Global Paper and Packaging Company
Customer & challenge
One of the world’s leading producers of fiber-based packaging, pulp and paper, with about 50,000 employees and more than 25,000 customers in 150 countries. The client creates packaging products that protect and promote goods, enable worldwide commerce and keep consumers safe. They produce pulp for diapers, tissue and other personal hygiene products that promote health and wellness.
The client was not able to include SAP data in the process automation and optimization that they had envisioned. This caused their data pulls and processes to be non-standardized and error-prone, which required rework activities to compile the data and ensure it was accurate. The organization was forced to dedicate more resources to standardize their data than to take action based on the data. Furthermore, this hindered the ability to drill down into the necessary level of detail that was once nice to have, but has quickly become essential to creating value for the company.
“Xtract Universal allowed us to achieve cost and time savings through integration with our data analytics platforms.
It made the automation of SAP data access possible.”
Senior Analyst, Operations Team
Solution with Xtract Universal
A deciding factor for the client was the ability of Xtract Universal to make SAP data available in different environments. For some users across the organization, SAP data access in Alteryx was critical to automate and standardize analytics processes. For other users, the ability for a true direct connection to SAP data in Power BI was the perfect solution. The addition of Xtract Universal to the client’s Alteryx platform was a force multiplier that enabled the realization of many data access and process improvement initiatives that the client had sought for a long time but had not been unable to achieve without IT involvement or programming knowledge. With Xtract Universal, the client was able to turn existing custom and standard ABAP reports, custom and standard SAP tables, as well as custom end user queries (SQ01) into automated data sources for Alteryx and Power BI. Existing SAP user job roles could be leveraged, and data access security remained the same as before.
Challenges
» No ability to include SAP data in process
automation and optimization
» SAP data pulls were manual, repetitive and
time-consuming
» Drill-down into necessary level of detail not possible
Advantages
» Self-service SAP data access and process
improvements with little IT involvement
» Consumption of SAP data in multiple
environments – Alteryx and Power BI
» Leveraging existing SAP job roles and data
access security
» Automation of data sources
