Unlocking the Full Potential of SAP Data: Fivetran’s Role in Driving Business Growth and Efficiency

Enterprise application software giant, SAP provides solutions for all aspects of an organization’s operations from supply chain to human resources. According to SAP, its customers generate 87% of the world’s global commerce and utilize SAP’s ERP solutions to boost productivity and bolster further business growth. 

Organizations looking to leverage their SAP data outside of the SAP ecosystem may face difficulties with navigation, with underlying systems running on Oracle, Db2i, SQL Server, HANA DB, or SAP S/4HANA. To overcome these data challenges, organizations must utilize integrations that work with the SAP system. 

Fivetran, a cloud-based data movement platform, provides organizations that are looking to make the most of their SAP data with a secure data integration solution that works in conjunction with the SAP ecosystem. 

Cemex cuts SAP processing time from weeks to minutes

One company that is utilizing Fivetran’s data integration platform  is Cemex, a global construction materials and solutions company. With over 4,000 tables in SAP, building and maintaining Informatica-based pipelines required a team of consultants and employees. Its batch-based replication could only support a data sync once every hour and, resulting in weeks to process market data, understand economic issues and supply chain status. To combat these hurdles, the construction firm needed a modern data infrastructure with sustainable infrastructure. 

The company chose Fivetran to consolidate data from all seven of its global SAP ECC and HANA instances. Cemex used Fivetran to sync its data every two minutes, which enabled its teams to efficiently perform data analysis at a global scale. 

With Fivetran providing real-time data visualization, Cemex built a customer 360 view with live integrations into its contact centers and customer-facing mobile app. This app helped the construction firm’s customers track the status of their orders, schedule deliveries, and update orders from their mobile devices. 

Gerardo S. Reyna Caamaño, Global Data Architecture Manager at Cemex, said: “Fivetran has revolutionized our global SAP data delivery, reducing time to insights from days to minutes. We can react swiftly to market changes and track our sustainability efforts at any moment.”

Gill Capital’s $50m gain with real-time insights

Gill Capital, a Singapore-based financial firm, faced challenges with data silos that made reporting slow and error-prone. In 2023, the firm adopted Fivetran and Google Cloud to modernize its data platform and create a functional data lakehouse and real-time reporting system. Fivetran integrated data from SAP and Magento into Google BigQuery, leveraging CDC to load and decode SAP HANA data efficiently. 

As a result, Gill Capital achieved real-time sales data and end-to-end inventory visibility across physical stores, distribution centers, and online platforms. During Black Friday 2023, real-time dashboards drove a 32% year-over-year sales increase and doubled online sales. The new system saves over 90 hours per week in data engineering, enabling the team to explore advanced use cases like GenAI.

Victor Siow, Chief Data Analytics Officer, Gill Capital Group, said: “We never had real-time data for Black Friday before Fivetran. Fivetran gave us data from SAP every five minutes, which allowed the data team to deploy real-time insights to the store for crowd management, stock replenishment and dynamic last-minute deals.”

Pitney Bowes transforms global logistics with real-time data 

Pitney Bowes, a global B2B technology leader in e-commerce, shipping, and mailing, processes over 800 million parcels annually across 16 distribution facilities for 750,000 businesses. However, siloed data, scalability issues, and inefficient infrastructure hindered decision-making and caused downstream issues, such as missed package delivery SLAs. 

To address these challenges, the company replaced its outdated ETL processes with Fivetran, reducing batch load times by 95% and enabling SAP data synchronization multiple times daily. This allowed Pitney Bowes to collect and aggregate data from 700,000 IoT devices, significantly reducing processing load.

With this new infrastructure, Pitney Bowes unlocked new opportunities, including a customer 360 portal and predictive analytics. A real-time operational dashboard provided executives and facility managers with deep visibility into labor, efficiency, and parcel volume, improving planning and decision-making. Overcoming SAP’s data limitations enabled predictive truck scheduling and the launch of a Guaranteed Delivery program, boosting customer satisfaction and lifetime value.

Vishal Shah, Data Architect Manager at Pitney Bowes, said: “Before Fivetran, we could only sync data every two-three days. Now we sync to Fivetran at least four times a day. SAP was a major factor of investing in Fivetran at the onset.”

Driving success with SAP

Fivetran’s fully-managed connectors enable secure and license-compliant access and advanced data replication options for HANA cloud-based deployments. Fivetran supports the integration of  SAP data to cloud storage which reduces implementation time and enables IT teams to focus on strategic goals rather than maintaining data workflows. 

What does this mean for SAP insiders?

Organizations can overcome the challenges of leveraging SAP data outside the SAP ecosystem by adopting tailored data integration solutions. Modern tools like those from Fivetran enable businesses to navigate these complexities and fully harness the potential of their SAP data.

Key takeaways:

• Simplified Data Integration: Fivetran’s cloud-based data movement platform supports seamless integration with SAP systems, reducing complexity for organizations running on HANA, SAP ECC, or S/4HANA.
• Real-Time Insights: By enabling real time data synchronization , Fivetran transforms processing times from weeks to minutes, as demonstrated by Cemex’s global operations.
• Improved Efficiency: Automated data workflows reduce the need for manual pipeline maintenance, allowing IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Live integrations into customer-facing platforms enable businesses to deliver real-time order tracking, scheduling, and updates.
• Scalability and Compliance: Fivetran provides specialized connectors and license-compliant data replication, ensuring sustainable growth for SAP users moving to the cloud.

For SAP users, modern integration solutions like Fivetran unlock the potential of SAP data, enabling faster decision-making, improved agility, and a competitive edge.