High-performance data warehousing solution for a large African water management company, enhancing data processing & analytics

Maventic implements a high-performance data warehousing solution for a large African water management company, enhancing data processing & analytics

The client is a state-owned entity and one of Africa’s most successful organizations involved in water management. It provides water services – water supply and sanitation services – to other water services institutions in its service area. It supplies 563 million m3 of potable water per annum to 11.1 million people across a geographical area of 94,359 km2.

Business Scenario

Before partnering with Maventic, the client managed its entire operations using a combination of software systems, including SAP ECC 6.0 (IS-Utilities), Labware (SQL), DHIDSS (SQL), and WRMDSS (PostgreSQL). However, following the decommissioning of its legacy system and the implementation of SAP ERP, the client was forced to rely on SAP standard reports and various manually prepared Excel reports to analyze its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This approach proved to be error-prone, time-consuming, cumbersome, and highly inefficient, leading to the need for a more effective and streamlined solution.

Challenges

The ad-hoc and unstructured reporting framework resulted in several challenges, including:

• Limited trust in manually compiled reports from various data sources
• Absence of printable reports or interactive dashboards for top management and the lack of self-exploration tools for ad-hoc analysis for business teams
• Lack of automated solutions for critical reports such as Financial Ratio, Operating Cash Flow, and CO Income Statement
• Unavailability of complex reports like OOR Investigation, BBBEE Tracking, Bid Tracker, and Water Balancing (Raw Balances, Plant Balances, and Distribution) 
• Lack of tools to check the correctness of billing runs, comparison of before and after billing volumes, sales, and tariffs
• Preparation of reports which was unnecessarily time-consuming
• Consolidation of data from various systems, which further delayed the availability of reports
• Manual compilation of data from various sources, which frequently put the veracity of the delivered reports in question

All of the above hampered the client’s decision-making process, efficiency, profitability, and growth.

Solution

In order to tackle the aforementioned challenges, the client expressed a keen interest in implementing SAP BWoH for analytical purposes. However, Maventic recommended an even more advanced solution - implementing the latest version, SAP BW4/HANA. The latter could leverage the power of HANA and develop business-centric reports across different business functions utilizing data from SAP and non-SAP systems. 

The solution was developed using BW/4HANA 2.0 and BusinessObjects 4.2 to allow Excel and graphical-based information presentation to ensure consistent data interpretation and LSA++ architecture to utilize HANA-optimized objects for best performance. This solution combined data from SAP ECC 6.0 (IS-Utilities), Labware (SQL), DHIDSS (SQL), and WRMDSS (PostgreSQL) for actuals and historical reporting.

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 multiple 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.

Data Extraction From Non-SAP System: SAP SDA (Smart Data Access) was used to extract data from the non-SAP database into SAP BW4HANA.

Fixed Format Reports: Web Intelligence reports were built to facilitate printing and publishing reports as per requirements.

Dashboards: To support the middle and top management in building future strategies, multiple interactive ad dynamic dashboards were developed, leveraging the capabilities of SAP BI Design Studio, to enable users to gain insights at a glance and make informed decisions. 

Benefits

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

• Empower business users with comprehensive data analysis through intuitive interfaces, ensuring data trustworthiness.
• Enable higher management to make informed decisions with graphical and interactive representations of information for strategic planning.
• Create a unified view of enterprise information and key performance indicators (KPIs) across different business areas.
• Utilize alert-based broadcasting to facilitate quick decision-making by users.
• Enhance user experience with a user-friendly solution that offers rich functionalities such as drill-downs, graphs, and easy navigation.
• Realize significant time savings in report preparation with readily available reports, reducing efforts and increasing efficiency.