Good Data Quality Means Profit

According to IBM, in the US alone, businesses lose $3.1 trillion annually due to the hidden cost of bad data. Various Forrester and Gartner research also indicates that bad data reduces operational efficiency by an average of 30 to 40 percent.

A six-month-long SAP ERP audit at one of the world’s largest energy producers discovered a half a billion USD a year black hole in lost sales and production caused by poor materials and data quality maintenance! Even worse, the SAP COE and Operations Management were unaware that the problem had existed for nearly a decade!

The hidden annual cost of poor SAP data quality to a medium-sized enterprise can be in the range of tens of millions of dollars from sub-optimal operations, extra IT administrative costs, and poor decision making.

Strong Business Cases Safeguard MDG Success

A detailed business case pinpointing value and prioritizing SAP data quality improvements is the key MDG success factor. Customer executives will not commit the necessary resources or lead change to drive success without it. On the other hand, IT-led MDG initiatives quickly get lost in a fog of aimless talk about data models, workflows and staging tables for hundreds of SAP S/4HANA objects and tens of thousands of attributes without understanding real-world business operations. Unfortunately, SAP history is littered with the wrecks of such projects where time and money get sucked into black holes of technical trivia without measurable improvements.

So how can you create an MDG business case?

Traditionally it took a 3 to 6 month half a million-dollar consulting study with customer interviews and detailed online SAP analysis to define high-level improvements and expected value. More recently, profiling tools such as SAP Information Steward or HANA Smart Data have been used for assessments.  Yet, they require significant expensive expert time, and the output is often long lists of technical mumbo jumbo completely disconnected from the main aim of operational improvements and value maximization. For these reasons, the above methods are of no use in making the necessary business cases to drive successful SAP S/4HANA MDG projects.

SCOUT uses new innovative technology to quickly identify SAP ERP data quality-based performance gaps and develop winning MDG business cases.

SAP AI Profit Mining Tool

SCOUT is a 5th generation AI profit mining tool that builds powerful SAP data governance business cases during the three to four-week SimpleMDG exploration phase. As a result, prioritized SAP object data quality improvements and a credible value proposition are built in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional methods. This gains vital stakeholder support for governance and organizational change but also ensures that SimpleMDG SAP object data model and workflow implementation activities are entirely focused on maximizing benefits.

The initial executive scoping workshop pre-configures SCOUT to support customer priorities within the IT landscape. As an “intelligent agent,” SCOUT is remotely inserted into SAP to detect logistics, financial or administrative performance gaps. SCOUT then evaluates the operational or financial impacts and possible data quality root causes. Finally, SCOUT publishes an initial MDG business case including KPI gap, value and SAP data quality issues for verification by Laidon experts and customer executives. The final SCOUT SimpleMDG business case can be credibly presented to executive management and act as the future foundation of a new corporate data governance strategy.

Data Governance Engagement Models

SimpleMDG customers can select between four SCOUT pricing options:

1.

A comprehensive SimpleMDG, SCOUT implementation and gained based licensing package.

2.

A comprehensive SimpleMDG, SCOUT implementation and standard licensing package.

3.

A fixed price SAP data governance business case development service.

4.

A flexible licensed SCOUT gap analysis service for SimpleMDG customers and partners.

Technology

SCOUT is a certified future-proof SAP BTP Cloud Product designed and built by SAP experts using the SAP Cloud Analytics graphical 3D dashboard. It is compatible with all SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA on-premise or cloud systems. It is plug and plays and Laidon can perform remote installation in less than one hour. No IT or business users are required to operate SCOUT.

In order to alleviate security concerns, customers can select whether SCOUT can operate:

  1. In an SAP production or pre-production/quality client.
  2. Within selected SAP data scope.
  3. In situ SAP data analysis or remote/cloud-based analysis.
  4. The SCOUT output files are sent only to the customer and not to Laidon.

For example, the most efficient option would be for an in-situ SAP pre-production client that is regularly refreshed and has no constraints on data scope or Laidon analysis.

See SimpleMDG in action

Let one of our experts show you how SimpleMDG can help you transform your business with clean and accurate data!

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