DataXstream: Accelerating the speed of business by pushing the limits of new technology to solve difficult business challenges
A focus on solving real business problems with AI
SAP gold partner DataXstream LLC created transformative value for customers by enhancing its SAP-certified app for order management and point of sale with SAP Business AI on SAP Business Technology Platform. The company’s enhanced app enables sales teams to be more responsive, elevating the customer experience while increasing operational efficiency and boosting revenue.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Professional services | Williamsburg, Virginia | ~150 employees |
reduction in the cost of order creation for various needs.
of sales order creation process digitalized.
to create a quote from a blueprint, down from days or weeks.
CEO, DataXstream LLC
Harnessing the power of AI to solve customers’ problems
SAP gold partner DataXstream LLC started out as a small integration service provider before evolving into an SAP-certified solutions provider, building its own world-class enterprise software that sits atop advanced ERP. With a focus on sales and order management for SAP users, DataXstream’s solutions help businesses extract maximum value from their ERP infrastructure by using proven and emerging technologies architected and deployed by its expert team.
These solutions automate and simplify sales and order processes, especially for complex sales such as those found in wholesale distribution, specialty retail, manufacturing, and industrial supply. Its flagship offering, OMS+IA, is an order-management and point-of-sale system that connects to sales channels while transacting in real time in SAP S/4HANA.
Firm in the belief that overcoming evolving business challenges requires taking risks, adopting new technologies, and having the right support from technology partners, DataXstream started its journey on AI by experimenting with various technologies. But the company soon discovered a number of potential drawbacks in applying these tools to the business environment, particularly around the rapid rate of change in AI, securing the data, and applying the right permissions.
Bryan Cain, director of artificial intelligence at DataXstream, explains, “AI is a very powerful tool that can do a lot of things. But the key to delivering value with AI is to focus it on real problems. Modern-day large language models can generate amazing output that isn’t always useful. But if we can take that ability to generate text and generate content and understand users’ queries, then we can deliver business value by solving real problems.”
Director of Artificial Intelligence, DataXstream LLC
Accelerating the speed of business to stay ahead
When DataXstream started experimenting with SAP Business AI on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), it discovered a novel way of tackling business challenges that was also grounded in enterprise-grade data security and compliance. That’s because SAP Business AI provides a service layer to access fast-evolving AI capabilities within a business framework, allowing DataXstream to move at speed to solve customers’ problems faster.
Cain explains, “DataXstream’s work with SAP is foundational, and SAP BTP underpins everything the company does. By having access to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and additional advances in technology as services running on SAP BTP, we can help our customers attain business efficiencies from an AI deployment in a secure environment.”
DataXstream developed its OMS+IA offering to extend customers’ instances of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition with intelligent automation for order management, creating a multichannel order management platform. The tool draws on the SAP AI Core infrastructure and generative AI hub capability to access large language models and other AI capabilities within SAP BTP. The AI feature uses data from the advanced ERP to find material, customer, inventory, and other supply chain data to automatically generate orders, quotes, reports, and additional documents.
Cain adds, “Since our core OMS+IA product is built on SAP BTP, integrating the generative AI hub and SAP AI Core into their existing workflows is a straightforward process for customers.”
CEO, DataXstream LLC
Embracing the latest AI technologies to enhance order accuracy
Through its innovation with SAP Business AI, DataXstream developed its OMS+IA software, giving customers an advanced order management tool with powerful AI technology integrated into selling processes. This tool allows its customers to avoid creating complex quotes manually, reducing extra effort while improving the accuracy of orders and quotes and delivering significant savings in time and money. By running return-on-investment calculations for different customers, DataXstream showed that its OMS+IA product could reduce the cost of order creation by 25%–70%, depending on their needs.
Timothy Yates, CEO at DataXstream, provides an example: “With our building print takeoff calculator, the tool can take a full building print and calculate all the materials needed to build that building. Using SAP Business AI allows it to execute in minutes quote processes that would have taken weeks previously. The AI feature reads the print, builds a mathematical model of the building, and then applies the rules for how you would build it. And out the other side, you get all the materials you need to build that building without having to think about it. It also enables customer service representatives to respond to customers’ inquiries in a matter of seconds.”
Cain comments on another aspect of the tool: “Using the SAP AI Core and generative AI hub, we could take advantage of natural language processing. So we built a chatbot into OMS+IA that you can simply ask questions of, just like you would ask a person. The feature is able to understand simple user input and turn it into an action.”
In addition, integration with the SAP Document AI solution simplifies order management administration. Inbound purchase orders received in the AI chat feature or through e-mail are parsed through the service, turning them into sales orders or quotes in the SAP ERP application. For large purchase orders in particular, this saves hours of a sales rep’s time.
CEO, DataXstream LLC
Improving operational efficiency through data consistency and order accuracy
Yates contemplates the rapid adoption of AI in business: “I think AI is creating tremendous opportunities for the future. Whether it’s accounting, selling, procurement, or warehousing—every function is going to go through massive change on the way to improving efficiency, accuracy, and business models.”
Yates continues, “For DataXstream, the shift from being a services company to a software company was a huge jump for us. And I believe that the AI technology that we’re adopting today is going to be that next big jump in how we do everything from a business perspective. Our use of SAP Business AI is already helping reduce the work effort for our customers to get the job done and get the job done faster. That’s a strategic advantage for our customers because if they can be the first to answer the quote and are always consistent, then they’re going to create their own loyal customers.”
The use of SAP Business AI is helping DataXstream keep its products at the forefront of innovation and ahead of the competition. As Yates puts it, “AI used in the right way is going to allow us to solve business problems in a way that other companies can only imagine.”