Many SAP customers still manually or semi-automatically transfer their data to other systems for further use. Implementing automation is an investment, to be sure – but one that will pay off.
Many companies that successfully manage and map their processes with SAP suffer from double standards: On the one hand, they pay a great deal of attention to maintaining their SAP infrastructure, sparing no (personnel) costs. On the other hand, they try to make do with narrow-track solutions when transferring the data to other systems and writing them back to SAP.
A questionable strategy
In practice, such companies often extract the information manually or semi-automatically. The data is selected manually in the SAP system and transferred to the target system. Some companies also pull SAP data into Excel, for example, where they are again prepared and analyzed manually. Such manual transfers can result in incomplete or duplicate data records being extracted, inconsistencies, or data not being in the correct order.
If employees notice such an error early on, they can restore the dataset, but they have to start integration from the beginning, which takes a lot of time. Consequently, all subsequent processes are delayed.
If employees fail to register an error in the data record in time, they are at risk of far more serious consequences. Inefficient inventory management as well as incorrect pricing and product measurement data that negatively impact billing and customer relations are just some possible examples.
Strategic decisions based on poor data
Since controllers, division managers, and board members also use SAP data to create analytics and visualizations and base key business decisions on them, incorrect datasets mean that decisions are based on incorrect assumptions. But even if datasets do not contain errors, decisions based on manual or semi-automated data integrations are not optimal because manual integration can take several hours or days, depending on the workflow. This may be sufficient for certain management areas. In organizations with a high level of digitalization and processing speed, however, such retrospective approaches can prove to be a significant competitive disadvantage.
Fast-growing companies face another challenge: Sooner or later, they will realize that manual integration is not a suitable tool for them in the long run. This is because the process proves not to be scalable as the data load increases. Digital transformation cannot be realized with manual data integration.
The remedy for the disadvantages that manual data merging entails is fully automated SAP integration. This means transferring data and processes from the SAP system to other target environments and writing them back to SAP via interfaces. For …….