Manufacturing | Data Analytics Services
Cascades Unlocks SAP Data in Google Cloud
Cascades replaced a costly, siloed SAP environment with a Google Cloud analytics platform their BI team now runs on their own.
Unlocking SAP data at scale
Cascades migrated off legacy SAP Business Warehouse by moving their data to Google Cloud with Pythian.
Cascades, a global sustainable paper manufacturer, used SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW). The platform was too costly to scale and too fragmented to provide executive reports, as data sat siloed across manufacturing, sales, and marketing. Google recommended Pythian to build a bridge, leading to a phased migration to Google Cloud using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Foundations, data platform solution, and the Google Cloud Cortex Framework. Cascades' BI team now operates the platform independently.
Siloed modules blocked cross-functional analysis
Manufacturing, sales, and marketing data lived in separate SAP modules. The BI team had no way to pull them together for a single coherent view.
SAP BW drained budget and relied on scarce expertise
High licensing costs and a near-impossible senior talent market made SAP Business Warehouse an unsustainable foundation for Cascades' analytics.
The platform couldn't meet leadership’s needs
Cascades' BI team couldn't build the advanced forecasting models or executive reports the business needed to support strategic decisions.
Google Cloud needed hardening before data could move
Cascades' GCP environment required a full review of identity management, network configuration, and data security before the migration could start.
SAP BW to Google Cloud in four phases
Pythian validated and hardened Cascades' Google Cloud environment.
We reviewed Cascades' Google Cloud environment from the ground up, including identity management, data security, and network connectivity. We made targeted modifications, confirmed the environment was ready for migration, and set the baseline for the next two phases.
SAP manufacturing data was centralized into BigQuery.
QuickStart pulls multiple data sources into a single BigQuery data warehouse and makes them available for analysis across the business. For Cascades, that meant pulling SAP manufacturing forecasting data into BigQuery fast, with Cloud Composer handling orchestration, Cloud Storage providing redundancy, and Dataproc running data transformation.
The Cortex Framework was customized to make SAP data actionable.
We customized the Cortex Framework for Cascades' specific SAP configuration. SAP's complex naming conventions became something the BI team and executives could read and act on without an SAP specialist in the room. We connected it to a Looker dashboard so insights were accessible across the business.
Pythian trained the BI team to run the platform independently.
We trained Cascades' BI team to run the platform themselves, pulling in new datasets, adjusting forecasting parameters, and building new analyses. That was the point.
Cascades' BI team now delivers executive reports on demand
Unified SAP data and a self-sufficient BI team
Cascades' BI team now pulls manufacturing, sales, and marketing data together in a single query, adds forecasting parameters, and surfaces insights to their executive team on demand. The legacy SAP BW environment couldn't support that. Cascades also shifted investment away from SAP Business Warehouse to a Google Cloud platform that costs less to run and gives the BI team room to grow.
99.99%
BigQuery availability SLA
3
SAP data sources unified
"Pythian’s professional services team was thorough and knowledgeable about what it would take to build an enterprise data platform on Google Cloud. They outlined how we could do this cost effectively, while still meeting our most urgent business requirements."
Guillaume Fournier
Senior Chief Financial Officer, Cascades Canada
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