ERP Business Intelligence (BI) means analyzing and reporting of data from different heterogeneous data sources. SAP Business Warehouse (BW) integrates data from different sources, transforms and consolidates the data, does data cleansing, and storing of data as well. It also includes data modeling, administration and staging area.
The data in ERP BW is managed with the help of a centralized tool known as ERP BI Administration Workbench. The BI platform provides infrastructure and functions which include −
- OLAP Processor
- Metadata Repository,
- Process designer and other functions.
The Business Explorer (BEx) is a reporting and analysis tool that supports query, analysis and reporting functions in BI. Using BEx, you can analyze historical and current data to different degree of analysis.
SAP BW is known as an open, standard tool which allows you to extract the data from different systems and then send it to the BI system. It also evaluates the data with different reporting tools and you can distribute this to other systems.
The following diagram shows an open, broad and standard based Architecture of Business Intelligence.