SAP Product Management

The SAP Product Management team in Germany selected SeaPark Consultancy as one of six SAP partners to execute a Proof of Concept (POC) on SAP BW Bridge for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. This would involve SeaPark working with the SAP BW Bridge development team for the duration of the POC. “SeaPark was one of the partners best positioned to move SAP BW customers to SAP DWC, because of their previous experiences with the SAP BW/4HANA conversion – a dedication to the topic evidenced by the development of their own tools (e.g. DECOM4) that augment what SAP already offers.” Karsten Ruf (SAP Solution Manager – Data & Analytics).

​

​

The Challenge

Interpreting, reporting on and analysing business data is critical to Ferrosan to stay agile and competitive in the market. Their cloud-first strategy enables them to be an early adopter to fulfil the technology needs of the business and drive savings. Ferrosan was one of the first to adopt SAP Analytics Cloud for data visualisation and predictive analysis supporting its roadmap to SAP S/4HANA. Ferrosan had been exploring further ways to move more of its business processes onto cloud technology, a key part of which was its data warehouse capability, currently on SAP BW (Business Warehouse). SeaPark Consultancy worked in conjunction with Innologic Consultancy (SeaPark’s Danish Partner) to provide a POC to move data over to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, using SAP BW Bridge. Having been experiencing some issues with its existing onpremise hosting partner for some time, Ferrosan made the decision it was a good time to explore this new and exciting opportunity. “The POC project with SeaPark supported our move to the cloud for all our SAP and non-SAP environments. As a fast-growing and innovative business, we have an open approach to new technology and were already looking at how RISE with SAP could deliver more efficiency and savings.” Clemens Bjørneboes, SAP BI Lead, Ferrosan Medical Devices.

Solution

The focus was to demonstrate to Ferrosan how it could optimise the flexibility, agility and scalability of the cloud to transfer its BW assets securely over to SAP Data Warehouse Cloud using SAP’s new technology SAP BW Bridge. SeaPark deployed its proprietary BW discovery tool DECOM4 to determine that Ferrosan’s profit centre accounting would make a suitable scenario for the POC. Using insights from DECOM4 , it uncovered what data content was actually in use. Any unused data would not need to be transferred and could potentially help Ferrosan to reduce their BW footprint, leading to considerable savings of both time and money when embarking on a cloud migration. Using SAP BW Bridge, which is required for ODP-based source systems (Operational Data Provisioning), SeaPark replicated the profit centre accounting business content from Ferrosan’s on premise SAP ECC6 system. The SAP BW Bridge was used to implement BW dataflow functionality, structure and logic “The focus was to demonstrate to Ferrosan how it could optimise the flexibility, agility and scalability of the

cloud.” that was then exposed into SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. Ferrosan’s profit centre accounting business content is now activated in the cloud with a live connection to SAP Analytics Cloud. This gives the relevant users instant access to this business intelligence content to do all the interpretation, analysis and reporting they need via visualisation dashboards in one cloud environment. “This successful and fascinating pilot to migrate our profit centre accounting business content into the cloud for use in SAP Analytics Cloud has showcased to us the art of the possible as we move forward to embrace cloud technology in our business.” Clemens Bjørneboes, SAP BI Lead, Ferrosan Medical Devices.