Data is growing by leaps and bounds, and organisations need to invest in new hardware, software, and skills to maintain it. A robust data management strategy can not only manage your data growth challenges, but also improve your daily operations and decision-making processes. Data management is an essential strategy for companies. It gives executives insight into what’s going on in the business and help them move from insight to action. For SAP customers, addressing data growth challenges before embarking on a strategic project like the move to S/4HANA will have the added benefit of a cheaper, faster and far less complex migration. Here we explore the data management and growth challenges a business might face and how to overcome them.
The challenges around SAP data management:
Lack of data governance
For GDPR and other data protection laws, companies need to have a strict understanding of data governance. However, many companies have no clear ownership of data and a fragmented governance around it. There needs to be a formal system of responsibility around data.
Confusion around data management
Data management should be holistic, not just a technical activity. If your company doesn’t understand data management, you won’t be able to make informed decisions.
Cost implications
The proliferation of data will lead to increasing costs. Companies need to prepare for costs like hardware, administrative costs and the costs for acquiring skilled staff.
Performance challenges
Data volumes and availability will impact business performance, as data will constantly have to be backed up. As business needs differ for different organisations, there might be some difficulty in scheduling times to do backups.
An effective SAP data management strategy is vital for maintaining good system performance, decreasing costs, maximising business value, and stronger productivity. With the proliferation of data, managing your data has become more important than ever – especially for organisations that generate large amounts of it. Errors in data cause a plethora of problems, and it’s becoming one of IT’s greatest challenges.
How to overcome SAP data growth challenges:
SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
With the growing levels of data, data control is a real challenge. By using SAP (ILM), it’s easier to comply with the necessary legal requirements for data retention and destruction.
Data Archiving
If you have older, inactive data that is still important to your organisation, you can store it on a separate storage device for long-term retention. By storing it onto a less expensive location, you save money and it’s also easier to locate files.
Data Retention
Organisations usually retain data for auditing and reporting purposes. An effective data retention policy will ensure that documents are organised and can be searched and accessed when necessary.
Decommissioning
Many companies still have legacy systems in place. While getting rid of them might seem like the easiest choice, they still have to be maintained as they could contain data which is required to meet compliance regulations.
Data Migration
Organisations usually migrate data when they’re implementing a new system or upgrading a server. Make sure you create a data migration plan to effectively manage the process. Most companies migrate data on a quarterly basis.
Data Deletion
The less data you have, the easier your data management strategy will be. Application performance will improve and there’ll be less of a security risk with the removal of unwanted data.
As SAP data management specialists, we provide best practice solutions that will improve your data management and help you keep up with the ever-increasing growth of data. Our services include data archiving, SAP ILM data retention management, and SAP Information Lifecycle Management decommissioning.
If you want to know more about overcoming data growth challenges and implementing a SAP data management strategy, then contact us.
