800 Percent: Use of Teradata® Analytics for

SAP® Solutions Accelerates Big Data Delivery

Executive Summary
ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) analysts author case studies covering
enterprise management products that demonstrate above-average customer value.
This EMA case study profiles the use of Teradata Analytics for SAP® Solutions by a leading European
retailer to accelerate the integration of SAP® ERP into Teradata by 350 days based on an initial solution
integrator implementation scope of 400 days, which in actuality only took 50.
Teradata Corporation provides analytic data platforms, marketing and analytic applications, and
consulting services. Teradata offers its solutions in the cloud to help organizations leverage the benefits
to data warehousing and advanced analytics without having to implement or manage the infrastructure
required in-house, thereby adding to the flexibility of its offerings.
With over 2,800 stores across several European countries and 15 different brands, this retailer sells
everything from toys to cookware and maintains its own technology and business infrastructure across
each brand.
This case study documents the tangible impact of leveraging Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions.

Teradata
Background
Founded in 1979, Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) provides analytic data platforms, marketing
and analytic applications, and consulting services. Teradata supports organizations in collecting,
integrating, and analyzing all of their data so they can focus on business priorities. Teradata supports
customers in banking/financial services, entertainment, government, insurance and health care,
manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, transportation, and travel industries. Headquartered in
Ohio, Teradata operates globally with offices and practices in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East,
Africa, and Asia Pacific.

Product Description
Teradata® Analytics for SAP Solutions is specifically designed for analyzing SAP® Enterprise Central
Component (ECC) data, also known as SAP® ERP. It leverages SAP’s own business models and processes
to cross-functionally integrate data within an SAP ERP as well as across multiple SAP ERP’s and
non-SAP source systems. This out-of-the-box solution includes enterprise architecture, ELT processes,
an integrated data model, and more than 150 dashboards and reports. It leverages data replication
techniques for near real-time and popular ELT tools for batched processes to extract transactional-level
data from one or more SAP ERPs, preparing the data in the correct format and loading it into Teradata
Database. The data is integrated in an extendable enterprise model, which provides the foundation for
enabling business agility via direct access to data, reports, and analytics.

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 European Retailer
Background
The company being profiled within this case study is a privately held Dutch retailer with 2,800 stores
across several European countries. This retailer has 15 different brands that include products from toys
to cookware, each brand having its own infrastructure. Each business entity is managed independently
as one of 15 individual companies in the way they develop their processes, maintain their legacy systems,
and make business decisions across finance, IT, supply chain, and general operations.

Use of Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions

Problem Scenario
Meeting the needs of a constantly evolving competitive environment requires global business visibility,
which is a challenge for this large retailer with 15 independent brands to manage. To gain better
visibility, increase business efficiencies, and lower costs, the retailer decided to develop a corporate
strategy to manage data in a centralized system using a single IT department. Data centralization means
that all brands will be managed within a single data warehouse and implemented brand by brand to
take into account individual business processes and needs. A big challenge for this large retailer is that
several systems have to be integrated, including their (15) SAP® ERPs, warehouse management systems
(WMS), POS systems, and materials master data.
With a focus on maintaining business agility for sales and margin analysis, the retailer’s goal was to
provide access to the transactional level of data originating from the roughly 50 SAP tables within
each ERP system. The move to a centralized approach was especially exacerbated by the complexity
and nuances across the 15 ERP instances. Work was estimated at 400 days of effort per source system
to bring this data into their central warehouse. Consequently, they needed a way to justify their
expenditure, develop an ongoing value proposition of their data warehouse approach, and develop a
way to expedite this process.

Product Acquisition Story

On the business side, the focus is on creating a centralized analytic platform The goal is to improve
with access to a global view of transactional data. Due to the seasonal visibility and provide
nature of retail, being able to leverage multiple years of data is important freedom of analytics across
to help identify seasonal trends, create forecasts, and develop pricing and their supply chain, materials,
promotions. The goal is to improve visibility and provide freedom of
sales, and marketing to
analytics across their supply chain, materials, sales, and marketing to help
help this organization
this organization become more efficient in the way it does business.
become more efficient in
Consequently, the retailer selected the Teradata Database because it could the way it does business.
handle both the transactional analytics in addition to providing advanced
analytics capabilities. Their goal was to support operational analytics and
flexibility by loading data without developing data marts or other logical models in advance of users
asking business questions. This approach enables them to save data centrally within a Teradata Database
while providing future flexibility related to data access, reports, and analytics for all of the brands.
Underestimating the complexities of SAP ERP, the company spent the first six months cutting their
teeth on a customer homegrown SAP integration. After six months with little to show, they recognized
the risks and stopped the project to investigate if there were better approaches to this problem. They
first met with a major SAP SI who provided a 400-day integration estimate to load data from just the
first SAP ERP system. This would not provide value fast enough, so the retailer escalated the issue
and investigated a new Teradata solution used to automate the data acquisition processes when using

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 SAP ERP. Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions was selected because it was The solution also delivers
specifically designed to address the challenges associated with bringing data an automated approach to
in from SAP ERP to the Teradata Database. The solution also delivers an integrating SAP ERP data
automated approach to integrating SAP ERP data into the data warehouse into the data warehouse
and enabled them to load the data required for the first brand in just five
and enabled them to load
days instead of the estimated 400. The retailer spent an additional 45 days
the data required for the
adding 25 custom (Z) tables and preparing the data for consumption. This
accelerated the integration of SAP data by 800 percent, thereby saving 350 first brand in just five days
days of work. instead of the estimated 400.

Technical Challenges
Combining a full ERP consolidation project across several legacy systems creates a project with many
complexities. Although Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions provided automation for the SAP-related
data management portion of the project, the retailer still encountered technical challenges due to
the fact that its data warehousing initiative was combined with a broader integration project. Their
approach was to standardize the tools and develop a framework with the first couple brands that could
be applied to the incremental rollout to the rest of the organization.
First, they needed to standardize on an ETL tool and develop a new methodology and way of leveraging
ETL. They used the ETL tool as an Extract Load Transform (ELT) tool to maintain the integrity of the
granular transactional data. The retailer ended up choosing Informatica® as the ETL standard and its
ETL environment by using the ELT tool as just a data mover and job scheduler.
Second, in addition to storing the atomic transactional data, the retailer was able to leverage the Teradata
platform to perform all of its business transformations in-database when moving data into the reporting
environment. This approach allowed them to keep a copy of the granular transactions, leverage the
out-of-the box integrations provided within the Analytics for SAP Solutions to add context to the SAP
data, and harness the database power to apply other transformations and analytics.
Third, high data quality was imperative for them. They wanted to ensure that data could be accessed
and managed in a consistent way. Material numbers highlight the importance of data governance to
this retailer. Material numbers are structured differently across multiple systems and historically would
have been reconciled during the load/model process. In this new architecture, they were able to easily
overcome this challenge by creating unique material views in the data warehouse to harmonize the
material numbers for reporting.
Finally, they required an agile way to deliver data and analytics for both reports and ad-hoc analytical
access, which could also meet the diverse requirements of the brands. By taking advantage of Teradata
partnerships with solution providers such as MicroStrategy®, the retailer was able to access the granular
data stored in the data warehouse while using the BI tools to apply the relevant algorithms and leverage
the flexibility designed into the data warehouse solution.
The development of the data warehouse as a centralized data access hub
was challenging at first due to the requirement to develop a new framework “Teradata Analytics for
and the overall learning curve because of the change in approach to data SAP is a fast and flexible
warehouse design. Luckily, once this framework was developed, integration integrated solution, offering
using Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions was simple and repeatable. lower project risk, faster
According to the architect at the European retailer, “Teradata Analytics development, an integrated
for SAP is a fast and flexible integrated solution, offering lower project semantic model, and direct
risk, faster development, an integrated semantic model, and direct access
access to detailed data.”
to detailed data.”

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 EMA Perspectives
Overall, the retailer’s goal is to provide a repeatable implementation strategy across their brands to
enable better business decisions, improve business efficiencies, and lower operating costs through IT
centralization. Although they are still in the early phases of the project, they have already learned
from the implementation of integrating their first brand into the Teradata data warehouse. Due to the
retailer’s use of Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions, they were able to accelerate the time to value and
simplify integration activities. Additionally, they were able to develop some of the following takeaways
to apply to the integration of their subsequent brands and to similar projects.
• Take the time for due diligence and learn what technologies/solutions exist to support
implementations. In this case, the retailer was able to take advantage of Teradata Analytics for SAP
Solutions, decreasing time to value and enabling it to focus on analytics as opposed to integration.
• Develop a framework to enable repeatable processes that can address the complexities of the vast
amount of data and custom needs of the business.
• Keep the system design as simple as possible to ensure technology and business adoption.
• Make sure to align technical decisions with the overall vision of enabling business agility.
• Develop a standard data governance approach to ensure data integrity that extends beyond the
implementation process so that business and technical users understand how they can apply data
for reports and analytics.
• Identify latency requirements to ensure that solutions—both data warehouse and integration
approach—support needs. This meant ensuring that the Teradata SAP solution also supported
their operational needs.
These lessons learned apply to the broader implementation and use of Teradata Analytics for SAP. The
retailer was committed to centralizing their infrastructure and managing their brands more effectively.
Consequently, they were able to take advantage of a way to automate the process and lessen time to
value because of the ability to leverage a targeted solution to tie their ERP solutions to their analytics.

About Teradata
Teradata (NYSE: TDC) helps companies get more value from data than any other company. Teradata’s
leading portfolio of big data analytic solutions, integrated marketing applications, and services can help
organizations gain a sustainable competitive advantage with data. Visit teradata.com.
Teradata and the Teradata logo are registered trademarks of Teradata and/or its affiliates in the U.S.
and worldwide.  SAP is a registered trademark of SAP SE in Germany and in several other countries.
Informatica is a registered trademark of Informatica Corporation.  MicroStrategy is a registered
trademark of MicroStrategy, Incorporated.
To find out more about how the  Teradata Analytics for SAP Solutions can help you visit 
http://www.teradata.com/teradata_analytics_for_sap/

About EMA
Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of
IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices,
and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help EMA’s clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research,
analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or
blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. 3199.071615

EB 8559

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