ATUL PATANKAR [ ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 2000 LINDA WILSON [ ASUG INSTALLATION MEMBER MEMBER SINCE: 1999 JUERGEN LINDNER [ SAP POINT OF CONTACT MEMBER SINCE: 1998 [ ] Allstate Integration of BW and BO Reporting Solution – Marketing Effectiveness [ April 16, 2010/Jay Cone Tom Sidor

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. Allstate at a Glance  The Allstate Corporation is the nation’s largest publicly held personal lines insurer.  A fortune 100 company with $132.7 billion in assets.  Allstate sells 13 major lines of insurance, including auto, property, life and commercial. Allstate also offers retirement and investment products and banking services.  Allstate is widely known through the “You’re In Good Hands With Allstate®” slogan.  The Allstate Corporation encompasses more than 70,000 professionals with technology operations located around the globe.  Allstate is reinventing protection and retirement to help individuals in approximately 17 million households protect what they have today and better prepare for tomorrow.

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 3  Project overview  Reporting tool selection process  Project opportunities with BW to BO integration  Lessons learned  Report examples  Q & A Agenda

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 4  Sales Order reporting was at a basic level for Marketing purposes  Unable to report by:  SKU  Agent  Marketing Initiatives  Territories  Reports were limited, manual, and subject to inaccuracies  Reporting also impacted the efficient management of:  Marketing Campaigns  Order/shipping behaviors (by material, agency, region, seasonal impacts) Project Overview Current Reporting Deficiencies Client  Allstate Marketing Department

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 5  Provide Marketing with timely and accurate material order reporting  Provide summary level reporting with the ability to analyze supporting detail  Understand the ordering and usage behavior of agents  Understand the impact of marketing initiatives on material usage in the field  Provide information to aid cost reduction initiatives and forecast future usage Project Overview Business Goals and Objectives

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 6  Used a combination of custom and standard SAP extractors for both transaction and master data  Transformations were performed within BW  Transformed data was loaded into a cube and Bex queries were built on a MultiProvider Project Overview High Level Design

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 7 Project Overview High Level Transaction Data Flow

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 8  Tool Decision was based on several factors  SAP Reporting Direction  Allstate BI Tool Direction  Project Team Skills  Project Requirements/Customer Input  Focused on BO tool set  Considered Voyager, Pioneer, Xcelsius, Crystal and Webi  Project requirements and tool availability limited choices to Webi or Crystal  Selected Web Intelligence  Used a Bex query based Universe Reporting Tool Selection Process BI Reporting Strategy

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 9 BO WEBI Reporting Flow

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 10  SAP Business Warehouse  SAP NetWeaver 7.0  Support stack level 16  Business Intelligence Content 7.03  Sun operating system  Oracle database level  Business Objects  Business Objects Enterprise 3.1 SP 1 FP 1.6  Installed on a 14 - server cluster running Windows 2003 servers with WebSphere 6.1 as an application server  Connecting to Oracle, SQL Server, DB/2, SAP R/3 and SAP BW data sources BW and BO Release Details

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 11  Updating Bex affects the BO Universe  Most Bex query changes require a Universe refresh (Be watchful of any customization done to a Universe)  Cascading LOV (List of Values) will need to be recreated  Previously deleted objects may return  Customization to Universe objects should be reviewed  Backend BW Characteristics or KF additions had unexpected impacts on BO Reports in progress  Changed the fields displayed Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 12  Hyperlinks used to drill to a child report  Special logic required to pass “optional” prompt values from query selections  Improper sorting on a column that is hyperlinked  Cannot use standard formatting techniques for numbers  Use of the database delegated feature was necessary but had other reporting implications  Limited the use of reporting variables within the report body and often displayed #Unavailable  Unexpected values of #Multivalue or 0 can appear and be difficult to resolve  Summary Totals were at times inaccurate Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 13  The combination of mandatory Bex input variables, BO cascading list of values, and a BO query input prompt is not supported by Webi and results in an error message  The work around was to create Optional Bex Input Variables Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 14  Other Issues  Not all Bex Time Objects received the same treatment in BO  Some are represented as text and others as date  Bex Fiscal Period 009/2009 is text not date  BO will create Formatted Dimension objects that are character based, along with primary numeric measure Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 15 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration  Reporting Performance Strategy  Perform report logging and tracing within BW and on the BO reporting server  Analyze results and identify performance improvement areas  Optimize Bex query  Optimize Webi query and reports  Transport SAP note updates  Recommended Source Material – SAP Community Network’s Webinar  SAP NetWeaver BW and BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Performance Best Practices SAP NetWeaver BW and BusinessObjects Web Intelligence Performance Best Practices  The above is a link to the Webinar.

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 16 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration  Reviewed BW Statistics Tables  RSDDSTAT_DM and RSDDSTAT_OLAP  Captured MDA Log Files  Provided MDX statements sent to BW  Provided Time Stamps for MDX execution  Analyzed the query within RSRT  Executed MDX statements using T-code MDXTEST Perform report logging and tracing

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 17 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration  Reviewed the results of the statistics and logs for the applicable queries and concluded:  Data mart processing was relatively quick  Majority of time was spent on OLAP processing  Causes of excess OLAP processing:  Redundant queries required for totals  Exception aggregation used in counts  Use of RKFs, CKFs and Structures within Bex  Use of hierarchies for displaying data  Flattening process to present data to Webi Analyze results and identify causes

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 18 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration Optimize Bex query  Updated Bex query properties in RSRT  Checked “Use Selection of Structure Elements”  Minimize records selected by adding relevant selection criteria

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 19 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration Optimize Webi Query and Report  Removed all fields in the Webi query that were not required for the report  Optimizes MDX sent to BW  Maximized the selection criteria within the Webi query panel  Broke up a single large query into two smaller queries  Special calculations required lower level of detail  Allowed BW aggregation on main data  Used the BO scheduling feature for long reports

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 20 Project Opportunities with BW to BO Integration Transport SAP Note updates MDX: Filter transfer in the case of cross join MDX: Performance when filtering on hierarchy node symptom Error while maintaining DTP for Master Data Update MDX: Buffering of hierarchy metadata Performance problems occur when reading the master data Performance optimization for hierarchy authorizations MDX: Performance improvements during determination of axes MDX: Performance of the UNION() function MDX: Performance of DESCENDANTS (..., LEAVES) function MDX: Performance of function EXCEPT(.Members,.[All]) MDX optimization: Reading minimal set of key figures

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 21  Upgrade both BW and BO to the latest available support packages prior to starting the project  On an initial integration of BW and BO allow for additional prep, research, and training in the project plan  Complete the BW build prior to starting the BO reporting build to minimize impacts and rework  Create multiple Bex queries and Universes for dissimilar BO reports (not just one)  Design reports that maximize the summarization on BW  Where possible break large Webi queries into multiple small queries  Minimize the records extracted for detail reports Lessons Learned

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 22 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 23 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 24 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 25 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 26 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 27 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 28 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 29 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 30 Report Examples

[ Real Experience. Real Advantage. 31 ]  Thank you Q & A