5 Common Mistakes to Avoid when Implementing Business Objects 6 in Your Business

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5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing Business Objects 6 in Your Business

Are you planning to adopt Business Objects 6 for your organization’s data analysis and reporting needs? While this SAP product can offer many benefits, such as real-time insights, self-service access, and intuitive visualization, it also requires careful planning, execution, and monitoring to yield successful outcomes. Unfortunately, many companies fall into some common traps that hinder their Business Objects implementation and undermine their return on investment. To help you avoid these mistakes, here are the top five things you should watch out for when implementing Business Objects 6 in your business:

1. Not aligning Business Objects with your business objectives

What is the main reason why you want to use Business Objects? Is it to reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction, optimize operations, or something else? Whatever your goal is, you need to ensure that your Business Objects implementation aligns with it. This means that you should define your key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics upfront and map them to the Business Objects reports, dashboards, and universes. You should also involve your stakeholders, such as business users, IT staff, and management, in the process of defining and validating the KPIs and requirements. Failure to do so can result in irrelevant or inaccurate data, limited adoption, and reduced value.

2. Underestimating the complexity of data integration and quality

One of the most challenging aspects of Business Objects implementation is the integration and quality of data. You need to ensure that your data sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, flat files, or web services, can be connected to Business Objects and that the data is accurate, complete, consistent, and timely. You also need to handle data cleansing, transformation, and enrichment to ensure that the data is useful and insightful. This requires a thorough understanding of your data architecture, data flows, and data governance. Neglecting these aspects can lead to data silos, data conflicts, data errors, and data credibility issues.

3. Overlooking the importance of user training and adoption

Another critical factor in Business Objects implementation is user training and adoption. You need to ensure that your end-users, who are the ultimate consumers of the reports, dashboards, and universes, can use them effectively and efficiently. This means providing them with adequate training, documentation, and support that cater to their needs, skills, and preferences. You also need to encourage them to use Business Objects regularly and to integrate it into their daily workflows. Neglecting these aspects can result in user resistance, low usage, and poor feedback.

4. Failing to establish and follow a governance framework

Business Objects implementation requires a strong governance framework to ensure that the data, reports, dashboards, and universes are managed effectively and securely. You need to establish policies, procedures, and roles that govern the creation, modification, distribution, and access of these artifacts. You also need to ensure that these artifacts comply with regulatory and internal standards and that they are reviewed and audited regularly. Neglecting these aspects can result in data breaches, data leaks, data loss, and non-compliance issues.

5. Not leveraging the latest features and best practices

Finally, Business Objects implementation requires continuous improvement and innovation to remain relevant and competitive. You need to stay updated with the latest features and best practices of Business Objects and apply them to your implementation if relevant. For example, you can leverage the new data visualization components, such as Lumira Designer and Explorer, to create compelling and interactive reports and dashboards. You can also adopt the agile methodology to deliver Business Objects projects faster and more collaboratively. Neglecting these aspects can result in a stagnant and outdated Business Objects implementation that fails to meet your evolving business needs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, implementing Business Objects 6 in your business can be a rewarding and transformative experience if you avoid the common mistakes outlined above. By aligning Business Objects with your business objectives, handling data integration and quality, promoting user training and adoption, establishing a governance framework, and leveraging the latest features and best practices, you can create a Business Objects implementation that provides you with actionable insights, competitive advantage, and business value. Just remember to plan, execute, and monitor your implementation carefully and to continuously improve it over time. Good luck!

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