Cutting-edge, real-time enterprise analytics solution for a leading retailer in the Middle East

Maventic successfully deploys a cutting-edge, real-time enterprise analytics solution for a leading retailer in the Middle East

The client is a major global retail chain with its headquarters in the Middle East. The company boasts a diverse portfolio of business divisions, including an immensely popular hypermarket brand and various shopping mall destinations. Its retail stores are across numerous countries, including the UAE, India, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Business Scenario

Before partnering with Maventic, the client relied on two SAP ECC 6.17 EA-Retail systems to manage its business processes - one for the middle east and the other for India respectively. Data from these ECC systems were combined into one SAP BW system for analytical purposes. While the existing architecture was utilized extensively for operational reporting needs, the client’s data models had become increasingly complex and difficult to manage over time. 

Challenges

The analytical architecture, comprising multiple SAP BW systems, posed several challenges, such as:

• Difficulty generating reports at a company level
• Fragmented master data
• Irregular sector-based analytical solutions
• Limited alert-based reporting capabilities
• Delayed generation of critical reports on inventory and sales
• Unavailability of complex reports, such as stock aging and OTB
• Large volumes of unstructured data which required cleaning
• Complicated authorization metrics to access reports

Solution

To address the above challenges, the client was eager to establish a state-of-the-art, organization-wide data warehousing system that could comprehensively support the company's growth for the foreseeable future.

Upon evaluating multiple SAP business analytics partners, Maventic's proposal was selected for a greenfield implementation of SAP BW/4HANA. This was recommended to ensure clean data models and eliminate system flaws. Maventic implemented SAP BW/4HANA 2.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) for reporting tools.

To consolidate information from multiple sources, Maventic used ODP data sources to extract inventory, sales, purchase, and financial data from the two ECC systems. This information was then merged as master data in the BI system. For non-SAP applications, Maventic leveraged the SDI in SAP BW/4HANA to extract the relevant data. Master data unification was implemented by compounding the source system for master data InfoObjects. BI Fiori Launchpad and an alert-based system were implemented for ease of access to reports.

The solution developed by Maventic had two components:

Data Warehouse: SAP BW/4HANA was used as the data warehouse solution to store structured data from the two different ECC source systems.

Analytical Reports: SAP BW queries were created, and business users could access it through SAP Analysis for Office (AFO) to analyze, slice, and dice data according to their specific requirements. These reports provided in-depth information on operational areas and supported users with alert-based distributions.

Dashboards: Concise and graphical representation of information, including cross-sector analysis, enabled higher management to construct future strategies. These dashboards assisted in monitoring key performance indicators, identifying trends, and visualizing data in a format that was easy to interpret.

Benefits

Utilizing SAP BW/4HANA, the client can now:

• Enable business users to access comprehensive, accurate data analysis
• Empower higher management to make informed operational decisions and develop future strategies through intuitive graphical representations
• Create a unified, global view of enterprise information
• Enhance end-user experience with a user-friendly solution that includes rich functionalities such as drill-downs, graphs, and easy navigation
• Ensure acceptable report and dashboard performance even with large data sets
• Provide alert-based report broadcasting to facilitate access to critical information