As companies look to harness the power of modern data management, many are migrating from traditional SAP systems to SAP HANA, SAP’s high-performance, in-memory data platform. This transition promises faster data processing, real-time analytics, and enhanced operational efficiency. However, one critical step often overlooked is data cleansing before the migration. Clean, accurate data is essential for a successful transition, as it directly impacts the quality and reliability of the data in SAP HANA.
This article explores the importance of data cleansing before migration, the risks of neglecting this step, and best practices for ensuring a smooth transition.
The Importance of Data Cleansing Before Migration
Data cleansing is the process of identifying, correcting, and eliminating inaccuracies, inconsistencies, duplicates, and other quality issues in a dataset. Before transferring data to SAP HANA, ensuring data quality is essential to avoid importing issues from the previous system. Here’s why data needs to be cleansed before migration:
Eliminating Duplicates and Inconsistencies
Duplicate records and inconsistencies are common in large datasets, especially those that have been in use for years. Without data cleansing, duplicate entries and inconsistencies can be carried over into SAP HANA, increasing storage costs and creating confusion.
Ensuring Data Accuracy for Real-Time Analytics
One of SAP HANA’s core benefits is the ability to deliver real-time analytics. However, inaccurate or outdated data undermines this capability, leading to unreliable insights and poor decision-making.
Optimising Performance and Storage
SAP HANA is an in-memory database, meaning it stores data in memory for rapid access. However, this storage method requires more resources, and having clean, optimised data minimises unnecessary usage of this valuable memory.
Supporting Compliance and Data Governance
Many organisations are bound by regulatory requirements that mandate data accuracy and integrity, such as GDPR or industry-specific standards. Data cleansing before migration helps organisations ensure compliance, reducing the risk of fines and reputational damage. It also improves data governance by establishing clear standards for data quality and maintenance from the start.
Facilitating Data Mapping and Transformation
When moving from SAP to SAP HANA, data often needs to be transformed or mapped to align with the new system’s architecture. Clean data makes this process easier and more accurate, as transformation errors are more likely when dealing with messy, inconsistent data.
Risks of Transferring Dirty Data
Transferring uncleaned data to SAP HANA can introduce a range of issues that impact operational efficiency, data reliability, and compliance.
Here are some of the main risks:
- Performance Degradation
Dirty data, such as duplicates and inaccuracies, can slow down SAP HANA’s performance. SAP HANA’s in-memory architecture is designed for high-speed operations, but unnecessary or redundant data increases memory usage, slowing down response times and impacting analytics performance. - Inaccurate Reporting and Analytics
Data inaccuracies are compounded in analytics, where poor-quality data can result in flawed reporting and unreliable insights. This is particularly problematic for decision-makers relying on real-time analytics to inform strategy and operations. Dirty data in SAP HANA can skew results and lead to misguided business decisions. - Increased Costs
Unclean data increases storage costs in SAP HANA, which may be considerable due to the premium nature of in-memory storage. Additionally, the costs associated with cleaning data post-migration are often higher, as organisations must deal with both the data itself and any issues it causes within the system. - Compliance and Legal Risks
If data quality issues are transferred to SAP HANA without cleansing, companies may inadvertently violate data regulations, leading to legal repercussions. Regulations often require accurate, up-to-date data, and uncleaned data introduces compliance risks that could result in fines or penalties.
Evaluating Legacy Data for Relevance
Before migrating data to a new system like SAP HANA, it’s crucial to review legacy data and determine which records are still relevant to the organisation. Many companies accumulate data over decades, with some information being over 20 years old. Not only can this outdated data be irrelevant to current operations, but cleaning and migrating it can also be costly. By carefully evaluating legacy data, organisations can focus their resources on cleansing and enriching only the data that truly adds value, ensuring a cost-effective and streamlined migration.
How AICA Can Support Your SAP HANA Migration with Data Cleansing and Enrichment
At AICA, we understand the critical role that data quality plays in successful migrations. Our AI and subject matter expert powered data cleansing and enrichment service is specifically designed to handle large, complex datasets efficiently. With automated processes, we help organisations clean, deduplicate, and enrich their data, preparing it for a smooth transition to SAP HANA.
- Automated Cleansing with Manual QA/QC: AICA’s platform combines advanced algorithms with manual quality checks to identify and correct errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies, ensuring your data is both clean and highly reliable.
- Data Enrichment: We add missing attributes, classifications, and other details to enhance data completeness, making it ready for advanced analytics in SAP HANA.
- Seamless Integration: AICA’s solution integrates with SAP systems, allowing for easy data maintenance without disrupting existing workflows.
Final Thoughts
Moving from SAP to SAP HANA is a significant upgrade that offers many benefits, but these are only fully realised when data quality is maintained. By investing in data cleansing before migration, organisations can enhance SAP HANA’s performance, reduce operational costs, and improve analytics and compliance. With AICA’s data cleansing and enrichment solutions, companies can make the transition to SAP HANA smooth and successful, leveraging high-quality data for greater insights and operational excellence.
Ready to prepare your data for SAP HANA? Contact AICA today to learn more about how our data solutions can ensure a clean, efficient migration.
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