Harness Your Competitive Advantage with Unified Data and Analytics

All organizations want and need to have a competitive advantage over their competitors in order to win market share and customers. Over the years, how organizations gain their competitive advantage has continued to evolve.  

With the advent of technology, the pace of change has ramped up considerably, and organizations have seen their business models completely transform. Alongside this dramatic increase in computing power is the growing amount of data. According to the IDC, the amount of digital data generated over the next five years alone will amount to more than double all data created since the advent of digital storage. With this massive amount of data, there exists plenty of opportunities for organizations to find new ways to get an advantage over competitors. 

Data and real-time insights mean you can dive into every aspect of your customers, from their search behavior, content preferences, communications, social media, and GPS location. When combined with powerful AI analysis, these customer insights let organizations automatically tailor offerings down to the individual consumer level and unlock their competitive advantage. Furthermore, organizations can even use data to go beyond the now and look to the future with predictive planning with simulations that can inform business decisions by actively predicting outcomes.  

However, sifting through massive volumes of data to harness insights and instilling a robust, data-driven culture remains an elusive goal for many organizations. So how can we combat complexity, tap into raw data, and draw insights to give data purpose? 

SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics 

The database, data management, and analytics solutions of the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) can turn data into business value and help you find your competitive advantage. One key pillar of SAP BTP is our unified data and analytics strategy that gives data purpose. This end-to-end strategy offers organizations much-needed simplicity in the face of increasingly complex data environments. 

Building a successful data strategy is a challenge for any organization. At SAP, we understand that organizations all have varying requirements and should forge their own path to the cloud. Flexibility is critical. No one wants to squander existing investments, so it’s essential to leverage what you have and build a modern infrastructure on top. With SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics solutions, you can go hybrid and connect your on-premise solutions, whether they run on SAP or on one of our hyperscaler partners, and migrate to the cloud at your own pace. This openness and ability to connect all data sources will create a single data gateway and alleviate complexity. Once SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics solutions are connected, you’ll be able to handle data of any size with the cloud’s flexible data tiering and virtualization. 

Self-service access to data is also critical. With self-service access, the people that know their business area best can get quick access to information without having to wait for access or data requests. At the same time, IT needs to balance this self-service agility with governance and security. To strike this balance, SAP’ Unified Data and Analytics solutions offer control across the whole landscape coupled with features like Spaces, that let users connect, share, and run analytics in isolated sandbox environments. With centralized governance, IT can ensure data quality and instill organizational trust in data. Business users get real-time access to data they can trust and understand with the Business Layer translating data into business terms. 

Unite, Trust, and Champion 

As more products and services get embedded with capabilities – from smart air filters to vacuum cleaners – organizations will face an ever-increasing wealth of data. This is an opportunity for organizations to derive value from data to excite and astound customers like never before. Harnessing this staggering amount of data for insights will also become a core requirement for developing a competitive advantage.  

It’s here that the next time you ask yourself the question “What is my competitive advantage?” know that SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics can help you find it. SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics will give your data purpose. With data management, quality control, and analytics in one strategy, you can harness value from your data. Unite your data under one unified strategy and trust your data-driven insights to make an impact for you and your customers with SAP’s Unified Data and Analytics. 

To listen to a Dun & Bradstreet podcast on the value of data, the rise of unstructured data sources and how to deliver value to customers, click here.