The integration of rapid data processing and advanced AI technologies is crucial for enhancing business agility. Solutions like SAP Business Data Cloud, in partnership with Databricks, provide a seamless data fabric that reduces latency and powers AI-driven insights, helping companies like Henkel to innovate and adapt to market changes efficiently.
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In today's business environment, the capacity to quickly react to events is increasingly valued. A company's ability to address business events promptly can enhance customer service and operational efficiency. Dr. Richard Hackathorn, an expert in analytics and business intelligence, uses the example of a customer's request for product information to illustrate how faster responses can provide increased value.
This responsiveness is affected by the time needed to capture, analyze, and act on data. Companies striving to improve their response times are adopting advanced AI and high-quality data to gain insights. However, many organizations encounter challenges due to data reliability issues. A survey of 1,200 business and technology leaders found that 55% identified poor data quality as a primary obstacle, with nearly half facing difficulties in harmonizing data across various systems.
Fragmentation is a key issue that hampers effective data use, leading to inconsistent AI outcomes, delayed decision-making, and a disconnect between business applications. Managing data across diverse platforms can be complex and costly, especially when the data lacks the necessary context for collaborative insights.
Organizations can address data latency by employing a business data fabric. This approach involves creating a comprehensive data layer that integrates fragmented data landscapes, providing seamless access to reliable data. This integration supports accurate decision-making, real-time insights, and streamlined data management, establishing a single source of truth that facilitates agile self-service access and comprehensive data governance.
SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) is a fully managed SaaS solution designed to reduce latency and enhance data trust by harmonizing data to generate actionable insights. This platform is part of SAP's Business Data Fabric strategy, allowing companies to ingest trusted data from various sources while maintaining business context. This capability supports intelligent applications, planning, AI, and advanced analytics.
The collaboration with Databricks enhances these capabilities by integrating AI/ML, data science, and data engineering functionalities within SAP BDC. This integration allows companies to combine semantically rich, business-ready data from SAP and other applications, utilizing Databricks’ zero-copy Delta Sharing protocols to streamline the integration of unstructured data into a single, harmonized data model.
Henkel, a multinational corporation with a diverse product range, demonstrates the practical application of these technologies. As a longstanding SAP user, Henkel relies on SAP for its data strategy. The implementation of SAP Business Data Cloud is expected to unlock the value of data within Henkel’s operations, supporting future product development and responsiveness to market changes.
Henkel also uses Databricks as its central data lakehouse, enabling the development of data products such as financial analytics and inventory management. The integration of SAP and Databricks solutions supports ongoing data management and AI development, ensuring that Henkel’s operations remain aligned with current business data.
Since 2004, Dr. Hackathorn has explored how advancements in data technology could improve companies' time to value. Today, data, analytics, and AI technologies have advanced significantly, allowing businesses to implement strategies that align with real-world events. Solutions like SAP BDC provide a reliable data foundation, enabling enterprises to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving global market.