Synergies and cost savings of using SAS with SAP

by Achim Welter, Impath Consulting Services

If getting more value out of your IT investments and optimizing business intelligence processes are on your list of priorities, you're not alone. But most CIOs and IT managers are striving, first, to justify and, then, to increase the value of investments made in necessary ERP systems, such as SAP R/3.

While the rest of your company might not realize it, ERP systems – such as SAP – hold vital business data. IT's new challenge has become delivering information from ERP systems in a reliable and timely fashion to make it more relevant and usable for intelligent business decisions.

For years, reporting and analysis systems grew at a phenomenal rate; the reasons for this growth were twofold: the need within the business for information and the lack of integrated business intelligence platforms. Filling these needs often meant that each new reporting or data analysis problem added a new system, many of which can now be eliminated. Replacing these systems with one that will optimize business intelligence processes is a natural next step in this evolution – and one that you don't want your competitors to finish before you do.

It must be understood that using information strategically is different from simply storing it in a set of operational, reporting or analysis systems. Therefore, accessing, cleansing and analyzing data from your ERP system as well as other back-end systems is necessary before providing it to the information consumers to use for daily decision making.

Integrating SAS on top of SAP provides impressive business intelligence performance that is based on a broad set of standard functionalities, and it reduces operational IT cost. SAS' functionally rich and complete ETL process combined with SAS Data Surveyors for SAP mean that you are assured a high degree of data quality and process control. This ETL toolset, combined with SAS' flexibility and scalability, guarantees a fast implementation cycle within a SAP or non-SAP environment. SAS can perform all aspects of ETL processing and analysis, thereby adding a layer of true business intelligence that goes far beyond simple query and reporting.

The benefits of adding this intelligence layer are:

• A short implementation cycle.
• Reduced maintenance effort.
• Higher data quality.
• A simplified IT environment.
• Reduced data replication.
• Improved business processes by providing a real business intelligence platform.
• Significantly lower operational and IT costs.

A less tangible result is that, throughout the organization, the IT department earns the reputation of being a valuable business unit that seamlessly delivers information to every member of the organization, when they need it and in the way they need it.

Bio: Achim Welter is president of Impath Consulting Services. Prior to founding Impath in 2004, he worked in various subsidiaries of Bertelsmann AG as an application developer, IT consultant, director of Internet and new media, vice president of SAP and e-commerce technologies, and as acting CIO and CTO.