Bonprix: Providing employees with ready access to business insights
Putting business users in the driver’s seat
Keeping up with the latest trends and changes in customer demand is key to success for Bonprix Handelsgesellschaft mbH. To provide employees with ready access to the latest business intelligence, the online fashion retailer created a centralized data environment based on the SAP Datasphere solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Retail | Hamburg, Germany | 1,500 employees | PCS Beratungscontor AG |
faster to run analytics.
time savings on system maintenance by IT.
faster loading time.
Senior BI Engineer, Bonprix Handelsgesellschaft mbH
Inspiring customers across Europe with a passion for fashion
With more than 10 million customers across 16 European countries, Bonprix is one of Europe’s leading online retailers. The company has built its brand on versatility, sustainability, and excellent value—and has pioneered the latest digital technologies in its mission to create inspiring shopping experiences.
Data had been held in three different data warehouse solutions across the company, one of which was the SAP Business Warehouse application. This meant that creating aggregated reports was a time-consuming task for the IT team, while business decision-makers had to wait longer than they’d like to gain the insights they needed.
Bonprix wanted to implement an innovative data management solution that would enable it to manage and efficiently process vast volumes of data, integrating both SAP and third-party data sources. It also wanted to change from a “push” reporting model, which involves IT providing business users with fixed, pre-agreed reports, to a “pull” model that allows different functions to access, define, and configure the information they need.
Determining a successful data management strategy with help from experts
Having considered data management software from a number of vendors, Bonprix opted for a business data fabric based on the SAP Datasphere solution. Key reasons for this decision included the ability to integrate tightly with the SAP BW/4HANA solution, SAP business applications, and third-party solutions, as well as the IT team’s existing skills in running SAP software.
Experts from SAP Services and Support assisted the company in designing a data management infrastructure to help meet the company’s project goals. This needed to support high-performance data processing and analysis, along with providing straightforward access to data for different areas of the business—in the form that users require.
With implementation guidance and support from SAP partner PCS Beratungscontor AG, Bonprix began the project by implementing SAP BW/4HANA. Consolidating inputs from the SAP ERP and SAP Customer Relationship Management applications as well as third-party software, this approach supports advanced data modeling and analytics while enabling the efficient management and processing of vast data volumes.
Alongside SAP BW/4HANA, Bonprix also deployed SAP Datasphere. This cloud-based solution enables integration across diverse cloud and on-premises data sources, including two other data warehouses supporting e-commerce and fashion purchasing operations. With SAP Datasphere, the company can also deliver meaningful data to company-wide consumers—with the business logic and context intact. See the digram for an overview of the current data and analytics landscape at Bonprix.
Empowering employees with rapid insights tailored to their needs
Thanks to the deployment of SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere, employees across the organization—from finance and sales to logistics and customer services—have instant access to the information they require to make sound business decisions. Running analytics is twice as fast as it had been in the past, while loading time is now a third of what it was previously.
The data insights accessed by employees are also more detailed, incorporating information from the other two data warehouses used for e-commerce and purchasing operations. In addition, the ability for each business area to define the information that it requires helps ensure that reports are more relevant. What’s more, the option to share those reports is improving collaboration between departments.
For the IT team, Bonprix’s adoption of a modern business data fabric has resulted in significant time savings of 75%. Operational tasks now take up only 15% of the team’s time—down from 60% before the implementation of SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere. Meanwhile, straightforward onboarding of new data sources and data consumers enables the company to scale and adapt quickly to take advantage of new market opportunities.
Senior BI Engineer, Bonprix Handelsgesellschaft mbH
Gaining competitive advantage through technological innovation
Supported by SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere, Bonprix is running as a data-driven business—gaining significant competitive advantage by using data insights to better understand customer needs and respond faster to changing market conditions. It’s now looking into streamlining data management with ready-to-go data products in the SAP Business Data Cloud solution and exploring how it can make analytics and planning more easily accessible through the SAP Analytics Cloud solution.
Bonprix is also exploring the opportunities offered by SAP Business AI to streamline processes. It has already seen significant efficiency gains by using the SAP Document AI solution to automatically extract data from incoming invoices. Meanwhile, Bonprix is considering a future migration to SAP Cloud ERP Private offerings, which would enable the company to take advantage of the latest AI-enabled innovations.
Want to know more about Bonprix?
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Featured partner
Specializing in SAP software–based data and analytics consulting, PCS Beratungscontor AG supports a wide range of customers—from midsize companies to international corporations. The SAP partner helped Bonprix design and implement a new business data fabric based on SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere.