Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Florida | May 15-18, 2011
SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and Walt Disney
Theme Parks Warehousing
Kenn Hierman
Cory Lasseter
]
[ Introduction
 Walt Disney Parks and Resorts (WDPR)
 International and Domestic
 Kenn Hierman
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Reporting and Security
Finance/Reporting Implementation
15 years
Kenneth.E.Hierman@Disney.com
 Cory Lasseter
 BI Development
 12 years
 Cory.W.Lasseter@disney.com
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
2
[ The Walt Disney Company
 Multimedia conglomerate operating in 42 countries
 Annual sales (FY ’10) of $38 billion in 5 key areas:
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45% - Media Networks
28% - Parks & Resorts
18% - Studio Entertainment
7% - Consumer Products
2% - Interactive Media
 149,000 Employees
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
3
[ The Walt Disney Company
 Holdings in 40 different countries
 11 different languages
North America
Canada
Puerto Rico
USA
Latin America
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Mexico
Venezuela
Asia-Pacific
* Have limited scope
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
Australia
China
Korea
Hong Kong
India
Japan
New Zealand
Singapore
Taiwan
EMEA
Austria
Belgium
Czech Republic*
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece*
Hungary*
Ireland
Israel*
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland*
Portugal
Russia*
South Africa*
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey*
UK
4
[ WDPR Reporting Current State
 There are 3 main areas of focus for reporting with WDPR
 PTP – purchasing and warehouse related
 PIC – projects related reporting
 Lodging – Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Flash and Business
Review-related reporting
 The target audience for these initiatives are:
 PTP – Sourcing and Procurement and the Fireworks department
at Walt Disney World (WDW)
 PIC – All areas that produce projects-related reporting across
the domestic segment as well as Hong Kong Disneyland
 Lodging – Front-line resort managers up to executives,
to provide standardized reports for domestic resorts
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
5
[ WDPR Reporting Technology
 The following technologies are being deployed to enable these
initiatives
 SAP ECC 6.0
 SAP Business Warehouse 7.0 SP6 Enhancement Pack 1
 SAP BusinessObjects Rapid Marts
 PTP - Accounts Payable, Inventory and Purchasing rapid marts
 PIC – Project and Cost Center rapid marts
 SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 SP2 Fix Pack 2.5
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Web Intelligence (Webi and Rich Client)
Crystal Reports 2008
Live Office
Xcelsius 2008
BI Widgets
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
6
[ WDPR Reporting Delivery Methods
 The following technologies are being utilized for delivery on
these initiatives
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BusinessObjects InfoView
Scheduling reports for viewing within Business Objects
Delivery of reports via Outlook
Business Objects Widgets
Custom Web Pages
Utilization of Crystal Reports as a dashboard
Open Doc Calls from independant applications
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
7
[ WDPR SAP Reporting Tools
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
8
[ Business Case: WDW Fireworks
 Federally mandated warehousing and storage policies require
standardized reporting to satisfy federal requirements for
monitoring explosive material
 The current process for the Fireworks department is a very
manual and labor-intensive process that includes generating
reports from SAP and the physical inventory of explosives
within each storage magazine across WDW property
 The Fireworks department requested a process change to
simplify reporting of the N.E.W. (Net Explosive Weight)
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
9
[ Tools Used
 Warehouse Rapid Mart
 SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
 Xcelsius 2008
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
10
[ WDW Fireworks Dashboard Demo
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
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[ Key Learnings and Development Challenges
 It is not currently possible to visualize SAP BW data using
Xcelsius
 Requires a GUI ID which is not supported within TWDC
infrastructure
 Working with SAP/BusinessObjects to develop SSO solution
 Additional data needed to be brought into the Warehouse
rapid mart
 Data sets cannot be too large
 Xcelsius only handles data 1,000 to 2,000 rows well
 Larger data sets create performance issues
 Formulas only support ranges of 500 rows
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
15
[ BI Solutions
 Universe changes were required to support the Fireworks
dashboard
 A new fact table was created in the Warehouse Rapid Mart to
house Warehouse Bin data
 A new BO Universe was created exclusively for the Disney
Fireworks department
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
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[ BI Solutions
 Three new reports were built to provide the required data for
the federal audit and organized to facilitate development of the
dashboard
 New Folders and User Groups were created and security was
configured, external of SAP, to control access to the new BO
universe
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
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[ Best Practices
 Make the database do as much work as possible
 Aggregation is a must for Xcelsius!
 Format the underlying reports to the desired format
 Do as little report formatting as possible within Xcelsius
 Xcelsius performs best as a visualization tool, not a reporting
tool
 Storyboards are critical to successful implementation
 The end user must define all views of the data as they would like
them to be visualized
 Do not go overboard with graphs, dials and pictures
 Simple is best
 Too many colors is confusing
 Make the eye go where it is important
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
18
[ Questions?
 Are there any questions about the tools used or the dashboard
demonstrated?
Real Experience. Real Advantage.
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[
]
 Thank you for participating.
Please remember to complete and return your
evaluation form following this session.
For ongoing education in this area of focus, visit www.asug.com.
SESSION CODE:
0406
Real Experience. Real Advantage.