Scheuch Group
Customer & challenge
The Scheuch Group operates on a global scale, supplying ventilation and environmental technology as both a systems manufacturer and a supplier for equipment and components in the industrial minerals, energy, metals, wood-based panels, glass and wood processing sectors. Today, the Scheuch Group employs a staff of more than 1,400 at various locations around the world and is recognized as a leading technology company in many industries. Read more at: www.scheuch.com. While integrating SAP S/4HANA in one of its divisions, the Scheuch Group sought to investigate how to extract data from SAP into the Microsoft environment with maximum efficiency.
“Medium- to long-term, we plan to integrate SAP throughout the group,” says Christian Wellmann, Senior Controller at Scheuch Management Holding GmbH. “That means the volume of SAP data that we need to extract for further processing in our BI environment will increase. We needed to find a data extraction solution that enables the provision of large volumes of SAP data for creating reports using Microsoft Power BI and SQL Reports, and which also features the capability of handling the large, complex data volumes expected. At the same time, we modernized the server environment for reporting.”
“With Xtract IS, we can extract even large volumes of data from SAP faster and more reliably than with the SAP HANA ODBC driver. Plus, SAP business logic comes with the interface, so there is no need for time-consuming programming efforts.”
Christian Wellmann, Senior Controller, Scheuch Management Holding GmbH
Solution with Xtract IS
Based on the recommendation from a third-party business analytics partner, Scheuch decided to take a closer look at Xtract IS. “We found the interface convincing with its ease of use, technical sophistication and high reliability. For added value, it can also be seamlessly integrated in the MS Visual Studio development platform that we use,” says Wellmann. Wellmann initially used the free trial version to check the suitability of the interface. “While reviewing the trial version, we soon found that we can extract data extremely quickly and with little effort using Xtract IS,” he says
Challenge
Data extraction from SAP S/4HANA to Microsoft SQL Server, long-term replacement of HANA ODBC-based extractions
Added value
Stable and efficient data provision for reporting and data interfaces as well as streamlining the reporting process in a heterogeneous application environment (Microsoft and SAP)
The data extracted using Xtract IS will be used throughout the various departments in the future to create reports and perform analyses. The Scheuch Group also plans to use Xtract IS to convert reports already in use, which in the past were filled with SAP data via an ODBC interface. Because Xtract IS can also write data back into SAP systems, Scheuch is considering using the interface to transfer data in both directions between other systems (e.g. Vault or legacysystems) and the SAP systems.
Scheuch benefits from the interface’s ability to reliably supply its employees and decision-makers with timely and relevant information. For Wellmann, another major benefit is the short data transfer time slots with the option of performing delta loads. He says, “With the ODBC driver, we had to load tables entirely, which already now, with SAP in use for about a year and a half,, takes up to 30 minutes per table during the overnight data load processes. With the delta loads that are possible with Xtract IS, we’ve achieved performance improvements of more than 80 percent.
