“How do I just get the data from SAP tables [and dump it into a spreadsheet]”? Questions like this have been regularly popping up on SAP Community and now other media since time immemorial.
No matter how many dazzling digital boardrooms or Fiori apps are offered, all that the business users seem to want is the raw, unfiltered, estate-bottled data. There have been some solutions for this, such as good old SQVI, its heir apparent Key User Extensibility with analytical queries, as well as third-party tools (e.g. well-known Winshuttle, acquired by Precisely last year).
However, IT is typically reluctant to grant access to these tools, much less invest in educating users on how to use them. The usual excuses are security and data governance. What the users do with the data and how they interpret it is a valid concern. But in general, when it comes to the users and SAP tables, I think it’s like with teenagers: instead of flat out denying, it’s sometimes better to let them experience things in a safe, controlled manner. Resistance is most likely futile. JP
This story was originally published in Issue 24 of The Boring Enterprise Nerdletter.
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