Why SAP Datasphere is the key to the value in your data

Those who are not data-driven are falling behind. That is the harsh reality. Organisations that know how to properly access data sources and base decisions on data can innovate faster, respond better to sudden transformations and launch new business models more easily. By now, most organisations know this. But at the same time, they use countless applications to support business processes. That means: mountains of data, scattered throughout the organisation. And even outside it. Because with external data sources, organisations can enrich their own data to realise even more accurate insights.

If you want to benefit from the value in that data, you need to be able to access that data quickly. And that can be a hefty task. Just extracting data from multiple data sources – both SAP and non-SAP, but also on-premise and cloud, for example – requires a lot of work. On top of that, data professionals also have to rebuild the business context of the data all over again in most cases. Think of data definitions, metadata and information about data creation. This is not to mention the subsequent challenges: how do you get datasets to the right people in an orderly and secure way?

What is SAP Datasphere?

SAP Datasphere offers organisations a way to make high-quality data easily available. Anytime, anywhere. With this data service, built on the SAP Business Technology Platform, you create a central access and processing point for all your data (streams). This makes it a powerful starting point for data integration, data cataloguing, semantic modelling, data warehousing, data federation and data virtualisation. We list the main advantages:

Simplify a complex data landscape

Data is scattered all over your organisation, but that should not be the problem of business users. With SAP Datasphere, you create one environment in which all your data comes together. From all your applications, both SAP and non-SAP sources and both on-premise and cloud. Such a central access point makes it easy for business users to find and use datasets. It also makes data governance easier, as you can manage all your data in one place via the Catalog. Moreover, SAP Datasphere always gives you a clear picture of the data lineage.

Anytime, fast access to high-quality company data

You have no use for data without context, or associated semantics, logic and context. Things that business users don’t say much about, but are crucial for interpreting data. After unlocking applications, data professionals often spend a lot of time rebuilding that context. With SAP Datasphere, you unlock data while retaining the semantics, logic and context already in the original applications. And with the Analytic Model you then present the data to business users in an easily understandable way. In this way, you always offer quick access to high-quality data.

Optimal findability of datasets

In these years of rapid market developments and unforeseen social events, you need to be able to act quickly. That is why data must be readily available and easy to find. After all, in the time that you submit a request to a BI department and have to wait until you get an answer, your chance may already be gone. SAP Datasphere offers user-friendly access to all your datasets. This allows business users from all layers of your organisation to find datasets themselves and then use them to extract value.

Share and enrich data easily

To get even more out of data, you want to be able to enrich it. For example, with external data from partners or data suppliers. Think of benchmark data on personnel costs, so you can compare your personnel costs with the average. Or external data to translate your organisation’s gas consumption into the amount of emissions. In the Data Marketplace of SAP Datasphere, you will find a wide range of additional datasets to make your data even more valuable. Of course, you can also share data sets there yourself.