Albatha: Adopting a modern data foundation to improve enterprise insights, data integration, and AI capabilities to support an ERP transformation
Bridging the knowledge gap with cloud solutions
Albatha Holdings LLC has adopted the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to support its ERP transformation. Modernizing its legacy SAP Business Warehouse application with the cloud-native solution and implementing SAP Business Data Cloud has enabled data integration with internal and third-party systems. This allows advanced analytics on a modern data foundation.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Consumer products | Dubai, United Arab Emirates | 7,000+ employees |
in potential cost savings.
to deliver the project, instead of a potential 19 weeks.
Data, AI, and Digital Transformation Leader, Albatha Holdings LLC
Driving a more efficient data extraction, transformation, and loading process
Family-owned conglomerate Albatha Holdings LLC is a highly diversified business group comprising more than 25 autonomous companies operating across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The group’s portfolio spans multiple industries and sectors, including automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, engineering, electronics, fast-moving consumer goods, food, and real estate.
Albatha has always pioneered the use of SAP solutions, being the first to implement the SAP ERP application in the United Arab Emirates in 1999 and driving innovation by implementing industry-leading solutions.
As part of its enterprise transformation strategy and under the visionary leadership of its chief information officer, Saji Oomen, Albatha embarked on an ERP migration. Through the RISE with SAP journey, the group transitioned from SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, part of SAP Cloud ERP Private solutions. During the ERP transformation, the group needed a robust approach to extract and integrate data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition while establishing the cloud ERP environment. Additionally, the scope and complexity of the data landscape presented a significant challenge. Albatha needed to migrate data from roughly 1,000 extractors, each requiring five to ten manual steps for configuration, development, and validation.
Initial discussions with external vendors resulted in a proposal estimating nearly 19 weeks of implementation effort at a cost of approximately $250,000, covering only half of the required scope (around 500 objects). Faced with this timeline and cost, Albatha sought a more innovative and scalable approach that would significantly reduce both implementation effort and expense.
Data, AI, and Digital Transformation Leader, Albatha Holdings LLC
Adopting cloud solutions to enhance data integration
To support the ERP transition, Albatha adopted the SAP Business Data Cloud solution as a core component of its modern data and analytics landscape. The group used the solution, enhanced with agentic AI-enabled automation, to streamline and accelerate its data integration processes. As a native SAP solution, SAP Business Data Cloud minimized the need for extensive custom configuration and manual development.
By applying agentic AI capabilities, Albatha automated repetitive integration tasks, reduced manual intervention, and simplified the orchestration of complex data extraction workflows from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. This approach enabled the group to move away from labor-intensive development models toward a more intelligent, automated, and scalable data integration framework. Bala Murugan, data, AI, and digital transformation leader at Albatha, says that the company understood how the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process had to be performed. He explains that, “Instead of humans performing the ETL activity, we generated scripts through large language models using LangChain, CrewAI, and local models as an agentic framework.”
Among Albatha’s reasons for choosing SAP Business Data Cloud was the solution’s knowledge graph capability. Using content and tools for data and use cases, it can create a knowledge graph tailored to specific artifacts in its data landscape. Bala notes, “If you build custom software-as-a-service products, you have to update them as things change over time, but you won’t have all of the necessary information. With the knowledge graph, we can connect our SAP solutions with external data sources.”
The group availed itself of the activation service for SAP Business Data Cloud to address planning, sizing, and connectivity tasks. And it modernized its SAP Business Warehouse application to enable the smooth integration and reuse of its existing technology.
Data, AI, and Digital Transformation Leader, Albatha Holdings LLC
Achieving time and cost savings and advancing value-adding work
Albatha successfully integrated data from its SAP software systems to Snowflake Inc. with AI. Using four AI agents and a team of eight people, Albatha was able to achieve a project delivery time of close to four weeks instead of the proposed nineteen weeks. The group now has a single place to centralize reports and answer questions while using agentic-based reporting development instead of traditional development.
Hundreds of jobs run multiple times a day in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, with details stored in tables. The group is now using agentic AI for monitoring, with hourly checks to see whether jobs have been completed. The AI agent notes completed tasks or automatically sends a push notification in Microsoft Teams to the support team for uncompleted tasks. With SAP Business Data Cloud, the group can create programmatic views and pull information from multiple tables. Bala comments, “We’re very interested in the different benefits of SAP Business Data Cloud. We hope to combine data agents in the solution with the Joule solution to automate the monitoring process that way in future and use intelligent apps that drive analytics in the modern era.”
Albatha has saved time and money by using SAP Business Data Cloud and agentic AI. The group has achieved lower integration complexity through native SAP offerings and automation-driven execution. It has also accelerated delivery timelines, avoiding prolonged project durations and reducing dependency on external vendors. Albatha anticipates potential savings of roughly $270,000 across implementation, development, and operational aspects. The group is also able to improve workforce productivity, allowing internal teams to shift their focus from routine data-management tasks to higher-value, strategic initiatives.
Data, AI, and Digital Transformation Leader, Albatha Holdings LLC
Expanding functionalities and the solution landscape
Albatha is looking forward to using other functionalities in SAP Business Data Cloud now that it’s live with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. It plans to take advantage of preconfigured data products managed by SAP to significantly cut time and effort in building out ETL integrations and data extraction. Bala notes, “With ETLs and changes managed automatically by SAP solutions, our reporting and insights can be more real time for better decision-making.”
Albatha values SAP’s road map toward a “zero-copy” data architecture, particularly in conjunction with its existing Snowflake environment and SAP Business Data Cloud. This architecture will enable multiple systems to access and consume a single, shared copy of data in its original location, eliminating unnecessary data movement and duplication through traditional ETL pipelines. By embracing this approach, Albatha is positioning itself for a more agile, scalable, and cost-efficient data architecture that supports advanced analytics, AI, and future digital innovation.
Albatha hopes to combine AI agents, SAP Business Data Cloud, Joule, and Snowflake context agents to create what it calls a “generative BI” solution. Bala concludes, “Leaders need to make quick decisions, and we see intelligent apps and Joule as game changers for them. They’ll be able to ask questions and make and share charts and dashboards that are automatically created in the back end in real time.” Using AI capabilities in Joule means that the group wouldn’t need to train large language models because the solution is already contextually aware. And the prepackaged solution based on best practices from SAP would benefit the organization while extending its ad hoc reporting through SAP Business Data Cloud, Snowflake, and other tools.
Albatha is also looking at the area of real-time planning as part of a project involving the SAP Integrated Business Planning solution.
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