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How SAP Ariba Improved
Its SAP Data Services Documentation Capabilities
Leveraging SAP Data Services at SAP Ariba
During a recent LinkedIn Live, we had the pleasure of welcoming one of our customers, SAP Ariba, to showcase how they leverage the 360Suite solutions for its SAP Data Services platform. SAP Ariba has been a 360Suite customer for 6 years leveraging many of our solutions. They recently upgraded to version 4.3 for its three Data Services production installs. With 7 repositories, more than 30 jobs running 24/7, 600 workflows, 30 projects, 500 data flows, and 15 billion monthly processed rows, SAP Ariba was looking for ways to improve its SAP Data Services documentation process. This article will explain the challenges they faced and how they overcame them thanks to our BI on ETL solution.
Improving SAP Data Services Documentation at SAP Ariba
Our customer was facing three main challenges with its SAP Data Services platform; centralizing metadata, monitoring KPIs, and documenting. Discover how 360Suite governance solutions helped them become more efficient in managing the platform:
Metadata Centralization
SAP Ariba has three different production installations and centralizing the metadata from each was a very manual, time-consuming process for the ETL Developers and Administrators. The metadata was extracted from each installation by a Developer and then manually centralized by the Manager, which created data accuracy issues. 360Eyes for Data Services allowed SAP Ariba to install an extractor component on the 3 different production platforms which extracts the metadata, puts it in a common database (360Eyes solution), and then they can automatically publish their customized reports to an internal portal. This provides them with accurate reports in real-time and is a time-saving process. By implementing 360Eyes for Data Services, SAP Ariba is 90% more efficient in managing the environment.
Before and after using 360Eyes for SAP Data Services.
Monitoring Job Executions
SAP Ariba needs to provide KPIs on a regular basis to the Business on the Data Services health with information such as job details, job execution status, running time, data volume, and performance issues. Before Wiiisdom came along, they were monitoring jobs through email alerts (e.g. if a job failed or was taking too long to run). In essence, they had to babysit jobs by manually checking to see if they were taking too long to run or if they had performance issues.
360Eyes for Data Services came along and provided all users with complete visibility. There was no more need for email alerts because the Business could track all the KPIs they needed without the help of the Developers. For example, one of the KPIs required by the Business was how many jobs successfully ran in the last quarter and 360Eyes was able to capture that view for them. Before 360Suite this was taking days to gather the information, but thanks to our solutions, this information is now on-demand. “We used to be reactive, but now we’re proactive. Plus, there’s no need to be tech-savvy to use the 360Eyes for Data Services solution.” Vasu, Senior BI Analyst and Developer at SAP Ariba.
Job Execution History with 360Eyes for SAP Data Services
Documentation
The whole Data Catalog needs to be documented including historical information but SAP Ariba had no documentation capabilities and limited search capabilities. With our SAP BODS documentation solution, they can now track everything over time in a self-service platform. Additionally, they are able to do impact analysis. Let’s take one of the scenarios at SAP Ariba:
A database often has to be moved from one data center to another but before they make the final decision, SAP Ariba needs to know what will be impacted and how much is going to be affected in Data Services. 360Eyes allows them to see how many projects are sourcing the target database that is being moved and how many scheduled jobs have been configured to run against this database. With our solution, they can know immediately allowing for quick impact analysis.
Vasu, Senior BI Analyst and Developer at SAP Ariba.
“It’s a very handy tool for Administrators and automates so many of the repetitive tasks which make my life easier. It helps end-users, especially with 360Eyes because any developer can run a report and the information is available to end-users all the time. It has certainly allowed me to focus on other tasks such as automation.”
“We’re a big fan of 360Suite. It makes my life a lot easier”.
Implementing 360Eyes for Data Services has provided value to both the Developers and the Management team at the Business level. BODS Administrator and ETL Developers are able to better centralize, monitor and document their Data Services deployment and free up more of their time to focus on resolving issues than collecting metrics for the Business. The value to the Management is that they can now access accurate, trusted, and on-demand KPIs themselves whenever they want instead of the quarterly metrics given to them before.
Are you looking for the same success for your SAP Data Services platform? Get in touch with us today.
