Business Content; Roles and Authorizations for SAP BW

Under the generic term "Business Content", SAP delivers preconfigured objects for BW. Using Business Content objects, you can implement BW more quickly, since solutions are delivered that are ready for use straightaway for many business problems that you want to process with BW. The Business Content contains:

R/3 extractor programs
DataSources
InfoObjects
InfoSources
InfoCubes
Queries
Roles
workbooks

The Business Content is continually being further developed; numerous specialists for the different industries and components are participating in this development.

Business Factors

The employees in your company have different requirements when it comes to type and scope of information. Using information resources optimally is always of high concern within a company. If individual employees can get the right information at the right time, they can then use it take the appropriate action. With growing competitive pressure, a company's ability to react quickly is essential. In the face of this, companies often attempt to have as many information sources as possible. However, this can lead to an unwelcome flood of information. Inconsistent or complex sources of information make you lose time when searching for data, therefore making it more difficult for you to react quickly.

The information that is already entered has to be adapted to the user's requirements. The majority of users prefer to work with predefined reports that are easy to access. These users need to be able to call up key figure values simply and easily. However, some users require extensive evaluation options. For example, they may want to navigate between certain sections of a report. As well as needing complete access to predefined queries and data collections, only a few users need to be able to create new queries and data sets in order to solve specific problems.

Business Content contains numerous objects that simplify the implementation of BW and accelerate the construction of an effective reporting system. These objects are grouped together to enable you to use them effectively: For all areas of your company and for many industry sectors, there are roles that provide users with the relevant reports and applications that they need to perform their tasks. In the future, cross-component applications called Analytical Applications will be available to provide direct access to all the information related to a process. They allow you not only to analyze these process, but also trigger actions and reactions in the systems that deliver data.

Areas particularly suitable for the implementation of Analytical Applications are, for example, Supply Chain Management (for example, supplier and catalog analysis, manufacturing analysis), Customer Relationship Management (for example, e-business analysis, market exploration) or analyses within the company, such as performance analysis, payment analysis, or human capital analysis.

Industry-specific Content

Industry-specific key figures and roles are also parts of Business Content. Examples of industry-specific roles:

Retail - Category Manager
Consumer Products - Key Account Manager
Pharma - Business Unit Manager
Banking - Account Manager
Media - Editor.
Automotive - Plant Manager
Oil & Gas - Exchange Manager

Business Performance Management with SAP BW

By linking key figures with other objects from the Business Content, you create the prerequisites for continually improving the efficiency of your company. The periodic generation of key figures (KPIs) gives you a clear picture of the results of the decisions made within your company. External providers, such as Dun & Bradstreet or A.C. Nielsen, deliver data to you from other companies in your industry that you can compare with the data from your company.

Business Content in Metadata Repository

The Metadata Repository offers the user the option of an overview of the entire Business Content delivered by SAP, or of seeing which Content objects are activated in the system. Navigate in the Metadata Repository using the hyperlinks. You can access the Metadata Repository in the Administrator Workbench, over an Internet server, or over local HTML pages. You can call up HTML pages from the Metadata Repository.

The Advantages of Business Content

Immediate access to interpreted information
Reports, data models, extractors, transformations
Consistency between business and administration processes
For employees on all levels and in all functions
Simple enhancement possible
Checked and comparable information
Comprehensive selection of standard key figures
Best practice model out of more than 2200 installations

Business Content Installation in Three Steps

With the setting 'Install Business Content' in the Administrator Workbench, you can copy the delivered Business Content and activate it. When you do this, the system automatically takes into account all the extra objects required as well as the activation sequence. In the menu 'Grouping', select the other Business Content objects you want to be included. Groupings bring together all the objects of one area. 'required objects only': Only those objects are taken into account that are essential for activating the selected objects (minimum selection).

'data flow before': All those objects are collected that provide data on one object.
'data flow after': All those objects are collected that get data from one object.
'data flow before and after': All those objects are collected that deliver data as well as pass it on.
'Security for system copy': With this setting you can collect only some of the objects for a transport request. You can incorporate this request again after a system copy.

To be able to start activating objects from Business Content, call the Administrator Workbench and
choose "Business Content". There are various ways of installing Business Content. You can select individual objects such as InfoCubes, InfoObjects or InfoSources and activate these with the objects assigned to them. If you use the SAP role concept, you can transfer roles from Content. When you transfer a role, all the necessary BW objects are activated.