6 SAP companies driving business results with BigQuery

Digital technology promises transformative results. Yet, it’s not uncommon to encounter potholes and speed bumps along the way. One area that frequently trips up businesses is putting data into action. It can be extraordinarily difficult to take advantage of the right data at exactly the right time — in real time — to drive decision-making. For SAP customers wanting to maximize the value of their data, Google Cloud offers a number of capabilities. 

BigQuery is a fully managed serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective multi cloud data warehouse designed for business agility. BigQuery integrates, aggregates, and analyzes petabytes of structured and unstructured data. According to IDC, for SAP customers it delivers productivity benefits, IT staff efficiency gains, and IT infrastructure cost reductions that can together result in an ROI of 320% or more. With the release of our BigQuery Connector for SAP we're adding to this offering with a quick, easy, and inexpensive solution where customers can now replicate SAP application data changes directly, in real-time, with low-latency into BigQuery. 

Google Cloud Cortex Framework is a further enabler for SAP customers working to maximize the value of their data. It allows customers to kickstart insights and reduce time-to-value with reference architectures, packaged services, and deployment accelerators that guide you from planning to delivery, so you can get up and running quickly. Google Cloud Cortex Framework accelerator content can be utilized as a templatized solution from Google Cloud or one of our trusted partners for specific use cases and business scenarios.

SAP customers driving extended value with Google Cloud and BigQuery

Here’s a look at how six SAP companies tapped the power of BigQuery to transform their business operations and drive improved customer experiences: 

ATB Financial. The Canadian financial institution turned to BigQuery to aid in a major data center modernization initiative. The company was looking to migrate from an on-premises data center to a more flexible and agile cloud framework that would support core SAP-based banking applications.

BigQuery introduced several sophisticated features, including the ability to acquire and ingest legacy data from a variety of internal and external sources at scale and in real-time, enrich data through advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, and enable self-service analytics and machine learning models. This is enabling ATB Financial to drive business insights from multiple data sources 117 times faster than its previous approach.

Breuninger. The luxury department store is among the most successful fashion and lifestyle retailers in Germany. It provides 15 premium services, including personal shopping assistance and a shuttle service. In order to support its high-touch, high-value business model, the company required informed and lightning-fast decision-making across the organization, including its 5,500 employees. 

Google Cloud helped take Breuninger’s business model to the next level. With BigQuery and SAP, the retailer harnesses the full value of Google’s Kubernetes Engine to extract data from disparate sources in real-time. This includes loyalty card data along with delivery information. For example, sales managers know exactly when specific products reach key customers — and they can follow up with a personalized call or email. 

Carrefour Belgium. A few years back, grocery retailer Carrefour Belgium, part of global Grocery giant Carrefour Group, found itself coping with an aging and increasingly outdated data center. It had systems divided into two separate clouds and, as a result, the company found it increasingly difficult to fully leverage data for advanced analytics across its 700 plus Belgian stores. 

After migrating critical enterprise applications to an SAP S/4HANA application stack on Google Cloud, the company immediately gained visibility into everything from customer behavior and supply chain efficiency to financial metrics. Moving data into a single data lake also has driven significant value. This enables better assortment planning and price setting, ensures a seamless user experience, and helps the retailer offer exceptional digital experiences for its shoppers. 

Herfy. Among Saudi Arabia’s largest and most successful food service companies, Herfy wanted to track 390 outlets scattered across the country along with franchises in Kuwait and Bangladesh. In the past, visibility and reporting functions were desperately lacking. As a result, the ability to react to changing business conditions lagged, while IT help-desk inquiries devoured precious time and resources.

After migrating its SAP S/4HANA system to Google Cloud, Herfy witnessed key benefits, including improved reliability, better security, and reduced costs. Herfy is now equipped to glean data insights from more than 2 billion records. This makes it possible to generate year-on-year reports that weren’t possible in the past, including on devices like Chromebooks. All told, Herfy has achieved a 50% reduction in the time needed to run material ledger for month-end financial closing and slashed IT helpdesk queries by 48%.

Lixil. Established in 2011 through a merger of five of Japan’s most successful building materials and housing companies, Lixil today is a global maker of water and housing products in more than 150 countries worldwide. The company had outgrown its on premises data center, and was looking to get more value out of its ballooning stores data, which was siloed among numerous in-house systems.

Lixil opted to migrate its SAP infrastructure (S/4 HANA) to Google Cloud, in part, to take advantage of BigQuery’s computing power, scalability, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness. The transition has paid immediate dividends for Lixil, which has been able to quickly utilize its data to contribute company value. 

The Home Depot. The world’s largest home improvement retailer, with 2,300 stores and more than 500,000 associates, recognized a need to innovate and push high-quality information out to frontline employees and customers. Among other things, The Home Depot wanted to introduce an “interconnected retail” platform that would allow customers to start a transaction online and then complete it in a store.

The company chose Google Cloud and SAP to maximize speed, scale and flexibility. It migrated S/4HANA, a customer activity repository, general ledger, BusinessObjects, and several other applications to the platform. With BigQuery, The Home Depot now has sophisticated analytics capabilities and a single source of truth for supply chain data.

BigQuery + SAP = Data Driven Success

A growing number of organizations are recognizing the value that Google Cloud and BigQuery deliver for SAP customers. Google Cloud Cortex Framework further supports this journey with a foundation of endorsed solution reference templates and content for customers to accelerate business outcomes with less risk, complexity, and cost.

Can leveraging BigQuery drive value for your company? Download your copy of the IDC report now.