In the recent couple of years I became convinced in what researchers had been telling for quite a long time – in the rise of unstructured data, or, simply put, plain text in natural language. Some analysts go as far as predicting that volume of unstructured data available to companies will exceed one of the ‘traditional’ structured data, which we read from database tables and are accustomed to build intelligence on. Analytical potential of unstructured data is well discussed (to mention a couple of uses, that would be consumer sentiment analysis and entities finding), so why don’t we talk about some practicalities of text data processing, and how SAP products could be of use.

I would like to start this series of blogs with discussion on how unstructured data from social media can be loaded to a data warehouse.

In this context appears the name JSON — an open source text-based data interchange format. The acronym stands for JavaScript Object Notation – the name points to the roots of the format, but, actually, the standard is used outside of Javascript, with implementations of JSON for various platforms referenced at its homepage, http://json.org.

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Throughout this article, Pratik Mukherjee discusses what BI means in today’s world in terms of implementation, the physics of an enterprise, creating a foundation for BI and effectively ensuring its future.
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In this article, Adrian Paino outlines some of the more advanced tools that go beyond the normal data warehousing and reporting functions. It is impossible to cover the full range of SAP BI products in just a few pages, so don’t worry if your favourite product is not listed here.

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Does this scenario sound familiar? An organisation has a BI system in place for reporting and analysis, but different silos and divisions believe it doesn’t meet their requirements. They take their concerns to IT, who are so swamped with other activities, they don’t have time to address the concerns. As a result, those divisions decide to create their own solution – perhaps using Excel or an Access database. This leads to an upsurge of IT solutions being managed and supported by business staff rather than IT staff, and business-critical decisions being made on the basis of reports generated from patched-together solutions. Meanwhile, the BI system sits idle.

If an organisation is serious about BI and getting the most out of their investment, a structured approach is necessary – and establishing a Business Intelligence (BI) Competency Centre (BICC) can provide that structure.

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