Revolutionizing data management in public transportation with SAP solutions: Camelot and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) won the SAP Innovation Award 2023 for “Enabling a Data-Driven Culture by Integrating SAP® Solutions with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).”
In 2017, CAMELOT started to support SBB’s transformation towards a data-driven organization. At that time, SBB faced challenges from expanding data management in various dimensions including systems, processes, organization, and data. The goal was to overcome issues such as suboptimal data hygiene and quality, limited data governance, and insufficient guidelines and standards, which resulted in poor data quality. The partners now won the SAP Innovation Award 2023 for “Enabling a Data-Driven Culture by Integrating SAP® Solutions with SAP Business Technology Platform” for this project.
The implemented solution is based on SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) as a central data management and governance system (details in this Case Study by SAP). The outcome is a 60 percent increase in overall data quality, and a full integration of the supplier/customer lifecycle, covered end-to-end in SAP Ariba and SAP CX via SAP BTP and SAP (see Pitch Deck).
Successful Implementation of SAP Helps SBB to Overcome Key Challenges
SBB faced four main challenges, with three of them concerning the rail travel industry as a whole:
- The COVID19 pandemic caused changes in consumer behavior and travel patterns, leading to decreased revenue and optimization challenges.
- Sustainability and climate change are driving demand towards rail travel, but infrastructural improvements come at a high cost.
- Service offerings need to be designed around new customer habits using data-driven decision-making.
- At SBB, there was no single source of truth due to insufficient data quality, low process automation, and insufficient guidelines and standards, which led to challenges in the harmonization of processes, lifecycle management, and authorization.
SAP Implementation Aims to Establish Data-Driven Culture and Streamline Processes for Higher Efficiency
The project objectives were to establish a data-driven culture within the organization by incorporating data into all business processes, automating and transforming processes wherever possible, and establishing a collective understanding of data quality. Harmonizing data quality, processes, and authorizations across all functions from customers to suppliers was essential to becoming a data-driven company. The implementation of a central system for material master data was necessary to fully integrate the supplier lifecycle and create high-quality master data that support efficient and autonomous processes. To accomplish these objectives, SAP was selected as the solution partner, and SAP Ariba, SAP CX, and SAP Business Technology Platform were implemented to provide end-to-end process coverage and facilitate communication with SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) across the value chain.
Recognized Success: SAP Innovation Award 2023 for Successful Transformation into a Data-Driven Organization with SAP MDG
The project realizes various improvements for SBB such as streamlined business processes, end-to-end data governance, central data management, and high data quality. The outcomes include end-to-end integration and automation of business processes by reducing process variants and the number of roles and authorizations. In addition, the implementation of a single source of truth for better master data maintenance and higher visibility across the value chain was achieved.
By winning the SAP Innovation Award 2023, the joint transformation project of Camelot and SBB was recognized as an outstanding success: The initiative resulted in a 60 percent increase in overall data quality and full integration of the supplier/customer lifecycle. The challenges faced by SBB in data management on their way to becoming a data-driven company were addressed through the four pillars of data, processes, organization, and systems, with SAP MDG as a central data management and governance system. The collaboration between Camelot and SBB serves as a model for other organizations seeking to adopt a data-driven culture.
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