Title
SAP Enterprise Reporting System (B)
Staff recommends amending the existing SAP Software License Agreement to implement an expanded Corporate Reporting System.
Explanation
GRU uses SAP software for its billing and financial systems, Customer Care System (CCS) and Financial Management Information System (FMIS), respectively. These systems include standard reporting tools used to manage business and account information. The suite of standard reports is limited by their generality and the range of data they can access.
With GRU’s changing reporting needs, the ability to access raw data from these systems in different ways has emerged. Because the existing software does not have the most current and advanced reporting capabilities, staff has developed an interim means of accessing the data in order to obtain more analytics. The retrieved data has been used to develop specialized reports which have allowed staff to research information and identify potential issues more effectively. Although small in scope, the initial reporting and analytic work using raw SAP data has resulted in significant cost benefits, including improved Accounts Receivable reporting, enhanced customer electronic funds transfer (EFT) management and data retrieval to help identify customers for notification during emergency response. These efforts have resulted in efficiency improvements and cost savings of over $350,000.
Technological limitations in retrieving data prevent further in-house development in analytics and reporting. In addition, the ad hoc reports require extra time and resources to develop. In order to meet GRU’s changing reporting needs and allow staff to research issues in greater detail, additional software is needed. SAP’s HANA Enterprise Edition and Business Object BI Edge will allow staff to extract data and provide analytics and reporting from both the CCS and FMIS systems more efficiently and effectively. The software will allow staff to expand its reporting met...
Click here for full text