AWS, Qlik, and SAP Data: Turning the Lifeblood of Business into Value and Action

One of my favorite analogies is that data is the lifeblood of the business.

Before you roll your eyes at me (I see it now), hear me out. At your annual physical, when you get your blood work done, think of how much information is uncovered about your overall health from a tiny vial of your blood. From those 10 CCs they extract comes back pages of information regarding your cell counts, glucose, cholesterol, and other information. Those results are vital to helping your doctor make proactive recommendations that will impact your overall health and lifespan. It’s all in the blood’s data - and business data is no different.

The modern analytics architecture has been one of the most innovative and evolving spaces in the world of business intelligence. Companies are becoming more data centric, changing their perception of data from being a by-product of the business or even a liability to understanding it holds hidden treasures about how that business operates and performs. In recent years, CEOs have initiated significant investments in IT applications and architecture to further understand what data is telling them about the business. The most aggressive innovations have been around analytics applications, including AI & large language models (LLM), cloud architectures, and modern data warehouses.

At Qlik we work with organizations across all vertical markets, and we see how competitors are positioning their offerings. Often, we see companies make deep investments in analytics with a clear vision and expectations. We also see competitors tip-toe in, understanding that analytics needs to be a priority but struggling to create clear direction or prioritize investment.

Recently, Qlik and AWS surveyed our SAP customers to better understand these investment decisions and what’s driving their core use cases. We published these findings in both an infographic and an interactive analytics app entitled “Unlock the Full Value of Your SAP Data.”

All use cases usually come down to three main objectives: reduce cost, increase revenue, or create a competitive advantage. Organizations that can align their use cases with these priorities and set expectations are already ahead.

Of our respondents, we found the overwhelming majority of customers surveyed (87%) said that it's critical to leverage SAP data to better understand the business. 88% expect to leverage SAP data to increase revenue, while almost half of them expect that revenue growth to be significant. Expectations around cost reduction are also very positive. Looking at these results, it’s clear that organizations intend to improve both the top and bottom line by correctly leveraging their SAP data to create accurate insights that lead to financial impact.

As a pilot, my instructor always taught me that “speed is life", and that’s true in business as well. By accurately delivering and integrating data at volume and velocity, decisions can be made faster with the most recent information. SAP customers have traditionally been accustomed to accepting significant latency in their data through Business Warehouse systems. Our study shows that nearly half of SAP customers agree that faster access to data would increase the speed in which they made decisions, with over half desiring latency of less than 30 minutes. Thankfully, with the innovations around cloud data warehouses and analytics applications, SAP customers can satisfy their increased appetite for real-time data.

With these technological advances, gone are the times of managing the business in the rear-view and making adjustments month to month or quarter to quarter. Instead, with the right investments, organizations today are realizing the power of data and acting more quickly on that data to create a competitive advantage or manage the business more proactively. This was best articulated by the CFO of a Qlik customer: “We have made massive strides in improving our daily orders and revenue process. Previously, orders and revenue were available once a month after month close. Now, anyone from the division president to the sales force can access this information daily through an application on their computer or phone. This means we can act with speed and agility to address gaps in the market.”

This is a clear continuation of the ongoing enterprise digital transformation journey focused on making data useful and putting it in the hands of every employee to make decisions faster. At Qlik, we are always seeking to understand the customer's journey and provide the architecture and solutions to make those use cases become a reality.

Interested in learning more about this survey? View our Qlik analytics app to make it easy for you to explore responses related to:

• Moving to HANA and the cloud

• Unlocking SAP data for analytics

• The economic benefits of unlocking SAP data

• Integration challenges

And to learn more about Qlik's solutions in driving more value from SAP data, visit SAP Data Integration and Analytics Solutions | Qlik.

Give it a try today!

Customers are leveraging Qlik and AWS together to reduce costs, increase revenue, and create a competitive advantage by unlocking the full value of their SAP data.