NASA's SAP Implementation - NASACT

Classification of Financial Reporting users at NASA• NASA financial informationrequirements are driven by five generalcategories of users:‣ Extended stakeholders such asCongress, OMB, the public, andbusiness partners‣ Senior Executives who requirefinancial information in order tomanage Agency and Center portfoliosof Programs and institutional services‣ Program/Project Managers whorequire financial information to monitorand act on indicators ofprogram/project financial performance‣ Analysts who work with detailedfinancial information to supplymanagers with detailed insight forbetter decision‣ Transactional Workers whoseprimary role is execution of financialbusiness processes on a daily basisExtendedSenior ExecutivesProgram/Project ManagersAnalystsTransactional Workers6976.31Why BW for NASA and Why in Parallel with R/3?♦ Wanted to define and implement a sound information deliverycapability from the outset of our ERP deployment• Without BW, would have created a large volume of ABAP reports• Would be difficult to break the cycle and move to BW after the fact• BW was SAP’s strategic direction for reporting♦ NASA didn’t have an existing Enterprise Data Warehouse♦ BW is tightly integrated with SAP R/3 transactional system• Predefined / extendible business content based on R/3• Data extractors, including delta change data extractors• Drill down support from BW query to R/3 transactional data.♦ All users that needed access to report information did not need accessto R/3 (non- transactional users)♦ The implementation of R/3 and future SAP modules created thepossibility of developing a NASA-wide data warehouse that couldsatisfy the majority of Business Intelligence requirements6976.32Application Development: ReportsReporting Decision TreeIdentify application area(s)Search in R/3 for the reportUse R/3 standard reportingYesDoes it exist?NoRequires currentday’s data?YesReview Business WarehouseDelivered business contentOperational/ManagementNoType of report?Transactional/ExternallyMandatedDevelop the report in R/3Does it exist?YesUse BusinessWarehouse contentAdvancedNoInfoset queryCreate custom transformationor databaseExecute theType of data?ABAP extractorlogic neededviewgeneric extractoraccessibleDefine custom BusinessWarehouse objectsA number of factors determine the best approach to resolve a Center reportingrequirement6976.3311