Modern procurement focuses on digital transformation and technology utilization to enhance data quality for optimizing procurement activities, boosting efficiency, and meeting strategic sourcing targets while reducing risk, enabling guided purchasing, cost-cutting, and supply chain optimization.
SAP Ariba, a cloud-based procurement solution, supports businesses in improving their procurement operations. It provides a unified platform that automates and streamlines the procurement process, helping businesses enhance their financial performance and meet purchasing objectives.
However, while many organizations that use
SAP Ariba are looking to improve their procurement procedures, SAP Ariba’s in-product analytics and reporting tool does not fully meet all their reporting requirements because of a lack of native tools for conducting advanced analytics as expected in today’s data-driven landscape.
Precog fills this critical void by enabling complex data analysis that the standard Ariba tools do not support. Precog supports leveraging SAP’s existing APIs to move data into data warehousing tools including
SAP Datasphere,
Snowflake,
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 and Synapse,
Google BigQuery,
PostgresSQL, and
Redshift. Precog in the context of
SAP Ariba data analysis presents a compelling case, benefiting both customers and SAP itself. Customers gain valuable insights by reviewing their Ariba data, identifying potential cost savings, and pinpointing efficiency improvements in their spending processes.
As Sami Haddad, Senior Sales Engineer at Precog highlights, “For SAP, the integration with Precog facilitates a dual advantage. It not only allows the storage of data, thus consuming
Datasphere credits, but also leverages the pre-built
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) stories for analytical purposes. Without Precog, transferring data from
Ariba to
Datasphere for further analysis would be challenging, if not impossible, underlining the mutually beneficial relationship between Precog’s cutting-edge
ELT solution and SAP Datasphere’s integrated data analytics framework.”
With Precog, connecting to all available
Ariba APIs using standard user credentials instantly transforms the data into analytic and AI ready tables within minutes. Its intuitive user experience enables users to effortlessly select the precise tables they require and directly load them into their desired data warehouse. Offering simplicity, speed, and unmatched flexibility, Precog stands out as the most user-friendly solution for accessing
Ariba data available on the market. It eliminates the need for coding, complex workflow construction, or intricate setup processes, allowing users to transform raw
Ariba data to actionable analytics in minutes.
Case in Point – A Swiss Pharmaceutical Company
A Swiss pharmaceutical and medical device company specializing in eye care products with annual revenues of approximately $10-$12 billion, focusing predominantly on its consumer product market, had a fully integrated SAP’s suite of solutions, including SAP ERP,
SAP HANA,
SAP Business Warehouse (BW), and SAP BusinessObjects (BOBJ), into its operations, alongside a comprehensive use of Ariba for both direct and indirect materials procurement over the past two years.
However, despite their advanced IT infrastructure, the company faced challenges in integrating and analyzing data from Ariba and other non-SAP sources to enhance their business operations. This led to a heavy reliance on their IT department for data modeling and analysis, hindering efficiency and agility in decision-making.
To address these challenges, the company aimed to leverage
SAP’s Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) for business modeling, enabling the combination of data from various sources. Additionally, by utilizing the
SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), they sought to graphically model data, analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), and broaden application use cases—all while reducing dependency on the IT department. This move towards self-service analytics was intended to empower business users to independently construct analytical models.
The SAP sales team initially encountered the company’s preference for utilizing their existing
SAP HANA and BusinessObjects systems for data analysis. However, they successfully advocated for the adoption of
SAP DWC, highlighting the benefits of cloud-based analytics and reduced IT reliance. Through close collaboration, they developed a template featuring 70 KPIs to maximize the value derived from the
Ariba platform and procurement activities. A proof of concept (PoC) was created, showcasing various use cases with strong support from Business Technology Platform (BTP) and International Standard Book Number (ISBN) Centers of Excellence (CoEs).
This collaboration included partnering with Precog to integrate data from multiple sources into SAP DWC for effective modeling and to establish predictive use cases for future sales inquiries, aiming to fulfill the company’s goals of enhanced data integration, analysis capabilities, and operational efficiency. Precog provided over
2,000 supported sources with no coding to help bring the company’s API data from
Ariba,
ServiceNow,
Beeline, Ganga and Ansha into DWC.
SAP Ariba ELT – A Market-ready Solution
Precog’s out-of-the-box solution is built for large-scale business needs, including these solution highlights:
- Compliance with critical security and privacy standards such as SOC II Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA, ensuring data is managed securely and in accordance with all geographic regulatory requirements.
- AI to generate analytic-ready tables from Ariba data automatically, providing a completely code-free environment for users. This core value proposition streamlines the preparation of data for analysis, eliminating manual table or schema
- Advanced AI-based primary key detection capability: Precog prioritizes the use of the primary key provided by Ariba but, in instances where this primary key may not be accurate, it intelligently identifies an alternative original primary key. This ensures seamless data integration into the chosen destination without complications.
- Backend column filtering is a proactive feature designed to manage data integrity. Precog automatically filters out potentially corrupted fields from Ariba, ensuring only clean, usable data is transferred. This automatic filtration facilitates uninterrupted data loading processes.
- Demonstrated capability to handle large volumes of data; having successfully processed tens of millions of rows for major enterprise clients without any performance issues. This underlines Precog’s reliability and efficiency in managing data at scale.
- Exclusive compatibility with SAP Datasphere, marking Precog as the only ELT product specifically designed to transfer SAP Ariba, as well as all available SAP Web APIs, data into SAP Datasphere. This integration allows Ariba customers to effectively utilize SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) for in-depth analysis of procurement data, answering critical business questions with unprecedented ease and accuracy.
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