ESG Concepts

The data challenge for ESG

What is ESG and why does it matter?

Decades ago, concerns about the immediate and global impact of business on the environment and society were seen as a bit of a fringe issue. What mattered most was the “bottom line”. In this blog we will look at the overall topic and then focus on the data challenge for ESG in the context of governance Read more

Enterprise applications, how to trust the data

How to trust the data

Knowing who and what to trust, it seems, has increasingly been on all our minds lately. One outcome of an ever more complex world is that the need to trust and search for evidence has become an essential activity in our daily lives. And, knowing if you can trust the data in your business systems and reports can be equally challenging.

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where is the data

Your data catalog and SAP: 15 questions you should ask your vendor

SAP and data catalogs

With much of your key data assets stored in core SAP applications, they are critical to the success of a data catalog, governance or lineage project. However, a data catalog and SAP can be difficult bedfellows. SAP ECC, S/4HANA, BW and BW/4HANA are large complex and often highly customized applications and so they can present a significant challenge to the delivery of a truly enterprise-wide solution. If SAP data can’t be assimilated easily into the new data platform, project failure could be on the horizon.

Read on to learn more about what to ask your data catalog or data governance vendors. Read more

enterprise metadata irresistible force and immovable object

Enterprise metadata challenges – when an irresistible force meets an immovable object

Enterprise metadata challenges

Spare a thought for your data engineers, analysts and architects. They are often, it seems to me in that difficult place where an irresistible force meets an immovable object. They are at the point where the expectations of the business for ever faster access to quality data come face to face with the realities of data management in corporate IT. And, in order to meet those demands one of the most significant components the data architect needs is access to the enterprise metadata in your organization’s technology applications. This metadata provides definitions and data structures which are vital for complex projects. And, as they will tell you accessing, understanding and using this information is not a trivial task.

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SAP and datalogs - can SAP be the early proof of value for your data catalog

SAP and data catalogs: 4 reasons why SAP could be the low-hanging fruit that delivers early value to your data catalog

Who is this blog for? If your organisation is considering, or already implementing a data catalog, data governance or enterprise metadata management platform and you are an SAP customer, you may think that SAP and data catalogs don’t mix. And, if you have ERP or CRM packages from vendors other than SAP – maybe from […]

Safyr for Microsoft Dynamics 365

We are delighted to announce that Safyr for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) will be available in December.

It’s been a while since we added a new data source type to the list of systems Safyr can work with, and that’s about to change.

ERP application software market share

We’ve had capability for Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM for some time, but we’ve had to turn away customers who wanted metadata from their Dynamics 365 applications to be loaded into Safyr and then used for data catalog and other projects. That will change now that Safyr for Microsoft Dynamics 365 is available. The increasing number of enquiries for Dynamics 365 we have received reflects the growth of Microsoft as an enterprise packaged application vendor.

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Are you still asking your BASIS teams for information about SAP tables and fields?

How do you find relevant SAP tables for your data management projects?

We talk to a good number of SAP customers, many of whom are struggling to find the right SAP tables, programs or other components for their enterprise data warehouse, data catalog, data governance, data migration and other initiatives. The same problem reoccurs with each new project and often causes budget overrun, delays and more worryingly a lack of trust in the data by the business.

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How you can find personal data fields in an SAP system for CCPA and GDPR

Why finding metadata for personal data in ERP and CRM systems for CCPA and GDPR is hard.

The State of California’s California Consumer Privacy Act and EU General Data Protection Regulation, usually referred to as CCPA and GDPR, together with regulations imposed by other governments and states,  have placed more responsibility on organisations for managing and releasing the personal data and information they hold about individuals. (This is an edited and updated version of a blog first posted in 2018).

Depending on the regulation these data items can refer to customers, employees, citizens, business partners etc. As time goes on more and more countries or individual states will implement similar regulations on companies operating under their jurisdiction.

One of the prerequisites for being able to identify and manage personal data is to know where it resides across your organisation’s IT systems. In order to do this it is critical to be able understand the metadata in these systems. In many cases they will give up the metadata relevant to personal data relatively easily.

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