By – Merri Beckfield

From my vantage points, I have the privilege of observing organizations at varying points in their journey to data insights.   And for SAP customers who have been waiting for the right moment for SAP Datasphere, there is now a focus on starting the journey.

Today, I’d like to share a bit about the journey of a supply chain management and logistics solutions provider who went all in on modernizing their SAP BI solutions.

 

THE PROBLEM

When we first started together, they were an SAP ECC shop with an on-premises, legacy BW data warehouse solution with over 500 BEX queries.  Users were sourcing data from a variety of systems for reporting and decision making.  On the front end, SAP Business Objects and Tableau were in the mix.    This is certainly a very common scenario.

With their legacy BI solution, the organization was facing some common challenges. They were struggling to achieve the necessary speed and cost-effective storage needed for their operations. Additionally, the lack of integration resulted in the loss of SAP context for data stored in third-party databases, further complicating their data management efforts.

 

THE SOLUTION

To overcome the challenges, together we came up with a strategy and plan to seize-the-moment with an upcoming S/4 implementation.  Rather than rework the legacy BI solutions to fit S/4 into the picture, the team took the opportunity to replace the existing BI solution with an all-in move to SAP Datasphere.  To mitigate risk, a “joint success plan” was put into place which laid out a phased migration (with a pilot) approach.  This allowed the team to work in an agile fashion, apply learnings along the way, and reap some business benefits along the way.

This all involved fully implementing a 3-tier Datasphere landscape, along with BW bridge.  To be honest, we learned a few things about BW bridge (and its limitations) along the way! The data and data flows were fully migrated from BW to Datasphere in a manner that allowed us to take advantage of the work previously done in BW (why reinvent the wheel?).  Security was fully integrated into the new solution.  The queries for the front end were updated to the new solution. And a data lake solution was put into place for cost-effective data storage.

 

THE RESULTS

At the end of the day, the outcome was a solution that provided:

  • Enhanced agility and scalability vs. their prior solution.
  • Streamlined data access by integrating SAP and non-SAP data sources
  • Real-time integration implemented to S/4 Hana for faster time to insight.

Ready to move your data strategy forward and unlock the potential of SAP Datasphere? This client success story is just one example of how we help businesses modernize their data architectures, streamline operations, and drive faster decision-making.

Let us help you achieve the same success! Contact us today to discuss how we can support your migration to SAP Datasphere.   Contact TEK – Tek Digital Transformations