SAP runs SAP: Fueling human insights and AI innovation with data products
From data projects to data products
Renowned for developing solutions that unlock the power of data, SAP SE wanted to make it easier for its employees to access and share the information they need to work productively and make informed decisions. To achieve this, the software company adopted a productized approach to data consumption using the SAP Business Data Cloud solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| High tech | Walldorf, Germany | 105,000 employees | Collibra |
data products currently available to users across the company.
time saving on the implementation of data products.
of data products created and owned by nontechnical business users, up from 0%.
Head of Platform, Corporate Functions and Analytics, SAP SE
Democratizing data modeling with a product-based approach
Founded in 1972, SAP set global standards for ERP software. Today, there are 230 million users of its cloud software, with more than 100 solutions providing comprehensive support across core business areas such as procurement, production, materials management, sales, marketing, finance, and human resources.
A project-based approach to data integration and modeling at SAP meant that business users had limited access to the data they needed. Each new analytics model needed to be created by IT experts as a separate project, with IT teams building more than 1,000 dashboards to meet business user requests. This meant that IT became a bottleneck—and lengthy delays could result in business users creating their own “shadow IT” fixes outside data governance frameworks. In addition, it was difficult to combine data from multiple data domains, limiting collaboration between different business areas.
As a data-driven business, SAP wanted to provide all of its employees with the information they needed to make sound decisions and work productively. For this reason, the company introduced a data product–based approach, empowering business users to create their own data models and share them with others, as well as reuse models created by other employees.
Providing a centralized data product hub for users business-wide
IT experts from SAP leveraged SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) to provide users across the business with straightforward access to existing data products. And if the product they’re looking for doesn’t exist, the solution would enable them to create their own.
The team implemented a central data product hub based on technology from SAP partner Collibra. The hub offers a catalog of existing data products and marketplace functionality that enables employees to access and shop for the products that best meet their needs. Once a basket of data products is checked out, the products are shared directly in an employee’s personal space in the SAP Datasphere solution (now part of SAP BDC), where they’re available for analysis, modeling, and insight generation. Collibra also plays a critical role in governing the lifecycle of data products—with roles, responsibilities, and approval workflows to help ensure compliance, quality, and accountability.
If employees can’t find a suitable data product, they can initiate a new one from within the hub. Using intuitive, low-code functionality provided by SAP Datasphere, business users can quickly create their own data products. A guided workflow helps users integrate data from source systems and create analytic models.
Where more-complex, pro-code data engineering is required, users can access advanced modeling functionality from the SAP Databricks capability. This enables integration with third-party data sources and the addition of AI or machine learning pipelines to data products.
Having created the data product, users can leverage the SAP Analytics Cloud solution to create dashboards and visualized reports for different audiences while using SAP Business Data Cloud Intelligent Applications.
Chief Analytics Officer, Corporate Processes and Information Technology, SAP SE
Accelerating access to relevant data insights
Using the data product hub, business users are now able to make better-informed, data-driven decisions. Straightforward access to a growing catalog of ready-to-go data products means users can quickly find the answers they need. What’s more, thanks to intuitive analytics tools and no longer having to rely on IT experts, new data models are ready faster, with time to value reduced from a couple of months to a couple of days. For example, the deployment of the data product for accounts payable analytics only took 20 days using SAP Business Data Cloud, down from an estimated 184 days.
The hub is also helping to eliminate a siloed approach to data analysis by making it easier to share and combine data from different business areas and use data from third parties such as training providers. This not only supports collaboration to reveal new insights, but it also improves productivity by removing duplication of effort: when a data product is created, it can be reused again and again.
With business users now empowered to create their own data models, IT personnel can focus on supporting more-advanced analytics requirements. Meanwhile, increased transparency into data usage and governance controls within the hub help ensure that SAP meets compliance standards.
Head of Innovation Engineering, Corporate Functions and Analytics, SAP SE
Providing a foundation for AI-based innovation
Currently, SAP is scaling up the use of the data product hub across the company. IT staff are educating business users about the hub and providing mentorship as they familiarize themselves with using and creating data products. And the more business users turn to the hub for answers, the more SAP expects its catalog of available data products to grow.
Going forward, SAP sees the hub as crucial to its overall AI strategy. Offering ready access to data products, the hub will help AI agents find the correct data to interact with when searching for information. This will enable AI agents to provide rapid and accurate answers while establishing a critical foundation for the ongoing adoption of AI-based innovations.
Meanwhile, SAP anticipates that the Joule copilot will play an increasingly important role in the consumption of data products across the company. The vision is that employees will ask Joule a question, and the copilot will then automatically search the hub for a relevant data product that can provide the answer, creating new data products as required.
Featured partner
Supporting organizations in revolutionizing the way they manage and leverage their data assets, Collibra helps users consume data more safely and compliantly. The SAP partner provided the technology on which SAP built its data product hub, enabling a marketplace where users can share access and data models.