“If you can’t use your data, you can’t use AI,” said Julie Sweet, the chief executive of Accenture.
Her words highlight the biggest barrier to AI success in business today. Data is scattered across different systems. This makes it hard for AI tools to work.
SAP, one of the world’s largest business software companies, has a major advantage. SAP launched their new Business Data Cloud, on February 13, 2025, with general availability planned for April 2025. It aims to unlock the full power of company data for AI use.
SAP are well positioned to do it. Ninety per cent of Fortune 500 companies use SAP. And 90% of the world’s finance and goods flows touching an SAP system.
Data that runs in these companies runs the business-critical processes of the world’s biggest companies, across every industry, every day.
It’s quality data about sales, purchasing, manufacturing, and finance. Their data is structured, reliable, and covers core business operations.
With the announcement of SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP have woken up to the potential of their customers business data.
It’s a massive head start in the world of AI and business data. Its’ effect will be transformative.
The Problem Of Scattered Data
Companies’ data often sits in separate places. Unstructured data may exist in documents and emails.
Getting all this information to work together is hard. Companies often spend days extracting data, reformatting it, and loading it into analytics systems.
“One of the biggest challenges with AI is that you have to extract the data from your source application. Then you transform it into a structured format, and then load it,” said Capability Director at Pivot Consulting. “That process is time-consuming, expensive, and doesn’t drive analytical-based decision making because it often can’t be done fast enough.”
How Business Data Cloud Works
SAP’s Business Data Cloud brings together several technologies. It combines SAP’s existing data tools such as (Datasphere, SAP Analytics Cloud, and Business Warehouse). It adds pre-built solutions called “Insight Apps” for specific business roles. It connects with Joule, SAP’s AI assistant.
The quicker you can get the data into analytics, the better you can present that to the people making decisions.
Crucially, SAP’s Business Data Cloud includes a new partnership with Databricks. They are a company that specialises in managing unstructured data. It joins structured data with unstructured data.
“I haven’t felt this enthusiastic since I first introduced SAP ERP R/3 into the UK”, said a Capability Director at Pivot.
“When a technical expert talks about ‘removing the extract-and-load element of an ETL process,’ executives might glaze over. But everyone gets the point when you say: ‘We’re losing revenue because we can only refresh data once a week, impacting our pricing and margins.”
SAP’s Business Data Cloud enables companies to move to near real-time analysis, reducing processing times from days to minutes.
A key strength of Business Data Cloud is that it works with non-SAP data. SAP recognises that most large companies use multiple systems. Like the early days of R/3, SAP is building a comprehensive ecosystem and it’s ironic that some of the latest non-SAP AI tools are called R1.
With more comprehensive data integration and AI-powered analysis, organisations can make more informed decisions faster about pricing, inventory, and business operations.
In today’s volatile markets, speed is critical.
Real Results, Not Just Promises
The impact can be dramatic. One company used SAP and Databricks to improve inventory management. What once took them 48 hours now takes just 45 minutes. They can combine SAP data with information from 3,000 other sources to make faster, better decisions.
Inside SAP itself, AI use saved an estimated £300 million in 2024. They expect these savings to rise to half a billion pounds as they continue to adopt AI across their business.
SAP said over 20,000 customers use their AI tools. Some of our clients are among early adopters. These firms are using AI for tasks like customs validation, promotions management, and demand planning
This move represents a brilliant major shift for companies using SAP. For years, they SAP pushed customers to move to their newer cloud platform S/4HANA with looming deadline warnings. Large companies need more reasons to move than technical support deadlines. Many had already made the move to the cloud with AWS, Microsoft and Google. Now with Business Data Cloud, SAP have the AI superpower because they have the business data, the applications, and the people to deliver. Other AI companies are skimming data, need to build applications, and are reaching for the Cloud with a ladder.
A Competitive Edge
No major competitor of SAP is growing as fast. They are offering access to business data in a way that no other competitor can.
To be clear, I am not a SAP cheerleader. But I haven’t felt this enthusiastic since 1990, when, working for Hewlett Packard, I first introduced SAP ERP (R3) into the UK.
My enthusiasm stems from SAP finally recognizing and leveraging the advantage they’ve always had. Namely, their customers’ business data. It represents an invaluable asset for AI that competitors can’t easily match.
Business Data Cloud finally gives companies a compelling reason to adopt SAP’s latest technologies. It’s no longer just about avoiding maintenance deadlines. It’s about unlocking the value of their data for AI.
