SAP announced enhance­ments to its busi­ness tech­nol­o­gy plat­form dur­ing SAP TechEd Barcelona, shar­ing capa­bil­i­ties to pre­pare orga­ni­za­tions to thrive in the expe­ri­ence econ­o­my. Specif­i­cal­ly, the plat­form includes the SAP Data Ware­house Cloud solu­tion, SAP HANA Cloud, and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud. The plat­form — which includes SAP HANA Cloud Ser­vices—com­bines all data and ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties with­in these solu­tions as one set of ser­vices to store, process, gov­ern, and con­sume large vol­umes of data.

Since the announce­ment, SAP Data Ware­house Cloud has been avail­able through a beta pro­gram for a select group of SAP cus­tomers. PwC, an ASUG mem­ber, was one of those cus­tomers. They recent­ly sat down with us to dis­cuss how the com­pa­ny used this solu­tion to achieve faster under­stand­ing of its data with­in a user-friend­ly envi­ron­ment that per­me­ates the entire orga­ni­za­tion. PwC Part­ner and Data and Ana­lyt­ics Leader Nico Reichen describes the ratio­nale behind opt­ing for a cloud ser­vice, how PwC pre­pared its data, and how it has ben­e­fit­ed the com­pa­ny globally. 

What Is SAP Data Ware­house Cloud? 

SAP Data Ware­house Cloud is a pay-as-you-go ser­vice that allows an orga­ni­za­tion to com­bine data-man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties with advanced ana­lyt­ics, includ­ing key fea­tures such as scal­a­bil­i­ty, elas­tic­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and openness. 

Users get the sim­plic­i­ty, speed, and pow­er of SAP HANA as a ser­vice in the cloud at both an enter­prise IT and Line-of-Busi­ness (LoB) lev­el. The data as a ser­vice plat­form, which fea­tures pre­built tem­plates and mod­els, inte­grates with both SAP and non-SAP data sources. It pro­vides high-per­for­mance ana­lyt­ics, advanced end-to-end secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance fea­tures, and allows an orga­ni­za­tion to scale up and down as needed.

PwC has expe­ri­enced strug­gles with being able to orga­nize its data, trust that it is accu­rate, or know what val­ue to glean from it. SAP Data Ware­house Cloud brings all valu­able data togeth­er in one sin­gle source of truth and allows the enter­prise to scale that infor­ma­tion across its many LoBs. 

Con­nect­ing Data Glob­al­ly with SAP Data Ware­house Cloud

PwC has a net­work of firms that pro­vide audit, assur­ance, tax, and con­sult­ing ser­vices around the world. With more than 250,000 employ­ees in 157 coun­tries, orga­niz­ing, struc­tur­ing, and gov­ern­ing data had become a major chal­lenge. ​“It was like we were liv­ing in the Stone Ages,” Reichen said. ​“All our com­pa­nies around world need­ed to work togeth­er, but all the data for each was stored local­ly. Many of our process­es need­ed to be man­u­al, and our con­trollers were hav­ing to use Microsoft Excel work­sheets to cre­ate reports for each LoB.” 

Aside from being time-con­sum­ing, this process left data at risk for secu­ri­ty breach­es as well. Know­ing data is an inte­gral part of the prob­lem-solv­ing work it does, PwC rec­og­nized the need to have all its data in one cen­tral instance and to add struc­ture and gov­er­nance to its processes. 

It need­ed a solu­tion that would allow all its busi­ness users to access the same, accu­rate data for var­i­ous busi­ness uses, secure­ly and quick­ly. PwC turned to SAP Data Ware­house Cloud as the solu­tion to this fast-grow­ing prob­lem. ​“We’re a cloud-first com­pa­ny,” Reichen said. ​“As such, we had no doubt about the secu­ri­ty aspect of using the cloud for our data. So that was one. But we also liked that fact that SAP Data Ware­house offered a live con­nec­tion, which means all our data is auto­mat­i­cal­ly uploaded in real time, and those who need access to it have it all the time.” 

Stan­dard­iz­ing the Data and the Processes 

Prepar­ing its data for the move was a fair­ly quick and easy project for PwC. Over­all, it took about three weeks to pull all the data from the dif­fer­ent loca­tions. ​“The chal­lenge, how­ev­er,” Reichen said, ​“was under­stand­ing the log­ic behind how each loca­tion col­lect­ed and used its data and apply­ing a stan­dard that would incor­po­rate all these dif­fer­ent use cases.” 

PwC also need­ed to get rid of dupli­ca­tion and silos where pos­si­ble. The com­pa­ny also used a func­tion with­in SAP Data Ware­house Cloud called Spaces, which are vir­tu­al work­spaces used for either indi­vid­u­als or groups of users work­ing on data mod­el­ing. It allows users to find rel­e­vant data for their projects and con­nect to remote data sources securely.

Good and Avail­able Data Leads to Bet­ter Busi­ness Decisions 

PwC is cur­rent­ly using SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, which is built into SAP Data Ware­house Cloud, to allow users to quick­ly start run­ning their proofs of con­cept. ​“One of the biggest ben­e­fits we have right now is the fact that all of our data is in one place, and those who need access have it,” Reichen said. ​“Aside from that, we’re start­ing to use the advanced ana­lyt­ics to plan for the future, too.” 

PwC is still in the begin­ning stages of using SAP Data Ware­house Cloud but looks for­ward to inte­grat­ing oth­er capa­bil­i­ties and advanced ana­lyt­ics as more of its work­force is trained to use the ser­vice. It’s also work­ing with SAP to make the ser­vice more adapt­able to PwC’s spe­cif­ic needs and to under­stand how to use SAP Data Ware­house Cloud to make bet­ter busi­ness decisions. 

Reg­is­ter for the ASUG web­cast, ​“Ana­lyt­ics Live: What Is SAP Data Telling You About Your Busi­ness Today?.”