Project overview
Our client, a global food and beverage conglomerate, required a large-scale data and reporting migration from SAP BusinessObjects (BOBJ) to Microsoft Power BI. The organization faced challenges with static reports and slow performance in BOBJ, prompting a strategic shift to Power BI—a more agile and integrated analytics platform that had already become the standard for most of their internal reporting initiatives.
For on-site product managers, a key daily activity involves reviewing the previous day’s sales performance to inform task assignment and operational planning. This requires fast, reliable access to detailed KPIs—including total sales, volume in kilograms, and volume in cases—presented in reports optimized for rapid decision-making.
Project scope
· Reports migrated: 120+
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Data volume: 100 million+ rows
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Data sources: Structured data from SAP and EG News page
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Impacted business units: Sales and Go-to-Market (GTM) operations
Key challenges
1. Large-scale migration complexity:
· Migrating over 120 reports with more than 100 million rows of data posed a significant technical challenge. Each report had to be replicated in Power BI while maintaining the functionality, logic, and business rules of SAP BOBJ.
2. Multiple data sources:
· The project involved consolidating structured data from SAP and EG News page (a mobile-based field sales platform). These systems had different schemas and refresh cycles, demanding a robust data pipeline architecture to unify them under a consistent model.
3. Data export limitations in Power BI :
· SAP BOBJ supported detailed, cell-level exports of large tables—a feature not natively available in Power BI. To replicate this functionality, we implemented Power BI Paginated Reports, enabling high-volume data exports while maintaining the visual and functional expectations of SAP BOBJ.
4. Performance optimization at scale:
· Some reports initially suffered from slow performance due to complex models and inefficient queries. We tackled this by optimizing queries and data models, separating business logic into flat tables where appropriate, and leveraging Azure Synapse Analytics to improve efficiency.
Solution
The data pipeline consisted of five main stages:
· Ingestion: Extracted data from SAP ECC, SAP BW, and EG News page using Azure Data Factory (ADF)
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Storage and Processing: Stored raw and cleaned data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and processes it using Apache Spark via Azure Databricks.
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Serving: Refined datasets are stored in Synapse SQL (Azure Synapse Analytics) for fast querying.
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Visualization: Dashboards and reports are integrated with Power BI service for interactive reporting, and Power BI Report Builder for paginated reports.
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Supporting Services: Ensured security, access control, and execution with Azure Entra ID, Key Vault, Integration Runtimes, and Security Center.
| Figure 1: Solution architecture |
Outcomes
· Faster report load times: Product managers can now filter and view daily reports within seconds, improving agility and responsiveness in sales planning and task allocation.
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Enhanced visual insights: The broader visualization capabilities of Power BI enabled users to analyze trends and patterns specific to their needs, facilitating better decision-making.
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Mobile accessibility: Reports are now accessible through the Power BI mobile app, allowing secure access to insights from anywhere—without reliance on desktop environments.
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Improved data refresh: With Azure Synapse pipelines supporting data refresh cycles, performance and reliability improved significantly compared to the old BEX query model under SAP BOBJ.
Looking ahead
After a successful migration of all key reports, the client was positioned to embrace a self-service analytics culture. This empowered product managers to make faster, more informed decisions based on timely, customized reports.
Interested in learning more?
Beyond SAP BusinessObjects, MAQ Software offers end-to-end migration services from platforms including Tableau, MicroStrategy, Cognos, and others.
· BusinessObjects (BO) to Power BI Migration: Free Assessment
· BusinessObjects (BO) to Power BI Migration: Free 3-Week Assessment
· BusinessObjects (BO) to Power BI Migration: Implementation