Data-first business transformation delivers 314 percent ROI
Key Takeaways
⇨ Data is often an afterthought in business transformations when it should be a foundational step
⇨ Improving data quality helps avoid extra costs and provide 360-degree view over a business
⇨ Syniti’s Johann Lubbe says data management is an investment for getting access to innovations like AI, predictive analytics and forecasting
Taking a data-first approach in an SAP-led business transformation can yield a return on investment of up to 314 percent over three years, according to a customer survey commissioned by data management vendor Syniti.
The survey analysed the financial and investment benefits of customers using SAP Advanced Data Migration and Management by Syniti, finding that customers can break even on their investment after eight months.
Speaking at Mastering SAP Collaborate Melbourne, Syniti APJ presales and value engineering director Johann Lubbe said reconfiguring the role of data from an afterthought in business transformation to a foundational step can deliver ROI of more than 300 percent.
This is the focus of Syniti’s Data First strategy, which aims to get customers to begin data work before (or at the same time) as the design phase of a digital transformation project.
Lubbe said Data First deviates from the traditional approach where the “focus is about the design”.
“Everything is about the new features and functions they’re going to get in the new system, and only later would they say, ‘we have to do something about the data at some point’,” he said.
Lubbe added the data specification phase would only come up after the design, functional specification, and technical specification phases have been completed. And that is far too late to be transforming the data that forms the foundation of digital transformation.
“The data specification will eventually then evolve into something that will be handed to technical people to go and transform data through ETL (extract, transform and load) tools,” Lubbe said. “Now, the problem with that is your transformation of your data starts very late.”
He said some Syniti customers following the traditional approach have had issues like payment terms getting overwritten at the purchase order level; having duplicate vendors or suppliers in their systems; not having a 360-degree view of the business – resulting in additional costs from dealing with the data later.
Lubbe added that Syniti’s Data First strategy looks to challenge the market to say, “It’s not about getting your data into that target environment, but it’s about seeing the opportunity to do something about that data to improve business.”
He said data management shouldn’t be seen as a cost item but rather as an investment to keep up with the latest innovations like AI, predictive analytics and forecasting.
“You have to get your data right,” Lubbe added. “It’s not about just allocating the minimum budget to get your data into SAP S/4HANA. It’s about thinking about it differently, assessing that data long before you get to that go-live crunch time.”
The business benefits of data first have been demonstrated by recent Syniti customers. New Zealand-based global kiwifruit marketer and distributor Zespri International delivered improved data verification, reduced manual effort and enhanced data governance. Australian mining equipment company Orica started its data management processes on the first day of the business transformation journey. An oil and gas company found its fixed assets were not linked to physical assets thanks to an early data assessment with Syniti. This allowed the Middle East-based customer to plan resourcing to address the issue before migrating to SAP S/4HANA.
Lubbe also emphasised the need to get budgets approved for early data management activities.
“It all comes back to mindset – getting your budget approved to do something early is critical,” he said. “[Data migration] is also not IT’s problem, it’s a business and collaboration problem – you have to have buy-in from all parties and part of the challenge there is to make everyone realise the benefit to them if you have proper data in your system.
