Explaining the Customer Challenges Addressed by SAP Business Data Cloud

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to identify data challenges businesses face today and how SAP Business Data Cloud addresses them.

Data Challenges Faced by Businesses Today

Today’s businesses are working with more data than ever—from internal systems to customers, suppliers, and external sources. Yet despite having so much data, much of it remains underutilized. That’s because it’s often scattered across different systems, stored in various formats, and not readily accessible when needed. This fragmentation makes it difficult to get a clear view of the business, respond quickly, or drive innovation. In an increasingly competitive and fast-changing market, the inability to harness trusted, connected data becomes a serious barrier to agility, efficiency, and long-term success.

Organizations that make data-driven decisions today face the following challenges:

The need to modernize SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) systems without losing existing investments.
Uncovering the hidden potential in their business by unlocking seamless access to critical insights.
Boosting confidence in their data quality and integrity to empower data-driven decisions.
Harnessing the power of fragmented, unstructured data sources to turn them into valuable business insights.

More specifically, let's outline the key data challenges faced by companies aiming to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and insights for business transformation.

Illustration showing how Artificial Intelligence transforms business data by centralizing sources into a unified layer to unlock insights and automation.

These include:

The inconsistent access to SAP Lines of Business (LoB) data.
The need for business-ready data with context, since data preparation for analytics is costly, complex, and time-consuming.
The difficulty in harmonizing data from multiple SAP applications.
The requirement for better data storage options.
The desire for a simplified data landscape to reduce costs and accelerate insights.
The deep knowledge and significant resource investment when building analytics and data-rich applications on top of SAP and enterprise data.

SAP Business Data Cloud was built to address these key challenges. It centralizes data from SAP and non-SAP sources into a unified semantic layer, unlocking a new dimension of insights, advanced analytics, and AI capabilities.

By integrating cross-company data, businesses gain actionable intelligence to bridge transactional processes and drive AI-powered growth. SAP’s AI agents can then leverage accurate, context-rich data from both SAP and non-SAP systems to deliver advanced automation and seamless cross-solution collaboration. This empowers innovative decision-making and enables businesses to adapt, innovate, and thrive at scale. Every part of the business becomes deeply connected, driving today’s digital-first world.

Watch the video to discover data challenges that businesses face today.

Key Takeaways
Many companies understand how important data is, especially for using AI and driving business growth. However, they still face major challenges in getting the trusted, business-ready data they need. Customers say it's hard to consistently access data from different SAP applications—some tools work well with certain systems like SAP S/4HANA, but not with others like SAP Concur or SAP Ariba. Even when they get the data, it often lacks the original meaning or context, making it difficult to use for insights. Preparing data for analysis or AI is time-consuming and expensive, especially when combining information from multiple SAP systems, each with different formats. As data volumes grow, businesses also want better storage options, simpler data systems, and faster ways to turn data into insights—without relying on many tools or spending too much time and effort.

Key Takeaways

Many companies understand how important data is, especially for using AI and driving business growth. However, they still face major challenges in getting the trusted, business-ready data they need.

Customers say it's hard to consistently access data from different SAP applications—some tools work well with certain systems like SAP S/4HANA, but not with others like SAP Concur or SAP Ariba.
Even when they get the data, it often lacks the original meaning or context, making it difficult to use for insights.
Preparing data for analysis or AI is time-consuming and expensive, especially when combining information from multiple SAP systems, each with different formats.
As data volumes grow, businesses also want better storage options, simpler data systems, and faster ways to turn data into insights—without relying on many tools or spending too much time and effort.

Let's Summarize What You've Learned

SAP Business Data Cloud delivers a unified, context-rich data foundation, helping businesses access reliable insights and make informed decisions in real time.
By harmonizing data from across SAP and non-SAP systems, SAP Business Data Cloud enables AI agents to work with complete, high-quality information, fueling automation and innovation at scale.
SAP Business Data Cloud bridges silos and aligns data across departments, making it easier to collaborate, adapt to market changes, and drive business transformation.
With centralized data management, SAP Business Data Cloud reduces complexity, cuts down on redundant tools, and accelerates time-to-insight, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives.
SAP Business Data Cloud transforms unstructured and scattered data into actionable intelligence, helping businesses uncover opportunities, improve performance, and scale AI-driven growth.

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