The digital transformation journey of enterprises demands powerful and agile data management and analytics solutions. SAP S/4HANA, as the next-generation ERP suite, offers real-time transactional processing on the SAP HANA in-memory platform. Complementing it, SAP BW/4HANA provides a modern data warehousing solution designed for advanced analytics and enterprise-wide reporting.
Implementing SAP S/4HANA together with SAP BW/4HANA enables organizations to build an integrated ecosystem where operational and analytical systems work hand in hand—delivering actionable insights, operational excellence, and business agility.
This article explores the benefits, integration approaches, and best practices for implementing SAP S/4HANA alongside SAP BW/4HANA.
While S/4HANA handles real-time transactional processing and operational reporting, BW/4HANA is optimized for complex, historical, and enterprise-wide analytics without impacting the performance of the transactional system.
BW/4HANA offers advanced modeling capabilities including composite providers, open ODS views, and semantic layers that enable flexible and robust reporting across multiple data sources, including S/4HANA.
BW/4HANA acts as a single source of truth by integrating data from heterogeneous systems—SAP and non-SAP—supporting a comprehensive business intelligence strategy.
Both products run on SAP HANA and share modern design principles, ensuring compatibility, performance, and scalability.
SAP provides native extractors for key business objects in S/4HANA, enabling direct data extraction into BW/4HANA. This method supports real-time or scheduled data loads via technologies such as:
For advanced ETL scenarios, SAP Data Services or SAP Data Intelligence can be employed to transform, cleanse, and load data from S/4HANA and other sources into BW/4HANA.
With Open ODS Views and CompositeProviders, BW/4HANA can provide virtual views on S/4HANA data, enabling real-time federated queries without data duplication.
Define analytical requirements, reporting KPIs, and data volumes. Decide the scope of data to be replicated or accessed virtually.
Configure data sources, activate necessary extractors in S/4HANA, and establish ODP connections to BW/4HANA.
Build DataStore Objects (DSOs), InfoCubes (if required), CompositeProviders, and open ODS views to structure data for reporting.
Use SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Lumira, or SAP BW Query tools to develop dashboards and reports on BW/4HANA.
Validate data accuracy, perform load testing, and optimize data models and extraction processes.
Implementing SAP S/4HANA with SAP BW/4HANA offers organizations a powerful combination of real-time operational processing and advanced enterprise analytics. By following best practices for integration and data management, businesses can unlock a holistic view of their operations and gain the insights needed to drive informed decisions and competitive advantage.