Is Your SAP Data a Strategic Asset or a Digital Anchor?

An SAP system has been an enterprise’s undisputed, reliable heart for decades. It’s like a digital vault that meticulously and accurately records every transaction, from procurement to payment.

However, in the digital economy, this can feel like a weakness. Business leaders need answers now, but the data needed to provide them is often locked away and accessible only through slow, periodic batch processes. This creates a frustrating data latency gap between the business strategy and the IT team’s ability to execute it. While customers demand seamless, real-time experiences and the supply chain needs predictive insights, the enterprise’s core data remains a historical record rather than a live, strategic asset.

According to a whitepaper by SAP partner Onibex, organizations must fundamentally change their relationship with SAP data to survive and thrive.

Shifting from Data Extraction to Data Products

The whitepaper indicates that the traditional approach views SAP data through the lens of a specific process and is trapped in transaction codes and complex tables. The modern paradigm flips this entirely, focusing instead on creating reusable, governed Data Products.

A Data Product is a curated, high-quality, self-describing asset with clear ownership and governance. It represents a core business entity like a Customer, Order, or Product. The organization’s SAP system is the source of hundreds of these potential assets.

For example, a Data Product can transform an Available-to-Sell Inventory from a report a user has to request to a continuous stream of information ready for an e-commerce site, sales team, and logistics partners to consume simultaneously.

The Blueprint for Agility

Data Product’s philosophy is powered by a Data Core Architecture. Unlike older Data Fabric models that focused on connecting silos for batch analytics, a Data Core is built for real-time flow.

According to the whitepaper, it establishes a single, reliable source of truth where all systems—SAP, CRM, MES—publish and subscribe to real-time data streams. This decoupled, publish/subscribe model provides immense agility, allowing the business to add new data consumers without rebuilding its entire integration landscape.

This architecture enables three pillars of business value:

1. Real-Time Experiences: Provide customers and employees with live, contextual information. For example, provide an e-commerce platform with an exact, real-time view of inventory to prevent stockouts.
2. Predictive Insights: Move beyond analyzing what happened to anticipating what will happen in the near to long term. By analyzing real-time sensor and asset performance data, organizations can minimize downtime by predicting equipment failures before they occur.
3. Intelligent Automation: Optimize operations from the factory to the back office. Automate routine tasks like financial reconciliation across diverse applications, significantly reducing operational costs and freeing human talent.

An Agile Path to Value

Transitioning to a modern, data-centric architecture doesn’t require a high-risk, multi-year project. The path to democratizing data is built on delivering incremental value and building momentum.

The journey starts by identifying one high-impact use case where real-time data can provide immediate, measurable value. For example, pre-packaged solutions and accelerators from Onibex can connect to an organization’s SAP systems and begin streaming its first Data Products in days, not months. By delivering this new, real-time asset to their consumers, organizations can measure the impact, gather feedback, and showcase tangible business value to build a case for expansion.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Act small to win big with a rapid POC. Onibex can demonstrate this rapid, low-risk approach by delivering a Proof of Concept (POC) using the organization’s own SAP data in just 10 working hours, providing a clear blueprint for turning data latency liability into the business’s most significant competitive advantage.

Reframe your data’s purpose with a Data Core. Stop treating SAP data as a historical byproduct. Onibex helps implement a modern Data Core Architecture. This approach turns data into a strategic, real-time asset that directly fuels business outcomes instead of remaining locked in legacy systems.

Think in terms of building data products. Onibex utilizes pre-packaged solutions and accelerators to help organizations rapidly transform raw SAP data into governed, ready-to-consume Data Products. This creates a decoupled, scalable architecture that accelerates innovation and avoids the bottlenecks of traditional point-to-point integrations.