from the documentation process Ease of transport in general; get frustration out of development team. Meet deadlines during cutover periods.

Solution

Hours of work eliminated Cost savings Business Impact

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DSO Documentation Tool

Business Scenario
BW development team manually documents the DSO. The process takes lot of manual time and it is not keeping up with the changes to DSO. Our tool written in ABAP will solve this problem within minutes. It creates a nice looking excel document containing the query definition. Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Documents all properties of DSOs including the following o Information and settings o Key fields, data fields o Navigational attributes o Indexes o Analytics on the size of the DSO and its unique records for each object o Transformation

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Case Study
Customer Problem Retain Industry Company developers create DSO documents manually using screen shots in word document. Document is outdated since they do not get updated when changes to DSOs are made Implement MSys Documentation tool and eliminate the manual process 10 20 hours per week 2 minutes Developers are using the time saved in other tasks. Clear and correct documentation reflecting the latest changes to the DSO. Used to debug and discuss design challenges with the team members. Added benefit is the Analytics section of the documentation which gives the developers the sizing of the DSOs with unique records for each info object. This helps the developers to improve performance by eliminating objects or creating indexes on objects used to filter data.

Solution Hours of work eliminated Time to document using our tool Cost savings Business Impact

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Multi Provider Validation Tool

Business Scenario
Customer uses lot of multi providers for reporting purposes. The providers are physically partitioned by quarters. Each quarter a new provider is added to the multi provider. Developers miss to map one or more key figures. This is not a technical error and the multi provider goes to production. The reports are not correct the key figures are wrong. The development team changes the multi provider and transports to fix the problem. The turn around time is about a week

Our tool will allow the BW team to validate the multi provider before it is moved to QA. Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Check is done BEFORE you do move the multi provider to QA.

Case Study
Customer Problem Pharma company New providers are added to multi providers each quarter. Mistakes are made in mapping and are hard to detect. Reports become unusable for more than a week and users lose confidence in the BW solution. Implement MSys tool to identify errors. 1 Week turn around time for each multi provider Time and money saved. More confidence in the BW system by business users; eliminate errors in reporting.

Solution Hours of work eliminated Cost savings Business Impact

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Master Data Reporting Tool

Business Scenario
Customer uses lot of custom HR reports (time dependent attributes of master data) even though the data is available in BW. Because of Bex limitation, users can not display the change in attributes over a period of time.

Our tool will allow the end users to create time dependent report on any master data objects including HR objects. Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Installation is done within 10 minutes Transparent to end users. Acts like a regular info cube and users use any front end tool to report.

Case Study
Customer Problem Solution Hours of work eliminated Cost savings Business Impact Pharma company ABAP reports to report on HR data. Time consuming and error prone. Implement MSys master data reporting tool 20 hours per week of custom abap coding Time and money saved. Adhoc reports done by end users without IT support.

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Custom Business Content

Business Scenario
The data in any BW system is only part of the puzzle. Customers need external data to find out the following : How are we doing against the industry? How to get more customers using the combined data (BW data + external data) How to get the trends in various industries etc.

MSys provides both content and data catering to various industries. The content (BW objects) are in our own SAP approved name space. In addition to the content we provide data also. We have content for the following industries : Pharma / Medical o Hospital, ambulatory, OSHA, allergy, Asthma, diet, cholesterol, weight, physical activity, health care expenditure data Commodities o Price data, options data Energy/Utility o Consumption, petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, crude oil supply, spot prices, production, reserves, refining, processing, retail price data Transportation o Driving costs, licensed drivers, boating accidents, vehicle registration data Consumer o Spending data on food, beverages, housing, transportation Food and Drug o Drugs, vaccine, clinical inspections, drug universe, medical devices and NDC data.

Our tool will allow your BW team to integrate any third party/external data with your own company data. Features Written in ABAP, no additional software/hardware required Approved namespace from SAP assures that our objects will never interfere with your objects Installation is done within 10 minutes Out of the box functionality. We clean the data and make it ready for BW

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Case Study
Customer Problem Medical Device company Identify new customers more efficiently. Currently uses outdated data collection and analysis. External data is collected and stored in excel format manually. Manual analysis of this data with BW data. No visibility to BW system. Implement our healthcare data to identify new customers. Implemented the custom info provider and provided data from all the 50 states on a monthly frequency. More accurate data and along with the customers BW data gave visibility to the entire organization. About 2000 hours per custom info provider and about 400 hours per year per info provider on maintenance and trouble shooting. Enormous and can not be measured. Got new customers within a short period. New customers !

Solution

Hours of work eliminated

Cost savings Business Impact

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Performance Audit
Business Scenario
Customer has problems with performance of reports, loading data and in general wants to check the health of the BW landscape.

Our Solution
We have created the standard procedure to check the performance of BW landscape. Our team of basis experts and BW experts spend about 2 weeks time onsite with the customers BW team and come up with recommendations. Check all BW system from a basis point of view which includes the hardware, memory, CPU, patch levels, databases, app servers, db servers, solution manager, etc. Check all the landscape from BW perspective; go through the early watch report and recommend solutiuon. Discuss and educate the BW team on best practices, pain points and how to solve it. Follow up with a 1-2 day visit every month.

Some of our customers have reported significant improvement in their reporting, loading and in general the health of their BW landscape.

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BWA
Business Scenario
Customer is new to BWA and wants some expert advise and help in installing, configuring and monitoring BWA.

Our Solution
Our BWA team spends 2-3 weeks with customer onsite and helps the team to get BWA up and running. Vendor selection/RFP (if needed for BWA appliance) Capacity planning and tips on reducing the size of the hardware to decrease the expenses Best practice approach for deploying info providers on to BWA Initial index build, fill Backup and recovery process Weekly batch jobs creating and maintenance Measure improvement in performance and document

Our customers have found that our services are very valuable. For some customers with smaller BW footprint, we completely eliminated the BWA option by improving query, best usage of query cache, html cache and other techniques.

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Contacts
Email Web Phone Fax bw@msysinc.com http://www.msysinc.com +1 510 797 4965 +1 510 280 7352

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Testimonials
Find out how Fortune companies around the world are using our products and services to save money and time. Remember that we offer a 30 day trial period on all our products.

The MSys Query utilities save us 10 to 20 hours a week by moving queries across our BW environment. Within weeks it had paid more than for itself in query development time and reduced errors.

Steve Lewis, Director, BI Analytics, McKesson Pharmaceutical, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.

Your tool has eliminated lot of manual process in creating documentation to comply with our auditing. Thank you for saving tons of time for our developers

Director, Defense Company

Thank you for Raj and his team for a smooth upgrade to the new BW version. Director, Medical Devices Company

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