One would imagine in our ever advancing world of data access in BusinessObjects that no longer would companies so heavily rely upon one of the oldest reporting tools and data sources out there; Microsoft Excel. However, time and time again through webinar presentations or our annual BusinessObjects User Groups, conversations still manage to come down to talking about this one, irreplaceable (it seems) and not going anywhere- data storage/ reporting solution.

In a recent study to global business software systems, about 81% of business and organizations today still heavily rely upon Excel. This percentage is quite high considering each year more and more database management tools are being introduced, or version enhancements to existing systems like SAP BusinessObjects Universe Design Tool, or Information Design Tool, are advancing to heightened levels of usability.

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Still Excel remains a large demographic in business data storage. Not only as an easy to use, not quite so pretty, reporting solution; but also as a method of hard-copy databases floating amidst endless company folders and portals for storing historical, valuable information.

Due to such a large toolset as the SAP BusinessObjects suite, users of reporting solutions like Web Intelligence, also find limitations in accessing the Universe or IDT, in order to extract the data they need in a timely manner. These limitations, although common, due to the construct of a Universe and Administrative permissions, cause an inevitable need to work around the Universe data and simply load straight from Microsoft Excel.

Michael Ward from Creative Technologies Training & Solutions (CTTS), a fantastic expert, instructor and advocate of the beloved reporting tool within BusinessObjects, Web Intelligence, put together a fantastic webinar loaded with tips and tricks on how to best leverage your Excel data into SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence. This webinar is well worth attending and having a notepad. For such a straight forward topic on Excel into Web Intelligence, our viewers we surprised with the variety of methods one can not only import their Excel Spreadsheets, but also refresh, reload, and reconstruct the data within Web Intelligence.