3 Ways to Replace Distrust of Your SAP Data With Confidence

September 26, 2023

Unlocking the full potential of your SAP solution requires the complete trust of your data. Without trust, users will second guess any insights, stalling business progress. Research has pinpointed three key pain points that companies encounter with their SAP data: a prevailing sense of data distrust, a lack of maintenance and data cleansing, and a shortage of skilled users. These pain points not only impede progress but also pose significant roadblocks to migrating to S/4HANA, the future of SAP.

What’s Driving the Mistrust of Your SAP Data

According to reports, transparency, data cleansing, and skills shortages in SAP data management are critical issues that organizations face:

• Transparency Challenges: An SAP study highlighted the complexity of data within SAP systems, with 71% of organizations admitting they struggled to understand what they could do with their data, emphasizing a lack of transparency in data usage.
• Data Cleansing Imperative: The same report revealed that organizations recognized the importance of data quality, with 71% expressing concerns about data quality issues. This underscores the need for robust data cleansing solutions.
• Skills Shortage Concerns: A UKISUG survey of 188 SAP user organizations in the UK and Ireland found that nearly two-thirds (66%) were concerned about a future shortage of SAP skills. Factors like retirement and attrition were cited as primary contributors to the skills gap, highlighting the urgency of addressing this issue.

These statistics underscore the importance of addressing transparency issues, implementing effective data cleansing processes, and proactively closing the skills gap in SAP data management to ensure data reliability and effectiveness in decision-making.

Finding the Path to SAP Data Success

Addressing these concerns through proper training, data quality assurance measures, transparency, and effective change management can help alleviate user fears and build trust in SAP data. Here are the big three steps to take for your company to gain confidence with its SAP data.

Increase Transparency

Transparency in SAP data management serves as the bedrock for building user confidence. It provides clarity, accountability, and assurance that data is handled with integrity and in compliance with standards and regulations, creating a trustworthy environment for critical business decisions.

• Data Source Clarity: Transparency regarding the sourcing and origins of data within SAP systems provides users with a crystal-clear understanding of where data originates. This transparency enhances the perception of data authenticity, ultimately boosting trust in its reliability.
• Data Handling Processes: When users are granted visibility into the collection, processing, and transformation of data within SAP systems, they are more inclined to trust the accuracy and reliability of the data. Understanding how data is handled instills confidence in its quality.
• Auditability: Transparent data practices enable users to meticulously track changes and actions taken with the data. This not only ensures accountability but also reinforces trust in data quality as users can verify the integrity of data throughout its lifecycle.

Cleanse Data

Data cleansing is a critical element of effective data management, guaranteeing that ERP data is accurate, consistent, complete, and compliant. By knowing that data has undergone thorough cleansing and validation processes, users are more likely to trust and rely on it for their financial analysis and decision-making, reducing the risk of errors and misstatements in the process.

• Accuracy Enhancement: Data cleansing identifies and rectifies errors, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies in ERP data, ensuring that users can place their trust in data that accurately reflects the organization’s health.
• Consistency Assurance: Through data cleansing, uniformity in data format and structure is achieved. This consistency simplifies the interpretation and comparison of information across various reports and timeframes, bolstering user confidence.
• Data Integrity Maintenance: Data cleansing processes detect and rectify data integrity issues, such as duplicate entries or conflicting data. This proactive approach mitigates concerns regarding data reliability and fosters trust in the information.

Close the Skills Gap

Investing in training and skill development for SAP users is a pivotal strategy to ensure the accurate, efficient, and compliant handling of company data. Closing skills gaps empowers users to interact effectively with SAP systems, fostering trust in the accuracy, reliability, and security of the financial data they engage with, while also enhancing their adaptability to system changes and promoting collaborative data practices.

• Compliance Assurance: SAP financial systems often entail stringent compliance requirements. Bridging skills gaps equips users with the knowledge to comprehend and adhere to these regulations, reinforcing trust in the accuracy and legality of financial data.
• Enhanced Problem Solving: Proficient users possess the capability to identify and resolve data discrepancies or anomalies more effectively. Their adept problem-solving skills instill confidence in data quality by showcasing the ability to promptly rectify issues.
• Data Security Strengthening: Users with proper training exhibit a heightened awareness of data security protocols and best practices. This heightened awareness reduces the risk of data breaches or unauthorized access, thereby fortifying trust in data confidentiality.

4 Tools That Deliver SAP Data Confidence

insightsoftware’s suite of SAP products are purpose built to boost trust in SAP data by ensuring accuracy, transparency, and user proficiency, creating a reliable foundation for critical business decisions. Our tools excel in data cleansing, automatically identifying and rectifying errors, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies in data, ensuring its accuracy and reliability. They also enhance data transparency by offering insights into data sourcing and the entire data handling process within SAP systems, allowing users to understand and trust the data’s journey. Address skills gaps by providing tools that empower users to solve data-related issues effectively, even without technical expertise.

With low-code, user-friendly, Excel-based automation tools like Process Runner and Process Runner GLSU, companies can address their skills gap. With software like Angles and Wands, teams can run reports with SAP data in a breeze and in real-time. Angles can help cleanse company SAP data. Additionally, these solutions can minimize the risk and maximize the reward of moving to S/4HANA.

Wands for SAP: Empower business users to create their own refreshable and drillable reports, with flexible layouts, against SAP ECC and S/4HANA and provide them with an intuitive interface in which they can create custom reports, in minutes, without requiring technical knowledge.

Angles Enterprise for SAP: Transform SAP data into actionable business insights with the solution that applies a context-aware, process-rich business data model to SAP’s complex data structure and simplifies into normal business terms and language users understand, empowering business users to get answers quickly.

Process Runner: Makes SAP data management fast and easy and it offers deep automation capabilities for all SAP modules including FICO, SD, HCM, MM, PP, SM, QM, and PS, and full support for SAP S/4HANA.

Process Runner GLSU: Streamline routine financial processes and FICO data entry without adding complexity. Eliminate cumbersome manual processes and tedious tasks that consume significant time and effort.

Visit our website to schedule a demo and learn how your team can trust its SAP data.