Five ways to unlock the full potential of your organization’s SAP data now

SAP is essential enterprise software. Your organization has made significant investments in SAP. You’ve tailored it to suit your organization for particular needs, and you rely on it to run your business—it’s impossible to downplay its usefulness and value. But believe it or not, there are ways to make SAP even more useful and valuable.

Follow the tips below to get more out of SAP and reap the benefits for years. The list below reflects what the Pyramid Analytics Decision Intelligence Platform can do to elevate your decision-making!

#1 Access your data—quickly—with direct query

Direct query is powerful because there’s no movement of SAP data required. You can empower your business to create any desired analytics—reports, dashboards, mashups, and more. You don’t have to worry about setting up complex ETL processes—connect to the source and start querying data. You get answers to questions faster, a critical feature when decision-making is part of your job. Additionally, direct query helps reduce storage costs associated with data warehouses. By querying the source directly, you don’t need to store the data locally, which helps reduce the overall cost.

Tip: The Pyramid Analytics Decision Intelligence Platform can query data faster than commonly used tools and can access multiple data sources directly from its dashboard layer. Furthermore, the Pyramid Platform enables data mashups from multiple sources in a single view.

#2 Use all your data to produce the analytics you need

We are constantly seeking to improve decision-making with more—and better—data. Think of it like a well-funded military. Combat units are effective in battle when they have all the ammunition and weaponry they need for any type of conflict. Your business is no different—data arms you to make great decisions. And the more people in your company that have access to your data, the better the decisions will be. Your organization must have a data-driven culture to make the most of your data and the analytics it provides. All stakeholders must be involved in the data and analytics process. Everyone from the C-suite to the front line should understand its value and use it to inform their decisions.

Tip: Introduce data-driven principles and processes! Establish a data governance and management team and create guidelines and training modules to educate your employees on data literacy. Invest in tools and technologies that make your SAP data accessible, secure, and compliant.

#3 Maintain comprehensive governance systems to keep data secure

Governance is one of the most fundamental and essential parts of data management and accountability. Proper governance is vital to protecting data and is essential to any business’s success. Organizations should have a governance system that outlines the rules and regulations for how data is securely and accurately sourced and used. Governance also helps to ensure that data is managed responsibly and treated with respect and integrity. Through proper data governance, organizations can ensure that end users have access to the best data possible, allowing them to make informed decisions.

Tip: Without governance and security, an organization risks data loss, system downtime, and financial loss. Find a trusted partner you can rely on to maintain the inherent power and logic built into SAP BW cubes (and SAP HANA views) that have been developed and optimized to match the underlying SAP ERP application. (The Pyramid Platform allows for that.)

#4 Empower non-technical employees with analytics on SAP

When you start working for a new organization, you can access whatever tools they have already purchased. In some special circumstances, you may be part of a team deciding on tools to procure. But not all tools are created equal. Most tools will likely address limited problems but leave others unsolved. Others are too complicated for most businesspeople. One end-to-end platform takes care of all these disparate and disjointed tools. SAP data should be accessible to employees for analysis and decision-making, in combination with all the other data, no matter where it resides. Tools shouldn’t be the bottleneck.

Tip: Pyramid’s Decision Intelligence Platform provides functionality that non-technical users can use to make decisions with all your company’s data. No need to have multiple copies of your important data floating around your organization.

#5 Support end-to-end enterprise analytics to reduce TCO

Investing in a unified, complete, fast platform that combines data prep, business analytics, and data science to elevate your analytics game is advantageous. When your entire organization is involved in the end-to-end process, employees will feel more engaged, and their decisions will be based on qualified, credible information. The result? Faster decisions, broader adoption, and simplified analytics.

Tip: Only an analytic platform featuring a structured and governed end-to-end workflow can provide the structure required for BI deployments that can support different types of people in your organization, from analysts to everyday businesspeople. The Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform can give you the functionality needed to help your business now and in the future.

In conclusion, you can amplify your SAP investment by utilizing processes and software that provide:

• Direct query
• Access to all data
• Governance and security
• Universal access for everyone
• End-to-end analytics

With the right platform and a little know-how, analytics can be a powerful resource for all employees. If this article inspires you, we should talk.