"Datawatch|ES has solved our SAP reporting needs, with no new programming, and no need for live connections to the SAP system or other database. Plus, Datawatch|ES has dramatically cut our ongoing SAP costs."

 

Datawatch|ES is a web-enabled, programming-free business intelligence system, transforming SAP report output into live, customized online data, with no direct access to SAP required.

Many organizations running ERP systems struggle to end the frustrations and cost of running, printing, bursting, and distributing ERP reports and other business documents enterprise-wide. Also they want to enable business users to work with ERP data quickly and easily, for decision making and effective management without the need to rely upon the IT Department or charge additional ERP training/license costs. Recently, the European Patent Office (EPO) effectively resolved these concerns by selecting Datawatch|ES for programming-free, web enabled business intelligence derived from its vast library of existing SAP reports.

The EPO, based primarily in Munich, Germany, and The Hague, Netherlands, is the patent granting authority for Europe, with over 6,000 employees located throughout the continent. EPO utilizes most of the standard SAP modules including Financial Accounting (FI), Controlling (CO), Material Management (MM) and Project Systems (PS) modules.

Unfortunately, EPO faced several serious SAP reporting challenges. First and foremost, EPO concluded it had too many expensive (named) SAP licenses for occasional users of the system who often simply needed to run certain reports. However, the existing reports did not match the users' expectations and designing and developing ad-hoc applications to replace them was rather expensive too. The expertise and the resources required to write these new reports implied long development times. And the same applies for any change - also the minor ones.

The problems did not stop there. Other SAP reports required layout and logic changes, but the means to do so were deemed too complicated for end users. Some SAP reports were not useful without data found within other reports, making it difficult to match procurement requests with vendor invoices and assigned budgets. These reporting problems caused numerous reporting delays, which often resulted in an unacceptable loss of budget control.

Datawatch|ES resolved these and other needs identified by EPO, with no new database programming; the solution also enhances the company's existing SAP investment. Datawatch|ES was implemented at a fraction of the cost, time and complexity of alternative business intelligence solutions.

Datawatch|ES will replace the need for manual running of SAP reports with web-enabled archiving of SAP reports on a regular basis. End users will access Datawatch|ES, not SAP, to access needed reports, with full security applied uniformly across the organization; for example, EPO director might have authority to access to more indexed report sections than a manager.

From there, EPO end users can also automatically mine the data from archived SAP reports into an online table, ready for sorting, filtering, export to Excel or PDF.

"Thanks to Datawatch|ES, our existing SAP reports are easily produced and distributed and can be made accessible online with complete security. Our managers and directors can view the data mined from those reports in any manner they wish. We are very pleased with the new SAP reporting and data access and flexibility we now have from Datawatch|ES."

Datawatch even fulfilled EPO's need to combine data buried within several different reports, using Monarch Data Pump, a server-based solution providing automated report mining and data exporting. The data from certain SAP reports are automatically pre-mined and aggregated together into a single report by Monarch Data Pump, which can then be archived into Datawatch|ES.

Finally, Datawatch|ES also provided EPO online forms management, by rendering certain report data into XML forms. For example, certain vendor data can be rendered into online reminder letters, which is then securely accessed online by the vendors themselves.

The ROI provided by Datawatch|ES was compelling: EPO was able to discontinue many SAP named licenses and cut the CPU processing requirements -these savings alone have paid for EPO's Datawatch|ES system. The organization has also achieved substantial savings in IT time and resources previously devoted to SAP reporting requests and SAP user administration.

In the words of Paul Giroul, Application Management Finance of EPO, "Datawatch|ES has solved our SAP reporting needs, with no new programming, and no need for live connections to the SAP system or other database. Plus, Datawatch has dramatically cut our ongoing SAP costs. "

"Thanks to Datawatch|ES, our existing SAP reports are easily produced and distributed and can be made accessible online with complete security. Our managers and directors can view the data mined from those reports in any manner they wish, with the click of the mouse. We are very pleased with the new SAP reporting and data access and flexibility we now have from Datawatch|ES."

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