Introduction
By rapidly adopting new technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and IoT devices, manufacturers can transform their operations and keep up with new customer demands. However, these new technologies can only produce desired results if manufacturers understand how to utilize the full potential of their data. Many manufacturing businesses face the challenge of integrating both SAP and non-SAP data. To get the best out of their data, manufacturers need to leverage cloud data warehouses, data development platforms and data integration platforms for a seamless SAP data integration.
Platforms like Snowflake, Fivetran and Coalesce help manufacturers extract, transform, and analyze data from SAP. With these three powerful platforms, manufacturers can unlock the full potential of their SAP and non-SAP data, enhance decision-making, and streamline their operations.
Challenges Manufacturers Face While Leveraging SAP
The technology boom has created several platforms for manufacturers to consolidate data, analyze and extract actionable insights. With multiple channels operational like social media platforms, websites, IoT sensors and more, manufacturers need to deal with vast volumes of data regularly.
Manufacturers using SAP find it difficult to consolidate, manage and analyze these vast volumes of data. To make accurate decisions, manufacturers need to combine data from both SAP and non-SAP sources. Traditional SAP data management systems can be cumbersome and slow. In SAP, the processes involved in extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data are typically manual, prone to human error, and time-consuming.
To accelerate SAP data transformation, manufacturers can leverage Fivetran, Snowflake and Coalesce to eliminate data silos and get a holistic view of their operations. With these three platforms, they can gain actionable insights from their data stored in SAP.
The Role of Fivetran in Automating Data Movement
Fivetran is a cloud-based data movement platform that is designed to help manufacturers easily extract and load data from multiple sources to a data warehouse. With Fivetran, manufacturers can automate the extraction and loading of data from SAP systems into Snowflake without any manual intervention. Fivetran streamlines and automates data movement with:
- Automated Schema Migration: “Schema” means the structure of your data. When you plan on moving your data stored in SAP to Snowflake, Fivetran automatically ensures that Snowflake understands the data structure, enabling data accuracy and saving time and resources.
- Low-Impact Change Data Capture (CDC): Fivetran promptly captures the data changes, without any performance implications on the source database. It captures the data from source to target without any data loss.
- Customizable Pipeline Sync Frequency: You can customize the synchronization of your (pipelines) incremental data in Fivetran according to your business requirements.
- Pipelines Accessing All Tables/Reports in Data Sources: Fivetran’s pipelines are designed to pull any data from tables or reports, giving you comprehensive access to your data.
- API Change Management: When the API (Application Programming Interfaces) of your data sources change, Fivetran automatically adjusts its pipelines to keep the data flowing. As API changes can break data integrations, Fivetran takes care of these integration issues, so you don’t have to.
Role of Snowflake in Unifying & Analyzing Data Brought by Fivetran
Snowflake AI Data Cloud offers a unified platform to manufacturers for managing all types of data—from IT and OT systems and data from suppliers and partners.
Leveraging Snowflake, manufacturers can deploy AI/ML models securely, share data easily with suppliers, partners, and customers, and solve critical operational challenges. Snowflake empowers manufacturers to take strategic decisions regarding supply chain and utilize shipping and logistics data to improve forecasting and product and inventory distribution. Snowflake has separate compute and storage which allows it to accommodate large volumes of data brought by Fivetran from multiple sources, without any performance or scaling issues.
Its flexible architecture also supports multi-cloud environments, making it easier for manufacturers to work with various cloud providers. Snowflake also helps manufacturers eliminate data silos, enabling a 360-degree view of the supply chain and operations.
Coalesce’s Role in Accelerating SAP Data Transformation
Once data is moved into Snowflake, manufacturers can leverage Coalesce, a powerful data development platform. Coalesce can “describe” the transformation and structure of data within Snowflake – meaning how the data is organized and integrated in Snowflake. It empowers manufacturers to create and review a plan before they deploy any changes to Snowflake.
Manufacturers can leverage Coalesce to implement standardized, scalable data transformations through an intuitive, code-first platform that combines both visual and GUI-driven experiences. It offers ready-to-use templates for common transformation patterns, along with built-in column-level lineage and stored metadata across all warehouse environments.
Here’s why manufacturers need to leverage Coalesce along with Fivetran and Snowflake for SAP data integration:
- Provides Full Snowflake Functionality Support: Coalesce is built to work seamlessly with all of Snowflake’s features and capabilities.
- Accelerates Data Insights with Automated Data Integration: By automating the data integration process, Coalesce helps you get insights from your data faster.
- Provides Real-Time Insights: Coalesce enables manufacturers to access real-time data. This helps them create reports and dashboards that reflect the current state of their business.
- Improves Supply Chain Efficiency: By analyzing data from the supply chain, manufacturers can identify bottlenecks, optimize inventory levels, and reduce costs.
- Drives Product Innovation: Coalesce empowers manufacturers to analyze real-time customer data and market trends. This helps them identify new opportunities to create new products and improve existing products.
Why Choose Kasmo as Your Partner to Implement Fivetran, Snowflake and Coalesce in Your Business?
Kasmo – a proud Premier Partner of Snowflake, can help manufacturers implement Fivetran, Snowflake, and Coalesce to address their SAP data integration challenges and accelerate SAP data transformation. Our experts can leverage Fivetran to automate the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of data from SAP and non-SAP sources into Snowflake, eliminating manual data processes. Then we leverage Snowflake and unify all the data brought in by Fivetran. Snowflake provides a flexible, scalable platform that enables manufacturers to integrate SAP and non-SAP data in real-time.
Our experts help manufacturers harness Snowflake’s ability to run AI/ML models and perform complex analytics across multiple data sources. Snowflake’s multi-cloud architecture (meaning it’s designed to operate across multiple cloud platforms) allows manufacturers to break down data silos. This facilitates manufacturers get a comprehensive view of their business operations, including supply chain, logistics, and enables forecasting of customer demands.
Once the data is in Snowflake, our experts can implement Coalesce to accelerate SAP data transformation. By leveraging Coalesce’s capabilities, Kasmo helps manufacturers accelerate the time-to-insight and ensure that data is ready for analysis. This leads to faster, more informed decision-making.
With Kasmo’s expertise, manufacturers can get these business outcomes:
- Enhance risk management and operational efficiency in their supply chain.
- Get 360-degree view on customer data, which will help manufacturers improve product design and monitor the production process of goods.
- Manufacturers can practice connected manufacturing (a business strategy that leverages technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and real-time communication to connect people, machines, and supply chains) and optimize the yield and quality of their products.
Kasmo brings unparalleled expertise and tailored solutions to solve the challenges faced by manufacturers. With a deep understanding of industry challenges and Snowflake’s capabilities, Kasmo is uniquely positioned to help manufacturing leaders by providing:
- Strategic Assessment and Migration Tactics: Kasmo leverages Snowflake and helps manufacturers assess their data and design a scalable migration strategy. This ensures a smooth transition from legacy systems to a modern, cloud-native environment.
- End-to-End Support: From implementation to optimization, Kasmo provides end-to-end support, enabling manufacturers to focus on their core competencies.
- Maximizing ROI with Cost-Efficient Strategies: Kasmo helps manufacturers reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) by leveraging Snowflake’s elastic compute model and enabling cost-effective scaling.
Conclusion
Extracting valuable insights from SAP systems is more critical than ever. By leveraging the power of Snowflake AI Data Cloud, Fivetran, and Coalesce, manufacturers can enable smooth SAP data integration and unlock the full potential of their data. Additionally, with Kasmo’s expertise, manufacturers can efficiently handle increasing volume of data, gain real-time insights, enhance operational efficiency, and drive product innovation, which empowers them to stay ahead of competition.
