In a modern data stack where powerful cloud-based platforms like the Snowflake AI Data Cloud enable businesses to integrate data across an organization, the notion of a single source of truth that delivers true enterprise analytics isn’t just a fantasy anymore. To the contrary, the benefits of integrating and enriching your ERP data with the rest of your data ecosystem are too numerous and transformative to ignore—especially as more and more of your competitors are beginning to explore similar possibilities.
In a recent Hakkoda webinar, Matt Florian, Practice Director of SAP Delivery at Hakkoda sat down with David Richert, SAP Modernization Evangelist & Principal Sales Engineer at Snowflake, to address five of the biggest reasons organizations are moving their SAP analytical workloads into Snowflake.
1. Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
Arguably one of the most attractive pulls towards Snowflake is the reduced total cost of ownership. According to Richert, Snowflake’s unified engine eliminates the need for multiple applications and pipelines, dramatically cutting costs. Florian, for his part, drilled into this point with a case study which followed a major utilities company as it moved its analytical workloads from BW to Snowflake—achieving a 10x cost savings along the way.2. Data Democratization
By integrating structured and semi-structured data, Snowflake allows users accessibility to a centralized data repository.
This feature facilitates data democratization within organizations, a need that Richert underlines with another customer story out of the CPG space. By taking advantage of Snowflake’s scalable capabilities, including isolated compute, the company was able to scale from 5,000 to 60,000 users.
With SAP constituting only 20% of the organization’s data, the next stage of the CPG organization’s Snowflake journey involved unifying that data with the remaining 80% to achieve a holistic view of their enterprise.
3. Enhanced Decision Making
With Snowflake’s data analytics and AI/ML capabilities, businesses can enjoy faster and more accurate decision-making.
Florian pointed out the ease of using Snowflake’s Cortex and ML tools, bringing advanced, AI-powered analysis to your fingertips.
4. Data Innovation
For organizations eyeing the frontier of data innovation, Snowflake is an excellent enabler. Its platform allows the development and implementation of data products and advanced analytics solutions.
Richert particularly highlighted the platform’s ability to accommodate large amounts of data, opening doors to work with petabyte-scale data sets.
5. Seamless Data Consumer Experience
Turning their attention to the consumer experience which ultimately determines the success or failure of an analytics solution, Florian and Richert underscored once again the isolated compute capabilities of Snowflake.
This flexible workload isolation functionality helps ensure that end users at any level of an organization can run analytics on their data at any time without traditional fears of bringing down the system during heavy compute periods.
This is complemented by Snowflake’s cross-platform access and modern data visualization tools, which can streamline historically cumbersome analytical processes and slash time to insight for key stakeholders.
Embracing Snowflake for Enterprise Analytics: The Way Forward
“Moving to Snowflake, businesses can enjoy improved query performance, simplified development, and the ability to create a seamless and trustworthy data experience for customers and data consumers,” Florian neatly summarized.
As more and more enterprises break free of SAP’s proprietary ecosystems and build analytics solutions that enrich ERP data with a host of other critical information, the benefits of a centralized cloud platform like Snowflake grow exponentially more apparent. From advanced data management capabilities, to reduced compute and maintenance costs, to improved decision-making backed by context-rich data and an enhanced user experience, the rewards awaiting businesses ready to modernize their SAP analytics workloads are both manifold and fundamentally transformative.
Want to learn more about the benefits of migrating SAP analytics to Snowflake? Contact one of our SAP experts today, or register to view the full webinar on demand here.
