Influence the World’s Leading BI Tools with SAP’s Idea Place

[Former Member]

Can the collective wisdom of crowds be a successful driver for increasing the overall effectiveness of enterprise BI tools?

The answer appears to be a resounding ‘YES’ based on the successes of SAP’s Idea Place and their BI product offerings. Let’s take a look at a few facts about how SAP is doing compared to their competitors and I'll give you a few highlights about the SAP’s Idea Place as related to my favorite BI platform – SAP BusinessObjects.

Did you know…

• SAP is the worldwide leader in BI and Analytics Enterprise software
• With revenue of over $3 Billion exclusively from BI and analytics products
• Over 10,000 ideas submitted on the SAP Idea Place
• A TON of crowd-sourced ideas delivered to customers around the world and built into product offerings

Question: In an industry with an annual revenue of over $14B, how does SAP fare against the competition?

Answer: They dominate all competitors with over a 21% market share.

Question: What’s the industry?

Answer: Business Intelligence and Analytics Enterprise software

So how do they do it? Two words – SAP BusinessObjects.

Let’s drill into those numbers a little and get to the heart of the $14B number. Any idea what the largest subsegment is in the BI and Analytics segment? It’s – BI Platforms with 59% or $8.5B in annual revenue.

So, what makes SAP BusinessObjects so great?

• The BI Platform known as the BI Launch Pad – The perfect BI portal for delivering analytics to users
• The Information Design Tool (IDT) and Universe Design Tool (UDT) – The Semantic Layer rules. Need I say more?
• The Central Management Console – Security and administration at your fingertips
• Web Intelligence – The gold standard of query, analysis & reporting tools

Get Involved

• How can we as developers, analysts, consultants, users and customers be sure that our favorite (and the WORLD’S favorite) BI Platform is meeting our business needs?
• How can we become active contributors to the SAP BI ecosystem?
• How can I influence future Fix Packs, Service Packs and product releases?

Answer: That would be the SAP Idea Place – https://ideas.sap.com

Let your voice be heard and contribute to SAP’s Idea Place by voting on existing ideas, commenting on ideas to add your perspective, or submit new ideas!

So, what exactly is on the SAP Idea Place?

Products are presented in 7 different categories with the most sessions found in the Analytics grouping with 36 different sessions.

• Analytics
• Business Applications
• Cloud
• Database Technology
• Mobile
• Other

Question: What’s the most popular product session on Idea Place with nearly 20% of all Analytic ideas?

Answer: Web Intelligence

Top 5 Analytic Product Sessions

• Web Intelligence – 19.45% with 1519 ideas
• BI Platform – 11.36% with 887 ideas
• Crystal Reports – 8.49% with 663 ideas
• SAP BPC for SAP NW – 7.64%  ideas
• SAP Lumira – 4.33% with 338 ideas

Note: Disqualified from this list:

• Xcelsius - 5.11% of ideas. Since SAP recently announced that SAP Dashboards would be retired soon.
• Access Control - 5.0% of ideas. Interesting. But more governance/risk/compliance than BI.

The most popular area on SAP Idea Place is…. (drum roll)… Web Intelligence!

BI analysts, consultants, and developers alike have a ton of great ideas about Webi on the Idea Place. I also have a few submitted ideas with “a few” being... two or three… or thirty. (I hope the product developers are looking and will consider a few of them!)

What should I know about crowd-sourcing BI ideas

• It takes time.
  • You’ll have to invest some time to read through all of the ideas. Vote for the ones that interest you and that you think would deliver value to your user base.
• The ideas with the highest number of votes aren’t always the best.
  • This is simply because there are some excellent ideas that haven’t been seen by many readers yet. Comment on those ideas. Vote for them. Hopefully the product developers will give them full consideration.
• If the ideas bring value to users, the likelihood is high that they'll be delivered.
  • I have loads of confidence in the Webi (and SAP BusinessObjects) product developers and know that all ideas will receive consideration and many will be delivered.

Fact check

Below are the sites I used for financial facts used in this article:

• According to Forbes, SAP had over $3B in BI and Analytics revenue in 2013. That number is expected to increase in 2014 and the gap between SAP and it's competitors is expected to get wider.
  • http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/04/29/2013-business-intelligence-and-analytics-market...
• Gartner agrees
  • http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2723717

Thank you for reading. I’ll look for your ideas. Please vote for mine. :smile:

- Jim Brogden

http://twitter.com/jhbrogdenjr