Clariba Obtains the SAP Partner Center of Expertise Certification

Certificate PCoE

SAP service and support audit confirms that Clariba can support its customers in accordance with SAP’s current technical and organizational standards, thereby receiving the Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) Certification.

On the 30th of May Clariba employees received the amazing news – They had passed the final audit and SAP was granting Clariba Support Center with the PCoE certification.

This was the finishing line of a process that started in 2011 and took a lot of effort from Clariba Support Center members, going from the installation of SAP Solution Manager (the system used to provide support), through certifying support center staff, creating all marketing materials and finally undergoing a 6-hour audit to evaluate if all requirements were in place.

“It’s been a very long and complex process, since it was our first experience with SAP native applications. Installing and configuring SAP Solution Manager has been a big challenge, but now it  allows us to provide full SAP Enterprise Support to our customers. We use SAP Solution Manager to monitor our customer installations remotely as well as connect them with the resourceful SAP back-end infrastructure. In addition, SAP Solution Manager provides our support customers with a Service Desk available 24x7, to create and track their incidents and to ensure a fast and efficient service for very critical issues at any time” says Carolina Delgado, support manager at Clariba.

The Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) certification affirms that the defined procedures, guidelines and certified support team members are available to provide qualified, timely and reliable support services for SAP BI Solutions.

“As a requirement for achieving the PCoE certification, all our support consultants have the Support Associate - Incident Management in SAP BusinessObjects certification and as a commitment to high quality and professionalism, we require all our consultants to be certified in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. Both accreditations ensure that our support staff has the required knowledge to efficiently address and resolve any technical issue that may arise. In addition, they can draw from a wide knowledge base that comes from many years of experience on SAP BusinessObjects installation and development as well as on a continuous interaction with the SAP community" mentions Carolina.

PCoE Process

With this in place, Clariba Support Center can offer VAR delivered support to its clients, providing the knowledge and support tools for SAP BusinessObjects licenses through a single point of contact ─ a familiar, agile and available partner, ensuring that a defined and known point of contact is always available to customers in the event that any problems arise in their SAP BusinessObjects systems.

Carolina points out that the Key benefit is the proximity with customers and their environments. “In most cases we are maintaining BI systems which have been deployed by Clariba itself. This gives us the advantage of better understanding the customer's environment, so that we can provide a more accurate and tailored service.”

As a SAP Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE), Clariba can offer their clients

a fully qualified staff according to SAP quality standards;

real-life SAP BusinessObjects implementation, training and support experience;

a relationship with the client organization built on trust and past successes;detailed knowledge of the organization’s history, systems and business processes when the BI system has been deployed by Clariba;

staff trained for rapid issue resolution and focused on customer satisfaction;

very strong cooperation and relationship with SAP experts worldwide and an integrated support platform that ensures the best quality of service.

For more information on Clariba´s Support Center offerings visit http://www.clariba.com/bi-services/support.php

BI and Social Media - A Powerful Combination (Part 1: Google Analytics)

If you take a look at the latest Business Intelligence (BI) trends you will see a great deal of mentions revolving around the “Social Media” topic. There are a lot of interesting ideas out there and it seems to be certain that this will become even more prominent in the near future since it continues growing and it is becoming an intrinsic part of our society. This also means that the information related to Social Media becomes more valuable with each passing day, becoming the new “gold mine” for Business Intelligence consultants when handled correctly. No wonder there are a lot of us that want to start digging in!

In this blog post, I will share the research I recently made with the objective to determine the possible alternatives to extract and use information from Google Analytics to develop SAP BusinessObjects reports and dashboards. An important note is that I did not consider SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator’s Unstructured Data and Text Analysis capabilities on purpose, in order to see what other options were out there.

Extracting data from Google Analytics

The first thing you must know is that in December 2011, Google released the Google Analytics Core Reporting API (in replacement of its old Data Export API) which allows us to extract data from its application. Although it is not rare to see the old API still being used, if you are starting a fresh development and have the opportunity to choose, then go with the new version of course. Considering these interfaces, I found four different strategies that stood above the rest.

Programmed Google Docs spreadsheet: It is a Google Docs spreadsheet available free of charge, which contains embedded Google Apps Script code to connect to the Google Analytics Data Export API. Once authenticated, it allows the user to define the dimensions, metrics and filters filling in the fields of the document with the desired values. Subsequently, this spreadsheet can be exported as a .CSV file and use it as a data source to be reported with several tools of SAP BusinessObjects such as Web Intelligence or Data Integrator, for example. Credits go to Mikael Thuneberg who developed this. 1

GA Data Grabber: It offers a 7-day trial version, the cost to purchase the Google  Analytics module is 299USD per year (at the present date). It consists of an Excel file containing Macros and Visual Basic code to run queries with any of the dimensions, metrics or filters available in the Google Analytics Core Reporting API. This is one of the best options I found so far, since it has a user interface that is very easy to use, good flexibility to select metrics, dimensions and filters, besides having a fairly comprehensive structure that facilitates the understanding of the type of information that can be obtained from the API. By having the data available in an Excel file there are more SAP BusinessObjects tools that can be involved in addition to Web Intelligence and Data Integrator, such as LiveOffice that allows direct integration with Xcelsius dashboards. 2

Reporting Utility of Google Analytics: This functionality is already included in the Google Analytics application. It is a relatively manual process, which requires the user to have some prior knowledge of the dimensions and metrics that can be obtained. However, custom reports can be created with specific information that can be exported to .CSV files so they can be incorporated into the reporting capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects.

Custom Application Development: If third party tools are not the desired option, then the best strategy to use is to develop a custom application in any common programming language, such as PHP, Ruby, Python, Java and JavaScript. The Google Analytics Core Reporting API lets you connect with these type of applications. In spite of representing the option that requires more effort to be implemented, it is also the one that permits to have a perfectly tailored, automatable and free solution. The data can be potentially stored in text files or custom databases from where any SAP BusinessObjects tools can draw information.

Official Documentation always does the trick

I did not want to get into too much technical detail because they are very susceptible to change through time, and it is always best practice to look at the official documentation published by Google. In this sense, I will leave you with a few links that will be very useful to deepen the technical knowledge necessary to develop an integrated solution with Google Analytics.

• Google Analytics Core Reporting API Overview:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/

• Dimensions & Metrics Reference (to understand what information can be retrieved):

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/dimsmets

• Google Analytics Core Reporting & Data Export API Change Log:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/community/export_changelog

• Google Analytics Core Reporting API Client Libraries:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/gdataLibraries

• Google APIs Console:

https://code.google.com/apis/console

Final Thought

As with all things that become “the latest trend” and  develop at a hectic pace, a lot of changes are expected to happen, meaning that sooner rather than later there will be more and better options available. So my final thought is to keep an inquisitive eye for all that is moving around Social Media and its most popular networks, because this is the future that is already happening.

If you have any questions or anything to add to help improve this post, please feel free to leave your comments.

References

1 For more info: http://www.automateanalytics.com/2010/04/google-analytics-data-to-google-docs.html

2 For more info: http://www.gadatagrabbertool.com/

Working with Data Services 4.0 repositories

On my previous blog,  “Installing Data Services 4.0 in a distributed environment”  I mentioned there was an important step to be carried out after installing data services in a distributed environment:  configure the repositories. As promised, I will now walk you through this process. Data Services 4.0 can now be managed using the BI Platform for security and administration. This puts all of the security for Data Services in one place, instead of being fragmented across the various repositories. It means that Data Services repositories are managed through the Central Management Console. With Data Services 4.0 you will be able to set rights on individual repositories just like you would with any other object in the SAP BusinessObjects platform. What is particularly interesting about managing Data Services security using CMC is that you can assign rights to the different Data services repositories.

Data Services Application in CMC

Now you can log into Data Services Designer or Management Console with your SAP BusinessObjects user ID instead of needing to enter database credentials. Once you log into Designer, you are presented with a simple list of Data Services repositories to choose from.

I advice anyone who is beginning to experiment with Data Services to use the repositories properly from the start! At first it might seem really tough, but it will prove to be very useful. SAP BusinessObjects Data Services solutions are built over 3 different types of meta-data repositories called central, local and profile repository. In this article I am going to show you how to configure and use the central and the local repository.

The local repositories can be used by the individual ETL developers to store the meta-data pertaining to their ETL codes, the central repository is used to "check in" the individual work and maintain a single version of truth for the configuration items. This “check in” action allows you to have a version history from which you can recover older versions in case you need it.

Now lets see how to configure the local and central repository in order to finish the Data Services’ installation.

So, let’s start with the local repository. First of all, go to Start Menu and start Data Service Repository Manager Tool.

Choose “Local” in the repository type combo box. Then, enter the information to configure the meta-data of the Local Repository.

Configuring Local repository

For the central repository chose central as repository type and then enter the information to configure the meta-data of the Central Repository. Check the check box “Enable Security”.

Configuring Central repository

After filling in the information, press Get Version in order to know if there is connection with the data base. If there is connection established, press Create.

Once you have created the repositories you have to add them into the Data Service Management Console. To do that log in DS Management Console. You will see the screen below.

DS Management Console Error

This error is telling you that you have to register the repositories. The next steps is to click on Administrator to register the repositories.

On the left pane, click on Management list item.  Then click on Repositories and you will see that there are no repositories registered on it. In order to register them, click the Add button to register a repository in management console.

Finally, write the repository information and click Test to check the connection. If the connection is successful, click apply and then you will be able to see the following image which contains the repositories that you have created. DO NOT forget to register the central repository.

DS Management console

After that, the next logical step is to try to access Data Services using one of the local repositories. Once inside the Designer, activate the central repository that you have created. Data services will display an error telling you that you do not have enough privileges to activate it.

To be able to active the central repository you have to assign the security. To do that go to Data Services Management Console. In the left pane go to “Central Repository” and click on “users and groups”.

Central repository - Users and groups

Once you are inside Users and Groups, click “add” and create a new group. When the group is created select it and click on the “users” tab which is on the right of the group tab (see the image below).

Add and Create new group

Now you can add the names of the users that can activate and use the central repository in the designer tool. As you can see in the image below the only user that you added in the example is the “Administrator”.

Add user names

Now the last task is to configure the Job Server to finish the configuration.

As always, go to Start Menu and start Server Manager Tool. Once you start the Server Manager the window below appears.

Server Manager tool

Press Configuration Editor a new window will be opened. Press Add and you will have a new job server.

Configuration editor

Keep the default port and choose a name or keep the default one for the new Job server. Then press Add to associate the repositories with the job server created.

Once you press “Add” you will be able to add information in the right part of the window “Repository Information”. Add the information of the local repositories that you have created in the previous steps.

At the end you will see two local repositories associated.

Add Repository Information

With this step you have already finished the repository configuration and are now able to manage the security from the CMC and  use the regular BO users to log into the designer and add security to the Data Services repositories like you do with every BusinessObjects application.

If you have any questions or other tips, share it with us by leaving a comment below.

Join Clariba at the SAP Forum and SUG MENA Conference events in Doha on May 29 and Dubai on May 30

Clariba is pleased to be sponsoring SAP Forum and SUG MENA conference in Qatar and UAE in May 2012. SAP Forum (known as SAP World Tour in 2011) and the SUGMENA Conference will be jointly held by SAP MENA and SUGMENA (SAP User Group, MENA) in May 2012. This is a unique opportunity where attendees can enjoy unparalleled networking with peers from many industries, thought leadership keynotes and innovative demonstrations.

“Clariba is glad to be sponsoring the SAP Forum Qatar and UAE for the second year. We had a great event in 2011 and expect 2012 to be even better” says Marc Haberland, Managing director of Clariba. SUG MENA conference will be jointly held with SAP Forum on 2012 and Marc comments “we think this is a great addition to the event, as we get the chance to learn more about how SAP users are experiencing the solutions we offer”. Marc sees the event as the SAP highlight of the year in MENA “it´s the main SAP event in the region and a great occasion for business and IT professionals to network and to learn more about leading technologies like SAP BusinessObjects BI4, SAP HANA and many more up and coming innovative solutions”. On a final note, Marc says “don’t miss the chance to visit us in the Partner Exhibition zone where we will have our team showcasing our solutions. If you happen to be attending the event in Dubai, make sure you catch our customer case study presentation with ADCO on the Business Analytics track.”

As a trusted SAP Partner in Business Intelligence in the region and a specialist in SAP BusinessObjects technology, Clariba is on board of this incredible event as a sponsor. Members of the Clariba BI consultancy will be present at our booth in the exhibition area. They will be available to demonstrate our dashboard and reporting solutions for a variety of industries and business units and will be happy to guide you through the SAP business intelligence offerings. You will also have the chance to enter the drawing to win an iPad when you visit our booth.

Clariba will also be presenting at the Dubai event. Join the Business Analytics track (track 6), from 15:45 to 16:20 where you will have the chance to hear from Clariba, Jason Bath (Director of BA&T SAP MENA) and one of our customers, the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), on how Clariba and SAP have helped them gain actionable financial insight into their business and achieve significant benefits.

In addition to meeting Clariba at our booth, the event also offers great benefits to professionals, such as C-level executives, IT decision makers and Business managers, whose career depends on the successful execution of business objectives. These are some of the activities participants can look forward to:

• Seeing the latest solutions underpinning SAP’s latest product strategy demonstrated on stage and at the SAP technology showcase.
• Hearing from some of the leading regional CIO’s on how they are driving SAP investments to deliver the competitive edge and productivity improvements required by their organisations.
• Witnessing the latest Ecosystem technologies in the SAP Forum and SUGMENA Conference Sponsors Exhibition.
• Networking with attendees from most SAP customers in your region as well with SAP Partners like Clariba.
• Listening to visionary keynote from Jim Snabe (co-CEO SAP) in Dubai and Steve Stathis Tzikakis (Senior Vice President, Head Premier Customer Network, SAP EMEA) in Doha and learn about the latest essential business technology trends and innovations.
• Discovering how today's open technologies and business networks can help create a business beyond boundaries.
• Realizing how investing in technology can deliver greater visibility for improved decision-making, operational excellence, flexibility and sustained growth.

The SAP Forum and SUG MENA conference in Qatar will be held on May 29 in the Grand Ballroom of the St Regis Doha, at Doha west bay from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Attendance at the SAP Forum is free of charge. REGISTER NOW to secure your place.

The SAP Forum and SUG MENA conference in Dubai will be held on May 30 in Sheikh Rashid Hall in the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre - Dubai World Trade Center, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Attendance at the SAP Forum is free of charge. REGISTER NOW to secure your place.

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Clariba delivers innovative, reliable and high-quality business intelligence (BI) solutions to customers worldwide. We are recognized and respected as one of the leading SAP Business Intelligence consultancies in EMEA. Our consultants, based in the Middle East and Europe are SAP BusinessObjects certified professionals and experts in the planning, installation, development and deployment of BI solutions. Clariba develops best practice BI solutions for dashboards, reporting and analysis, providing our customers with clarity and actionable insight to improve their business performance. Our customers in the Middle East are leaders in the telecommunication, education, manufacturing, and banking sectors. By working closely with business leaders and IT teams, Clariba turns vital data from ERP, CRM and other transactional systems into actionable insight for all levels of the organization. For more information on Clariba’s business intelligence solutions visit www.clariba.com or contact us at info@clariba.com.

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 4: SAP is not Agile Enough

Picture3

The 4th and last post on our SAP Myth busting series, this article intends to show how SMEs can meet their need for speed with SAP.A bigger business is a better business. It’s a common assumption, but it’s not strictly true. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have a number of advantages over their larger counterparts. Their size is often their strength – it makes them agile. In fact, most SMEs we speak to pride themselves on this. They can respond faster to changes in the market and take advantage of new insight and opportunities faster than larger organizations.

To capitalize on their agility, SMEs need systems that play to this strength. Unfortunately, some SMEs get bogged down by manual processes. They rely on off-the-shelf software that doesn’t quite meet their needs and depend on spreadsheets for their business intelligence. All these things slow their businesses down and mean they’re more likely to miss opportunities. In this environment, executives often resort to making important decisions on a gut feeling rather than the latest data.

That’s why it’s always a surprise to hear an SME wondering if SAP software will slow them down. Maybe the perception is that SAP software is only for enterprise organizations, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s another business myth. Rather than slow these businesses down, SAP helps them become more agile and able to capitalize on opportunities faster.

Clariba has helped companies streamline their internal reporting processes, arriving in a particular case to an 80% reduction in the time it took to produce monthly internal reports. We also allow organizations reduce reliance on manual data, improving reporting accuracy, reducing errors and promoting decisions based on solid information rather than just gut feeling.

More importantly, we have the expertise to speed up the implementation process, so that your company can start enjoying the benefits of an SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence solutions in a short time frame. Furthermore, if you are worried about the impact the change will have over your employees, Clariba has best-in-class trainers, with years of experience, ready to help your employees make the transition from a spreadsheet based organization to the innovative and integrated information hub they will soon benefit from.

Contact us to discover how much SAP and Clariba can deliver to your company.

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 3: SAP is Too Complicated for Us

Blog number 3 on our SAP Myth Busting Series. It intends to show how SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligece (BI)can take you on a simple route to real business benefits. We know that implementing new IT systems can be a daunting prospect for some businesses. They worry that it’ll interrupt their everyday activities, take time to deploy and that staff will need time to get used to it. Similarly, when we talk to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) about SAP software, they’re often under the false impression that SAP software is too complex for a business of their size. While they agree it could help them, they’ve always assumed it’s built for large enterprises.

The complexity of SAP is yet another myth that vanishes when you start looking at hard facts. We often speak to SMEs and they’re looking for software that’s easy to run, install and use, and they want to see real-life examples to prove it. They want to see organisations like theirs that have been there and done it. Thankfully, for us, SAP has 88,000 SMEs that have been there and done it. You can see what some of them have achieved by clicking here, they’ve got the figures to prove that it doesn’t take long to deploy the software and see a return on investment.

In the last few years, the number of SMEs implementing SAP software has tripled. That’s partly down to the fact that it’s easy to use and install, but also because it delivers all the benefits that SMEs are led to believe are just for the big boys. It’s not usually very long before they’ve automated previously manual processes, gained greater insight into their business and generated significant cost savings.

Clariba can help you unleash the potential of your SME, with the right business intelligence solution for your company, no matter how you are running it now. Our solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects technology and the expertise of our consultants will help you implement faster so you can enjoy the benefits quicker. We are also experts in end user training, to make sure that your employees will make the best of their new BI tool.

Still think SAP might be too complicated for you? watch this SAP Video and think again!

If you are an SME and want to know more about Clariba and SAP BusinessObjects Solutions, get in contact with us.

Clariba Webinar – Exxova MyBI Mobile: Movilidad para su Negocio

Obtenga la posibilidad de tomar decisiones a cualquier momento visualizando los datos de su empresa desde su dispositivo móvil con Exxova MyBI

Asista a nuestro Webinar (en Castellano) 16 de Mayo de 11.00 a 12:00 (CET GMT+1:00)

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Muchas empresas han realizado importantes inversiones en el desarrollo de sus soluciones de Business Intelligence. En el caso de SAP BW y BusinessObjects, dichas empresas han acumulado cientos de informes utilizando herramientas como Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence y Dashboards (Xcelsius) de SAP, realizando además grandes esfuerzos para establecer un modelo de seguridad y suponiendo todo ello, una inversión considerable. La percepción actual del mercado es que los dispositivos móviles actuales, no pueden manejar el análisis de datos de la misma manera en que lo hacen las soluciones de BI avanzadas y maduras de hoy en día, por lo que los negocios tienden a modificar sus procesos y contenidos para la movilidad.

Sin embargo, la aplicación MyBI Mobile permite a las compañías aprovechar sus inversiones anteriores. Con ella el usuario puede acceder al contenido crucial de toda la empresa en cualquier lugar, en cualquier momento y sin ninguna modificación importante en el contenido o la plataforma existentes. Los usuarios pueden imprimir, cambiar, actualizar y hacer todo el trabajo que realizan actualmente en el sistema BI de la empresa a través de un dispositivo móvil, facilitando la acogida por parte de los usuarios.

Le invitamos a invertir una hora de tu tiempo para conocer esta solución y verla en acción en nuestro webinar MyBI. La agenda del evento es:

• Introducción
• Características principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Beneficios principales de Exxova MyBI Mobile
• Demo
• Preguntas y respuestas

REGISTRESE AQUÍ

Para obtener más información visite nuestro sitio web.

Saludos Cordiales,

Lorena Laborda Business Development Manager – Clariba EU

SMEs Run SAP – Myth 2: SAP is Too Expensive for Us

Continuing on our series of blogs on Myths that surround SAP, this second one intends to show how spending can be the best way to save.

Invest to Save

A popular piece of received wisdom is that you have to speculate to accumulate, or, in simple terms, you've got to spend money to make money. Most businesses know that you can’t just throw money at a problem. However, they also recognise that carefully planned purchases can pay dividends.

Clariba works with many small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and we know how important every financial decision is to them. That’s why it’s important that we can demonstrate the value of what we do. Most of the businesses we talk to know SAP software can help them reduce costs. However, some of them have been under the impression that the software is only available to enterprise organisations with big budgets. These businesses risk missing out.

We get to break the good news that SAP is an affordable option for SMEs. In fact, SAP has around 88,000 SME customers to prove it. These businesses are not only reducing costs with SAP, they’re also boosting profitability. In most cases, that translates into a quick return on investment. As a result, we find that most of the SMEs we talk to conclude that they can’t afford not to deploy SAP software.

Whats more, Clariba´s solutions based on SAP BusinessObjects have helped small and medium sized business to:

• automate distribution process of reports to users

• improve management performance with reporting, query & analysis, and data integration

• optimize customer support resources

• improve campaign effectiveness

• enhance data quality and compliance

We also have available our range of pre-packaged solutions called FastTrack. They are accessible and quick to deploy, which means your company can start enjoying the benefits of a top technology tool in a short time frame.

Here is what one of our SME clients has to say about one of our FastTrack solutions: “With Clariba’ FastTrack for Siebel CRM solution we are now able to better analyze data, segment customers, measure the ROI of our marketing initiatives and provide a rolled-up sales forecast. This capability allows us to be more competitive, offer better service to customers and provide a faster response to changing market conditions.”

Is your company an SME?  Contact us to  know more about how to benefit from SAP Solutions

SMEs Run SAP - Myth 1: You Have to be Big to Work with SAP

Myths and misnomers litter the business world. All small businesses are agile, all enterprises are big corporate entities, sales figures are the most important, customers will always buy the best product. As we all know, these don’t stand up to scrutiny. Some large businesses are agile, some small businesses aren’t, cash flow is more important than sales and the best product isn’t always the most popular. Business people can’t afford to make assumptions and to blindly follow these misconceptions. That’s why we do our research and base decisions on facts. We started a series of blog post about myths that surround SAP, the platform that Clariba chose to bring Business Intelligence (BI) to our customers. This first one intends to explain why you DON´T have to be an enterprise to work with SAP and SAP BusinessObjects.

SMEs can run SAP

SAP actually works with a client base composed by a  majority of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SAP software combined with Clariba´s implementation expertise allows them to automate processes and gain valuable insight into their businesses. By doing this, these businesses take assumptions out of the equation – it means that instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, they work with the facts. The result is they find it easier to spot opportunities and identify areas to improve.

However, before these businesses start dealing with the facts, they often need to challenge another set of preconceptions. One Clariba comes across frequently is that SAP only works with enterprise organizations. But this isn’t the case. More than 77% of SAP’s customers are SMEs. That’s about 88,000 businesses! What’s more, SAP has been working with SMEs for nearly 40 years. As a result, the company understands the unique challenges they face and the tools they need to grow.

Clariba´s work is to translate that to the customers, helping them match their requirements to the best SAP tool available. Our audits help SME´s to get an idea of where they are in terms  of their BI environment and the benefits they could enjoy with Clariba and SAP:

• our accessible pre-packaged solutions allows for rapid deployment

• streamline processes by automating reporting tasks

• improve data quality, reducing misleading information that leads to poor decision making

• uncover hidden  facts and make insights available to take the best course of action

• help small companies improve management of different departments

If you are an SME and want to know more about SAP Solutions, contact us.

Problem Uninstalling Data Services

I have faced a problem uninstalling Data Services  recently and I wanted to share the resolution, just in case you find the same problem. I was trying to upgrade a Data Services machine following SAP procedure (this is copying the configuration files uninstall and then install the new version – not very sophisticated as you can see). This was not as simple as I first thought.

Problems started after uninstalling the software, the new version refused to install stating that I should first uninstall the previous version. I uninstalled the software again… but Data Services is still there, so uninstalled again, but this time the process failed (makes sense as the software is already uninstalled), so I kept trying… reboot…uninstall… reboot…rename older path name… reboot…you see where this is going…

So, how did I finally solve this?

1. Start Registry Editor (type regedit in a command window or in the Execute dialog).
2. Take a backup of the current Registry content. To do this, with the top node of the registry (Computer) selected go to File -> Export and select a name for the backup file.
3. Delete the Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIM (Suite XX.X may vary).  NOTE: You may want to write down the key KEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREBusiness ObjectsSuite 12.0EIMKeycode first as it contains the license code.
4. To remove the entry for the software in the Uninstall Window’s dialog, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows CurrentVersionUninstall and look for a KEY which property DisplayName is “BusinessObjects Data Services.
5. Finally delete the content of the installation directory (typically: C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsBusiness Objects Data Services)

Now you can launch the installer and it should work.

Hope this may help you if in case you are experiencing the same issue. If you have any doubts or if you ever faced the same issue, leave a comment below.