At a Glance

Industry	Biopharmaceutical (enterprise operational, commercial, and regulatory reporting across business functions)
Organization	A leading American biopharmaceutical company
Migration	SAP BusinessObjects (Web Intelligence reports and universes) → Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)
Challenge	Consolidating an aging SAP BusinessObjects estate onto one governed platform without losing business logic or formatting
Scope	SAP BusinessObjects reports migrated over 6 months
Approach	Automation-led migration using the DataTerrain Automated Conversion Engine, with the same data sources validated in both environments

A LEADING AMERICAN BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY

Migrating SAP BusinessObjects to OBIEE for a Leading American Biopharmaceutical Company

Customer Background

An American Biopharma Company Reporting on SAP BusinessObjects

Biopharmaceutical companies run on trusted, timely reporting, and they need a business intelligence platform that is easy to govern, cost-effective, and scalable. Our client, an American biopharmaceutical company, built its reports over several years on SAP BusinessObjects across its business functions.

As licensing and maintenance costs grew and the legacy platform became harder to justify, the company's IT team standardized on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), a governed enterprise BI platform. It partnered with DataTerrain to automate the migration of 75 reports from SAP BusinessObjects to OBIEE in 6 months, with high accuracy and minimal manual effort. The result is a legacy BI modernization that consolidates biopharma reporting on one platform.

Customer Storeis

The Challenge

Replacing an Aging BI Platform Without Changing Business Results

Built over several years, the company's SAP BusinessObjects environment had become a source of technical debt that was difficult to maintain and govern. Several issues stood out:

Aging legacy BI platform

Reports and universes on SAP BusinessObjects required dedicated skills, servers, and support, making the reporting estate increasingly hard to maintain and update.

High licensing and maintenance costs

Running the legacy SAP BusinessObjects platform required significant licensing and support overhead.

Inconsistent reporting and governance

Reports built independently over the years varied in format and logic, making consistency and governance difficult across business functions.

Complex report logic

Webi variables, queries, universe objects, prompts, and multi-block layouts had to be mapped accurately to OBIEE to avoid changes in business results.

Limited enterprise self-service

The legacy platform lacked the unified, governed self-service, interactive dashboards, and centralized security that a modern enterprise BI platform provides.

Migration at scale

With 75 reports in use, rebuilding them manually from scratch would have been slow and risked losing years of business logic and formatting.

Our Approach

DataTerrain's Automated, Five-Phase Migration

DataTerrain used its proprietary automation engine to streamline the entire SAP BusinessObjects-to-OBIEE conversion, significantly reducing manual effort and accelerating delivery without compromising quality. The project ran over 6 months in five structured phases:

1

Discovery and Requirement Gathering

The team worked closely with the company's IT leadership to assess the existing SAP BusinessObjects environment and define requirements, milestones, and governance standards.

2

Environment Provisioning and Automation Configuration

DataTerrain set up the source (SAP BusinessObjects) and target (OBIEE) environments against the same underlying data sources and configured the automated conversion engine.

3

Report Conversion and Enhancement

The DataTerrain engine converted the 75 SAP BO reports in bulk, translating queries, formulas, prompts, and layouts into OBIEE analyses and dashboards and applying consistent standards and naming conventions uniformly for easy identification and maintainability.

4

Testing and QA Validation

DataTerrain validated every migrated report for data accuracy and visual consistency against the original SAP BusinessObjects report.

5

Deployment to Production

The team deployed validated reports to the company's production instance with full version control, tracked milestones, and resolved issues in close collaboration with business and IT stakeholders.

Business Impact

Outcomes That Mattered to the Business

Platform Consolidation

Consolidated reporting from the legacy SAP BusinessObjects platform onto one governed enterprise BI platform on OBIEE.

Automation at Scale

Automated the SAP BO-to-OBIEE conversion, applying the same standards across 75 reports, saving significant time compared with manual rebuilds and preserving years of business logic.

Consistency and Accuracy

Validated every report against its legacy original for data accuracy and visual consistency, delivering consistent reporting across business functions on a single platform.

Lower Cost and Control

Retiring the legacy SAP BusinessObjects platform reduced licensing and support overhead, while centralized governance and security give the company complete control over its BI environment.

Bottom Line

Why Choose DataTerrain

Using its automated SAP BusinessObjects-to-OBIEE migration approach, DataTerrain converted 75 reports for an American biopharmaceutical company in 6 months, with validated data accuracy, consistent layouts, and lower total cost of ownership, without rebuilding a single report from scratch.

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"DataTerrain moved our SAP BusinessObjects reports to OBIEE in six months, and every report was validated against its legacy original. We now run our reporting on one governed platform, with lower licensing and support overhead and complete control over our BI environment." IT Director
American Biopharmaceutical Company