This January SAP has bought a tool called XL reporter which is based exclusively on MS Excel.
Here are the hyperlinks .

http://bi.ittoolbox.com/news/dispnews.asp?i=125613

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/21/HNsapbiefforts_1.html
Gadi Shamai VP Solutions management SAP

http://technews.orb6.com/stories/nf/20050114/29719.php

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1750709,00.asp

http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/0/B00CAEEFDF814016CC256F930075823F?

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/12/HNbizoneupgrade_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/12/HNbizoneupgrade_1.html


Here are some snippets for people who may not be able to view these hyperlinks full for any reason.


The forthcoming XL Reporter tool from SAP is intended to help staff create reports
and perform analysis without the help of analytics experts. It works with Microsoft Excel
and Outlook, allowing SAP data to be exported directly to desktops.

iLytix's capabilities will allow customers to create ad hoc reports using
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) Excel. "Excel is the primary tool among
SMBs to show reports and manipulate data," Gadi Shamia, vice president,
solution management, SAP Business One, told CRM Daily.

The new feature, called "XL Reporter," makes SAP Business One information
immediately available in Microsoft Excel. It allows customers to create new
or modify existing financial and business reports, as well as schedule
reports for automatic delivery. It also lets users develop alternative business
reports and "what if" scenarios with new point-and-click and drag-and-drop
features

SAP Business One is one of the two applications SAP offers SMBs. The other, called
"All-in-One," targets the upper end of the market, while Business One has been
designed for companies with 10 to 250 employees.

ILytix makes a tool called XL Reporter that helps companies pull together business reports
and budgets that can be viewed in Microsoft's (Profile, Products, Articles) Excel spreadsheet
software. Including the tool with Business One means customers won't have to export and reformat
data to get it from their business applications into Excel, said SAP spokesman Jim Dever.

It will also add improved reporting and data analytics capabilities through the acquisition of iLytix,



Excel is indispensible in SMB sector (companies with 10 to 250 exmployees as SAP). According to me
turnover definition of SMB sector is companies upto USD 100 million turnover annually. Correct me if wrong.

There is nothing to suggest that these XL reporter are not useful to big Enterprise customers too.
Sure these are extremely useful due to its direct connectivity to ERP repository access rather than
round about connectivity (ERP--> OLAP cubes --> Excel).

The reason why companies extend to Excel is the easy to use drag and drop features in MS excel pivot table
and Excel Group by features.
Pivot Table in MS Excel is a very superior browser to browse dimensions and corresponding cellset values
in multi-dimensional format. All other cube browsers talk of compatibility with MS excel due to it’s
superiority in following aspects.

1. Better Charting

2. Better printing & emailing facility

3. In-build convertor to translate pivot table to interactive htm web page.

4. Better pre-defined presentation layouts.

However Pivot table is not a scalable and secure storage for multi-dimensional data.
It can support upto 8000 distinct rows and 255 distinct columns (ie almost 2 million cellsets).
Although this limit applies to summary data (ie distinct rows and columns after transform) ,
it just can not replace scalable and secure multi-dimensional structures like cubes in SQL server
or Oracle 9i onwards.

It should help Baan customers design their BI strategies accordingly and include this Mini BI Excel
features as part of it.

Regarding MS-Excel as superior spreadsheet solution: are there any Baan customers who are using OpenOffice as an alternative? How do they value OpenOffice vs MS-Excel?

By open office I believe u talk of star office .

I dont have any information as to how SAP views this .

All I know is Openoffice is used more in Europe. In all other markets MS
Office dominates the show. People even do not know about openoffice.

I have not done any systematic study of MS Excel vs OpenOffice as spreadsheet solution.
I did c some articles on openoffice screen which look similar . Further I don't know
the programmability aspects of Openoffice which is what required in a tool of this sort.

When I told MS Excel as superior multidimensional browser , I meant in case number of cellsets
are less (ie less than it's limits 8000 rows / 255 cols / 2 Million cellset) , it is
the best drag and drop solution available for managers to query their data intuitively
which is what intelligence is all about . This is 1 reason why all BI vendor talk of compatibility
with MS Excel. All other sundry in-built features like printing / emailing /interactive web
browsability / pre-defined layouts / smart tags/ calculated fields / calculated items / compatibility
with any data source / drag and drop charting etc go to make it extremely useful to a manager
who is layman as far as IT is concerned.

Another aspect of this post is to show that SAP considers integration with backend ERP as very important factor for this.