As a government contracting professional in the world of GFEBS, you have probably heard of the upcoming migration from SAP Business Explorer (BEx), a tool that’s sunsetting in 2024, to SAP Business Objects Intelligence (BOBJ). Both tools can be leveraged to report and analyze GFEBS financial data; however, BOBJ is SAP’s newer and improved reporting platform in comparison to BEx. Soon, BEx users will be required to migrate their data to BOBJ because SAP will no longer be supporting BEx for most users. We know that migrating critical financial data can be a long and stressful process. With this in mind, we’re breaking down your most pressing questions on the matter and how to move forward for a successful BEx migration. 

What is SAP Business Objects Intelligence (BOBJ)?

BOBJ is a GFEBS reporting platform that empowers users to create Web Intelligence (Webi) reports and dashboards to analyze financial data and make informed decisions. According to SAP, using Webi can help you leverage data to answer high-level or narrow business questions, create new and update existing reports depending on your unique business requirements, as well as access and combine data from multiple sources like Excel, OLAP databases, and more. The Webi reporting interface is made to be easy to use with drag-and-drop functionality when you need to build or update reports.

Why do I need to migrate to BOBJ?

SAP announced that it will no longer support the BEx integration with MS Office beyond MS Office 2016, requiring most users to migrate their data to BOBJ. Even if you do not currently use anything beyond MS Office 2016 (such as Microsoft 365), we agree with experts that your team should be integrating with BOBJ regardless to prevent future data loss. Many BEx users have already begun moving to BOBJ. As more users continue to migrate to BOBJ, support providers like the GFEBS Helpdesk may not be as accessible to BEx users as they begin to prioritize accommodating the growing base of BOBJ users.

When should I begin migrating to BOBJ?

There is currently no official timeline on when SAP will remove its support for BEx; however, this will happen in the near future and is expected by late summer 2023. Moving from BEx to BOBJ will require users to manually recreate their reports in BOBJ, making this migration time-consuming. To ensure that your team has ample time to undergo this process before BEx is not supported, we recommend moving all existing data over and starting your data migration as soon as possible. Scrambling to complete your data migration to BOBJ will increase the risk of data loss in the process. Starting your migration now also gives your team time to learn the new interface at a comfortable pace so that you can leverage it to its full capabilities. 

How do I begin the process of migrating to BOBJ?

The GFEBS Helpdesk recommends beginning your data migration by first moving personal BEx reports and variants as well as BEx Portfolio bookmarks to BOBJ. The GFEBS Helpdesk provides helpful training tools and documentation in their SSO-BI Forum to begin your migration if you have this resource at your disposal. 

With the time-consuming nature of the migration, you may also want to consider enlisting outside help from recognized GFEBS experts like Thompson Gray. We can provide further guidance on optimal next steps based on your organization’s unique financial data management needs and help to begin this migration. Feel free to contact us with any questions you have!