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SAP + Business Objects = SAP Business Objects… Brilliance!

It has been over a year since SAP announced its acquisition of Business Objects. During those long 14 months it seems that the branding experts at SAP have decided on a new name for BO. Yes, they brilliantly came up with the catchy and yet classic “SAP Business Objects”.

Here is what their Business Partner Announcement said on the topic:

Business Objects brings to SAP an extremely strong brand in the business intelligence and analytics category. The Business Objects brand delivers credibility with its customers as well as with those customers it shares with SAP. Brand research has shown that the combination of SAP and Business Objects produces even stronger brand recognition and purchase consideration, for both those customers that identify themselves as predominantly SAP and those that rely on other platforms.

Changes to Begin in January 2009

Beginning in January 2009, Business Objects will be known as a division of SAP as part of the new, branded portfolio called SAP BusinessObjects. This portfolio will encompass all of the solutions in the SAP BusinessObjects division, including business intelligence (BI); information management (IM); enterprise performance management (EPM); and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions. With the evolution of the Business Objects brand, the naming of individual products will also become more uniform and descriptive.

The new look and feel will be most evident in external campaign activities and Web presence. Outbound marketing campaigns will adopt the SAP visual brand identity and launch a new SAP BusinessObjects portfolio area on www.sap.com. This dedicated area, linked from the homepage of the SAP Web site, will present the full line of solutions for large, midsize and small businesses. At the same time, the Business Objects Web site — www.businessobjects.com — will be retired, and visitors will be redirected to the new portfolio area.

So what does this mean to you. Well, www.businessobjects.com will be retired, the product should remain virtually unaffected for at least another year, and your company may be able leverage their SAP contract to get BO at a discount. It does say that naming of BI products will become more uniform. So Designer, watch your back, you are about to fall under the SAP naming microscope. And you too “BusinessObjects”, I think your elusive single-word defiance and confusion is about to come to an unexplained end.

Next time SAP, just save yourself the time and $100,000′s and send me a very conservative $10,000 check and I will give you an equally powerful and catchy brand name for your next acquisition in 1/365th the time.

Business Objects Support Portal, What Happened!?!?

The SAP AG Acquisition of Business Objects

If you don’t know yet that SAP AG purchased Business Objects for a mere 4.8 billion Euro in a friendly takeover then you must have been too busy creating universes and reports; you really need to get out more often or at least surf the web a little during breaks. This all was announced in fall of 2007, I’m not sure when it became official. But I can tell you that in July 2008 BO’s support web portal got folded into SAP’s support web portal, the SAP Service Marketplace, and in the process a few things changed.

New Support Role Call

Firstly, some new roles, or names of roles, have emerged. Apparently each business customer should have a “primary contact” or “superadministrator” who retains the maximum level of authorizations in the SAP Service Marketplace. This person(s) determines which company employees will have access to BO-SAP Support and what their assigned authorizations are with regards to the support application in the SAP Support Portal. The “named contacts” will generally have access to some or all of the following:

  • Display customer messages
  • Create customer messages
  • Send customer messages to SAP
  • Confirm customer messages
  • Open service connection
  • Maintain system data

New BO-SAP Service Marketplace Terms

    There are a few new terms that you should understand and adopt in order to make your support experience as painless as possible.

  • Customer Message: Become familiar with this term, this is your new “case” or “customer case”. It seems SAP found a way to remove any negative tones from the name for cases and at the same time remove most of the logical meaning from the name. Good luck with using that term in your communications, it will confuse everyone including yourself until we fully accept and adopt it.
  • Notes Database: You could probably guess this on a multiple choice test, but I will give you a huge hint, KB… ok, to be fair, I tire of all the acronyms so let me stop being a hypocrit, this is your new Knowledge Base.
  • Super-Administrators: I gave this away above, generally this is the central point of contact and the person who contols the Regular Support User membership.
  • Regular Support Users: These are the grunts, they women and men suffering through support issues, opening “Customer Messages” with BO-SAP, and praying for a pormpt response and resolution.
  • Netviewer: the SAP standard desktop sharing tool, replacing everyone’s favorite WebEx. Hmmm… as of last week I have heard that many BO Support folks are still using WebEx, but expect this to phase out.

Links

Business Objects Support – Tips and Tricks

  • Keep in mind that this SAP Support Portal is new to BO Support as well. They are still adjusting to the new terminology and functionality of the SAP Service Marketplace.
  • In reported experiences Internet Explorer 6 seems to have trouble with some of the website, especially the creation of Customer Messages. I recommend using Mozilla FireFox, it seems to do well.
  • Tired of Entering Your User Name and Password on Each New Page?:For efficiency and Sanity’s sake while working within the SAP Service Marketplace I strongly recommend, no I insist, that you make use of the “Single Sign-On with SAP Passports”. The “Single Sign-On Certificate” can be requested, and installed directly from the home page of SAP Service Marketplace or from the ‘My Profile’ left-hand navigation bar.
  • Preferences: Mine were all set to default European ones. I recommend you update these under My Profile. This might save some confusion with date and decimal formats. It also might prevent Business Objects Support from calling your personal cell phone at 6:00 AM.
  • Search Before Creation: OK, this is a strong trend everywhere support can be requested and BO-SAP are trying to help you out here. Get used to it. You can quickly execute a search and click “Create Message” button (towards the bottom, a dark gray button for me) if you know you have to open a case no matter what.
  • It gets easier, it really does. The first time you have to search for your system you will feel disoriented, but your perseverance pays nicely the next time as this system will be available as a hyperlink to quick selection. You will need to select a “Component” each time, but this gets easier as you learn where the important ones are in the hierarchy.

Business Objects SAP Support Tips and Tricks Guides!

I have managed to get my hands on some documents being distributed by Business Objects Support personnel that provide some screenshots and tips on navigating and creating support cases, I mean customer messages on the new SAP Service MarketPlace. I don’t think BO would mind me distributing these, enjoy:
BO SAP Support – Tips and Tricks
BO SAP Support – Creating an SAP Customer Message

References