SAP R/3 Finance Account Data Warehouse Data Model Design

When more and more global organizations rely on SAP R/3 to run their day-to-day business operations, one of the core challenges to emerge from an SAP R/3 implementation is how to upgrade to Decision Support System (DSS) rather than just normal business system. Initially customer expected SAP R/3 were not only a good business system but also a DSS. But they were wrong, they realized that a successful business system did not equal to a successful DSS.DSS is also called 'Business Intelligence' (BI), today almost all specialists focusing on BI area consider that BI should be based on the implementation of Data Warehouse. Typically, SAP BW should be tailored for SAP R/3. Actually, some organizations look to implement SAP BW while others have concerns with potential SAP BW inflexibility, time-to-deployment, required budget, and technical resources. These organizations are looking for other Data Warehousing alternatives.Theoretically, the alternative Data Warehousing solution should be enough flexible, low-risk, easy understanding to end users (Organization IT department). In the meanwhile, its public technology degrades TOC and extends lifecycle of Data Warehousing.The original background of this paper came of a classical alternative Data Warehousing solution project which was based on SAP R/3 FI Module (involved Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable). It covered Data Model designing according to end-users' requirements and ETL implementing. From end-users views, reports data generated from data module were available to end-users. In the other hand, from project management view, it reduced risk of project implementation and consulting cost, also it improved time-effective to whole project.