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Webinars
Past Webinar

Preparing for the Future: Optimizing Your SAP Data Infrastructure

Date and Time

Tue, Nov 19, 2024
Read the 3-minute summary

Details

As the 2027 sunset of SAP ECC approaches, organizations are under pressure to migrate to SAP S/4HANA and modernize their data infrastructure. Though the multi-year timeline to migrate may feel ample, the complexities around deployment strategies, partner selection and training will consume much of this time. The migration to SAP S/4HANA presents an opportunity to not only upgrade your organization’s ERP system, but also to modernize your data platform to take advantage of AI/ML and cross-cloud data sharing and business continuity features.

This webinar will explore how to integrate and centralize SAP ERP data with other data sources, addressing key challenges and strategies involved.

Join our expert speakers as they discuss:

  • The impact of the SAP ECC sunset and what it means for the modernization of your organization’s data architecture
  • Strategies to overcome the challenges of integrating SAP data and the benefits of a single source of truth in a cloud-based environment 
  • Real-world case studies highlighting key learnings from successful enterprise implementations
  • A demonstration on how to leverage your SAP data with Fivetran and Snowflake

Speakers

Mark Van de Wiel
Field CTO, Fivetran
Gopal Raghavan
Field CTO, Snowflake
Moderator: Jim Halcomb
Global Head of Research & Development, EDM Council

Post-event summary

The webinar titled “Preparing for the Future: Optimizing Your SAP Data Infrastructure,” hosted by EDM Council and Fivetran, explored strategies for modernizing SAP data ecosystems to meet evolving business and technological demands. The webinar was led by experts in the industry:

  • Mark Van de Wiel, Field CTO, Fivetran
  • Gopal Raghavan, Field CTO, Snowflake
  • Moderator: Jim Halcomb, Global Head of Research & Development, EDM Council

The speakers discussed challenges and solutions for scalable analytics and seamless integration of SAP data with modern architectures. Mark highlighted the complexity of SAP systems, emphasizing their centrality to global operations: “77% of global transaction volume flows through SAP ERP systems.” This underscores the criticality of optimizing SAP data for analytics without compromising system performance. Challenges such as minimizing system impact, navigating migrations from ECC to S/4HANA, and incorporating non-SAP data for richer insights were central themes.

The speakers introduced solutions leveraging Fivetran and Snowflake to enable efficient data extraction, transformation, and storage. Real-world examples, such as Pitney Bowes reducing its data preparation time from 31 hours to 2 hours, and Cemex achieving 90% automation in SAP data ingestion, showcased the tangible benefits of modernizing SAP analytics. Snowflake’s robust data governance capabilities, combined with Fivetran’s scalable data integration tools, provide a future-proof architecture for blending SAP and non-SAP data.

The webinar concluded with a focus on business continuity and compliance, critical for regulated industries, and emphasized Snowflake’s multi-cloud flexibility and advanced data-sharing capabilities. Together, Fivetran and Snowflake enable organizations to unlock insights, streamline operations, and position themselves for innovation. The session reinforced the importance of aligning data strategies with modern analytics demands, making it clear that future success hinges on adopting adaptive, scalable, and secure data infrastructures.