DENIOS SE
Customer & challenge
Founded in 1986, DENIOS has been the leading specialist in the containment of hazardous materials, floods and toxic chemicals for over 35 years. Through their products, DENIOS helps companies eliminate dangerous substances responsibly. With 25 stores and 6 production sites, the family business aims to make challenging environments as safe as possible – for both people, and the planet. DENIOS is globally recognized for their work, with over 900 employees across Germany, Europe, the USA, and China. Their 1.5 million+ customers include BMW, Volkswagen, Evonik, Bayer, and Bosch. DENIOS uses various types of marketing information when managing their customers, and it is all stored in SAP HANA.
This includes: Inquiries, offers, orders, purchase orders, invoices, etc. Frank Franke from the Data Intelligence Lab at DENIOS (Sweden) further explained:
“Our Marketing team used to use SAP Query to process this data. However, this meant obtaining relevant data took a long time. We realized it would be more efficient for us to link data from different sources, analyze it, and use it to automate recurring marketing tasks, such as e-mail marketing and lead nurturing.”
Since the company’s existing business intelligence (BI) solution did not offer enough flexibility to manage the marketing team’s new goals, they decided to try using Alteryx as their data analytics platform. They also set up a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to act as a central location for automated marketing processes.
“Xtract Universal’s convenient system makes it easy to access SAP data for Alteryx, so that we can reliably use it in our marketing analytics and automation processes.”
Frank Franke, Data Intelligence Lab, DENIOS SE
Solution with Xtract Universal
It was critical for us to find a no-code way to integrate and automate data transfers from SAP HANA. Frank Franke told us, “Our IT department wanted us to use a tool that was certified by SAP.” Since Xtract Universal (XU) is SAP certified and supports Alteryx environments, it was the obvious answer.
After migrating applications from the previous BI solution to Alteryx, it was time to put this new combination of programs (SAP, XU, Alteryx, and the CDP) to the test. After successful processing, the system went live, initially with a focus on transferring marketing-relevant SAP data.
Challenge: Automating the transfer process of marketing analytics data from SAP HANA to both Alteryx and a customer data platform.
Solution: Xtract Universal with Alteryx
Time to deploy: A few days
Value added: Utilizing the potential of SAP data for data-driven decision-making
Once XU was set up, it quickly became clear that this new system could support all different teams – not just marketing. Today, DENIOS’s controlling departments, management, supervisory board, sales teams and logistics department also benefit from being able to easily and reliably access SAP data. In the future, they hope to use XU to transfer additional procurement data from SAP to Alteryx or the CPD.
For DENIOS, the best part of using XU is that it provides faster and easier provision and utilization of SAP data. When we spoke with him, Frank Franke said:
“When using our previous BI solution, we encountered a problem of “conditional references” to SAP tables: Whenever changes were made in SAP, some effort had to be taken to map these changes in the BI tool. We used to export data via SAP Query and use a text file as a workaround solution. Now the process is much easier, and the SAP data is automatically updated daily.”
With Xtract Universal, SAP databases can be synchronized and replicated in real time. Changes in the SAP system are recorded and transferred to the target system, thereby guaranteeing reliable, automated data replication.
At the end of our interview, Gerhard Klassen (Team Lead for the Data Intelligence Lab at DENIOS) concluded:
“For us, Xtract Universal is a central and critical component for merging SAP data with data from non-SAP environments. We wouldn’t be able to make data-driven decisions without it.”
