Challenges in BI upgrade

Scope & objectives

To minimize the risks involved in the Upgrade and to improve the performance of the Upgrade and reduce the Downtime.

Business Benefits:

Standardization of existing processes using new functionalities thereby reducing custom developments.

Increased Value Added Activities – Updated Process, End User Training and Validation Testing Documentation

Salient Features:

Steps involved in a successful BI7 upgrade and what are the costs to the business, technical dependencies that need to be considered in an upgrade, dependencies between upgrading to BI7 and integrating SAP's new acquisition.

By following the below approach, the risks can be mitigating for a successful BI Upgrade.

The challenges facing BI/BW projects can be technical, or fiscal in nature. Discover how to eliminate problems before they occur, by preparing for them from the outset. Learn about common BW mistakes, find out how to avoid them and understand how successful BW projects can be executed.

Thoroughly study the customer requirement by analyzing their landscape, and go through the specific Master guide of the Upgrade and decide on the approach that has to be followed for the available functionalities in their current landscape.

Go-through the component Upgrade guides for the particular approach and document all the relevant notes that were referred for similar Upgrades.

Analyze whether there any developments in the source BW release and decide on the strategy that will be followed in the subsequent SPDD and SPAU modifications. You may need an SSCR key to perform the modification adjustment. Get the key before you upgrade the system. The adjusted objects are collected in a repair that is released to a transport request. You cannot release this transport request; instead you must flag it for transport in transaction SPDD. Towards the end of the upgrade, SAPup exports the request to the transport directory /usr/sap/trans and registers it for transport in the umodauto.lst file.

Analyze for any large tables which require ICNV conversion, and decide on the approach for ICNV conversions depending on the Upgrade strategy.For up-to-date information, see SAP Note 490788 - ICNV in upgrade to Web AS 6.20.

If the customer wants to implement security after the Upgrade, first check whether 3.x reports are used AS-IS or whether they want to convert them to 7.0. Authorization concept in BI 7.0 has been changed dramatically; following is the note that can be referred to. New authorization concept: Authorization Analysis note 955990 - BI in SAP NetWeaver 7.0: Incompatibilities with SAP BW 3.x.

Team structure for a BI Team

Changing skills requirements to upgrade BI; managing the relationship with external consultants empower the masses without killing the system; understanding the benefits a BI Competency Centre can deliver; understanding the critical skills of an effective BI team.