Power your advanced reporting: How to integrate data for actionable insights

Juggling multiple systems is a fact of life for IT teams in large companies.  CRM platforms, SAP for core operations and e-commerce solutions are vital.

But here’s the challenge: The data from these systems often lives in isolation, creating silos that make it difficult to get a unified view of your business. This lack of visibility can significantly hinder strategic decision-making.

We’ll show you how to break down silos and unlock actionable insights so you can move SAP data to the cloud and combine it with other data sources for a 360-degree view of your operations.

The challenge of data silos and reporting limitations

You might be familiar with siloed data if you’re a large organization. Each system generates valuable data, whether it’s CRM, SAP or your e-commerce platform. However, seeing the whole picture when these datasets are isolated becomes tough.

This fragmented view makes it challenging to answer questions like:

• How do customer interactions on our website impact sales performance within SAP?
• Can we correlate sensor data from the shop floor with inventory and logistics tracked in SAP?
• Are our marketing campaigns (tracked in the CRM) driving the financial results reflected in SAP?

Also, storing all operational data can be costly. Organizations often have large volumes of valuable data stored in other sources, such as heatmaps, sensor readings and Google Analytics. To gain comprehensive insights, it’s crucial to bring all of this data together, providing a holistic view of operations.

The potential insights from these sources are significant, but they are better housed in cloud platforms or specialized data warehouses for cost efficiency.

Advanced reporting: The key to a 360-degree business view

Advanced reporting is the solution to the challenges posed by data silos and disparate systems. This approach lets you pull data from multiple sources, including SAP, cloud-based applications and data warehouses.

By consolidating this information, you create a centralized repository for powerful analysis and reporting.

Imagine you’re a retailer with a robust e-commerce presence and want to optimize inventory and delivery times. Advanced reporting enables you to combine:

• E-commerce analytics: Heatmaps, website traffic and conversion rates
• SAP data: Sales orders, inventory levels and financial figures
• Logistics data: Data from a cloud-based warehouse management system

The retailer gains unprecedented insights into customer behavior, product demand and supply chain efficiency by analyzing this combined data. This empowers them to make data-driven decisions that improve stock availability, increase sales and boost customer satisfaction.

SNP Glue: Your path to seamless data integration

Transforming vast amounts of siloed data into actionable insights requires a robust data integration solution. That’s where SNP Glue comes in.

SNP Glue is an SAP-certified solution that allows you to replicate data from SAP systems to cloud platforms in near real-time. It also seamlessly connects with other SAP solutions like SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Datasphere and more, enabling you to consolidate all your essential business data in one location.

Key benefits of SNP Glue for enhanced reporting:

• Minimized impact on production systems: SNP Glue offers exceptional resource consumption controls, allowing you to replicate SAP data with carefully managed impact on your production environment.
• Flexible: Choose how you replicate data – batch, streaming or scheduled pipelines.
• Fast and scalable: Handle high-volume data transfers for large enterprises.
• Secure: Meets rigorous industry standards and security protocols.

SNP Glue seamlessly integrates SAP data with other essential business data. This is a crucial step towards advanced reporting, unlocking the full analytical potential of your combined datasets.

Benefits of integrated reporting

Integrated reporting offers a powerful framework for understanding your organization’s performance and impact. The first step is a comprehensive data integration strategy, which allows you to combine data from SAP and other business systems.

Here’s how:

Improved decision-making

When you have a holistic view of business operations, IT leaders gain the clarity and confidence to make data-driven decisions that achieve positive outcomes.

Optimized operations

Integrated insights allow you to identify bottlenecks, streamline processes and forecast demand accurately. This leads to smoother and more efficient operations overall.

Reduced costs

You can optimize storage and infrastructure spending by replicating large datasets from SAP to more cost-effective cloud platforms or data warehouses.

Competitive advantage

Integrating data for insightful reporting gives you the agility to make faster, more informed strategic adjustments, helping you outperform rivals in a dynamic marketplace.

Example scenario:

A manufacturing company using SNP Glue could integrate production data from SAP with IoT sensor readings and CRM insights to predict equipment maintenance needs. This proactive approach prevents downtime, increases efficiency and delivers a superior customer experience.

The future of reporting: Data integration for success

Extracting meaningful insights from unrelated data sources isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s critical. Integrating SAP data with other essential business data, using a robust solution like SNP Glue, is a crucial step towards advanced reporting. This integration empowers informed decision-making, drives operational excellence and delivers a decisive competitive edge.

If you’re ready to break down data silos, download our solution brief to gain a deeper understanding of data integration best practices. Be sure to also watch our webinar Integrate to Innovate with SNP Glue to see how it can streamline data integration.