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Data Integrity Matters: Building Trust and Certainty When Everything Is Unpredictable

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Facing an uncertain economy and unpredictable change, business leaders are making difficult choices. Some are making cuts and canceling projects while others are planning to ride out the storm or seeking solutions to emerge stronger. But the one thing they cannot afford is to ignore the quality and integrity of their data to make better decisions.

Decisions come in many packages, ranging from informed or gut-driven to actionable or avoidable. But at the end of the day, they all lead to consequences that will impact the future.

We are seeing this natural law of decision-making unfold as people try to make sense of this recent pandemic. For decades, scientists and healthcare advocates have warned national governments, industries, and citizens about the risk of a pathogen spreading at a voracious speed that would be difficult to contain in one area. Unfortunately, after years of inaction, COVID-19 caught the world by surprise – and within days, people’s lives and economic conditions altered in nearly every corner of the world.

Now, we are facing a new era that will never resemble the experiences we knew before the pandemic. Shopping behaviors have become more purposeful as customers value basic commodities and their health over luxury items. Meanwhile, executives face significant challenges as they reopen their offices, operational facilities, and stores in ways that ensure employee safety and health and compliance with strict regulations without sacrificing optimal cash flow and customer value.

Every choice that businesses make right now is consequential for not only themselves but also the customers buying their offerings, the communities surrounding them, and a global population indirectly impacted by them. And pulling together readily available, trusted data from various sources into a central platform – such as SAP HANA or SAP Digital Boardroom – can help companies better position themselves to provide the outcomes and care people expect and need.

Simplified Approach to Data Migration

For many businesses, a frustrating aspect of navigating today’s economic environment is the inability to improve, scale, and pivot operations fast enough to mitigate risk and respond to the unexpected. Sure, some companies have achieved noteworthy success. But for the majority, new customer behaviors, supplier dynamics, remote employees, and regulations can prove troublesome, leading to missed opportunities for moving products, strengthening brand loyalty, and protecting revenue growth.

The only way to resolve such an inefficient and unsustainable business strategy is to reconsider and increase data value and integrity. According to the IDC study, “The Business Value of SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Application Migration,” this approach supports efficient data migration to a core of intelligence – enabled by SAP S/4HANA and SAP SuccessFactors software for example – that drives more cost-effective operations.

IDC calculated that study participants using the SAP Advanced Data Migration application by Syniti will achieve, on average:

  • 303% return on investment (ROI) over three years
  • 38% lower data migration costs
  • US$3.45 million in average annual benefits
  • Eight-month payback period

“By using solution extensions, such as SAP Advanced Data Migration, data migration becomes more than just a one-time event,” stated Stewart Bond, director of Data Integration and Intelligence Software Research at IDC. “Organizations can accelerate the migration process while minimizing unplanned downtime – and establish a foundation for an expanded role and significance of data in the organization. This foundation of intelligence about data provides data-driven decision makers with a deeper understanding of what each data type means, how to store and access it, and which business scenarios need it.”

Five Benefits of Advanced Data Migration

After closer analysis, IDC found that the quantitative advantages of using SAP Advanced Data Migration were achieved when the application optimized the use of existing business-critical SAP solutions through five fundamental improvements.

1. Access to cleaner data with increased automation

A sophisticated toolset and management process help keep data clean, reducing the need for manual work and triggering advanced alerts to warn of potential issues before downstream problems emerge. Manual spreadsheets are replaced with automated project execution management, including tasks, roles, and project details for both business users and migration developers.

2. Improved data migration and governance

A repeatable and predictable process accelerates data migration, while cross-functional process integration helps optimize and govern data quality and value. In return, migration assets – such as designs for target data and information about the decisions involved – can be reused in downstream projects.

3. Enhanced business agility

While data migration is typically a future-focused project, it also provides immediate ROI. Businesses can move forward with enhanced agility and at an optimized cost. Furthermore, centralizing real-time data in a central platform keeps organizations aligned and streamlined with automated processes and reporting analytics.

4. Data evolution enablement

In a marketplace that relentlessly evolves, businesses cannot afford to run on static data. A paradigm that builds logic on live logic enables companies to acquire the flexibility and agility necessary to gain a resilient edge in responsiveness.

5. The potential to do more with the same resources

Thanks to machine learning, businesses can automate processes and capture and share expertise, context, and data insights. Doing so provides valuable input and assets that can be reused for future initiatives while breaking down siloed information to unlock institutional knowledge and an understanding of how data advances strategic goals.

Rise Above Uncertainty With the Right Data

It is clear that the recent pandemic is impacting every industry on a scale that is nothing less than surprising. Many long-established brands are struggling to the point of bankruptcy. Some brands are experiencing surging demand due to a sudden shift in customer behavior and priorities. Meanwhile, newer competitors are developing niche business models to take over for industry players that cannot keep up or are losing traction.

Addressing this level of volatility and uncertainty requires much more than pre-pandemic technology infrastructure. Businesses need data of high quality and integrity, which can only be supported by a fast, agile, and governed structure on an ongoing basis – everything that SAP Advanced Data Migration is designed to provide.

To learn how SAP customers are benefiting from this solution, attend the IDC webinar, “Why SAP Customers Are Seeing a 303% ROI from Data Migration,” on June 30, 2020, at 11:00 a.m. ET.

Explore the calculated cost savings and business benefits of SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti by reading the IDC Business Value white paper, “The Business Value of SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Application Migration,” sponsored by SAP and Syniti.