A robust data fabric
To give its business users easier access to company data for reporting and analytics, Norsk Hydro deployed the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions. In doing so, the renewables and aluminum company has put unified, reliable data at users’ fingertips, letting them contribute valuable insights that help the enterprise grow.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Mining | Oslo, Norway | 32,000 employees |
reduction in development time for reporting models.
reduction in time to create reports.
risk of data errors.
SAP Analytics Lead Architect, Norsk Hydro ASA
Leveraging a vast data resource for reporting and analytics
For 120 years, Norsk Hydro ASA (Hydro) has been turning natural resources into valuable products for people and businesses. Today, its operations range from renewables, batteries, and metal recycling to energy and aluminum—a sector it’s transforming by providing greener materials that help sustain the world’s rapid development. The company has featured in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index every year since the listing’s inception, and it also appears in both the UN Global Compact 100 index and FTSE4Good Global Index.
With operations from Norway, Germany, and Slovakia to Qatar, Brazil, Canada, and Australia, Hydro has an enormous amount of data spread across different software systems and geographies. The company wanted to provide intuitive, self-service access to this data not just to IT teams but also to business users.
Achieving this would help diverse users with differing skill levels contribute to the enterprise by developing their own operational reporting and analytics solutions.
Lead Architect, Norsk Hydro ASA
Forging a unified data experience in a complicated landscape
To unlock the potential of its wide-ranging data, Hydro embraced SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), implementing SAP Analytics Cloud to access advanced analytics and planning capabilities and SAP Datasphere to integrate data across departments. SAP Integration Suite helps Hydro connect diverse SAP and third-party solutions across its landscape. And the company uses SAP Build solutions to extend its ERP system based on its on-premises instance of SAP S/4HANA.
Data from SAP S/4HANA flows into a central administrative space in SAP Datasphere from which teams can build models. Business users can filter out the information they need thanks to row-level security, and they can share reusable models with different business-area spaces, all without requesting help from IT.
These users also have a variety of reporting and analytics tools at their fingertips, including the add-in for Microsoft Excel for SAP Analytics Cloud as well as intuitive dashboards.
Getting insights faster with user-friendly report development
Having successfully harnessed the reporting, analytics, and data capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere, Hydro has slashed the development time for reporting models and solutions. And it has significantly reduced the risk of data errors by migrating more and more of the spreadsheet-based reporting into SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud.
Users with different IT abilities and little or no knowledge of SAP solutions can quickly leverage business-critical data from SAP S/4HANA and other sources in real time. Through a drag-and-drop interface, they can now specify and build their own models and scenarios in a matter of days.
SAP Datasphere acts as the primary data fabric on top of multiple underlying SAP software systems, with third-party sources also smoothly connected. This means, for example, that even shop-floor and production data that resides outside of SAP software is tightly integrated, enabling blended reporting based on accurate, harmonized data that business users understand.
And the company can make decisions faster and in real time based on the models and solutions that diverse teams have conceived and built.