Intelligent Enterprise

SAP plans to integrate its business intelligence tools into the SAP Business All-in-One enterprise resource planning software for medium-sized businesses.

SAP said at the CeBIT conference in Hannover, Germany, this week that the BusinessObjects applications would include pre-built reports and dashboards that would offer visibility into operational data to spot trends and variances. The BI software would bepre-configured for faster deployment.

"By combining SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions with our business applications specifically addressing demands of mid-size companies, we will provide an offering that will help our customers effectively and efficiently manage their business operation,' Robert Vetter, senior VP of Business All-in-One marketing, said in a statement.

Analysts have advised companies to use BI as a tool for navigating the current recession. In a recent report, Forrester Research said information and knowledge management professionals should use the technology as a corporate asset to continue to compete and survive the economic downturn.

To help channel partners in migrating data into the Business All-in-One system, SAP plans to also release data migration tools for extracting, mapping, validation, loading and reconciling data across an organization.

In addition, SAP will offer a Best Practices for Data Migration package, which offers plans for providing pre-configured processes as well as detailed guidelines and validation content for a number of data objects commonly required by most companies. There also will be pre-configured content for a broad set of master and transactional data objects that are the foundation for the professional services, discrete and process, consumer products and wholesale industries.

The BI-loaded Business All-in-One would be available through SAP and its channel partners later in the year. The initial roll-out countries are the United States, Brazil and Germany. The migration tools will also available this year, initially in the United States and Germany.