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based on aggregated data in information structures. These capabilities are lim-
ited to data within the SAP ERP system. Today, however, companies need
even more powerful reporting capabilities that combine data from multiple
sources. This is the domain of business intelligence, which we discuss next.

Demo 2.6: Review SAP ERP reports

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence is a general term that refers to the overall capabilities
a company uses to collect and analyze data from a variety of sources to bet-
ter understand its operations and make better managerial decisions. As we sug-
gested in the previous paragraph, the OLAP environment within SAP ERP
cannot perform the powerful analytic capabilities needed to provide business
®
intelligence. For these purposes, businesses utilize SAP Business Warehouse
(SAP BW) (Figure 2-19).
SAP BW is a separate system that receives data from the SAP ERP sys-
tem, other SAP systems such as SAP CRM and SAP SRM, and other non-
SAP systems. These data are stored in the SAP BW database. Whereas the

Figure 2-19: Reporting using SAP BW

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