SAP BW Consulting Services
From optimizing SAP BW foundations to architecting production analytics and AI.
25+
Years of data expertise
100K+
Workloads migrated or managed
45+
Technology specializations
SAP BW use cases: Turning decades of encoded BI into a competitive advantage
Production-ready SAP BW solutions for every stage of your journey.
Stabilize and optimize
High-performance SAP BW operations
We stabilize mission-critical reporting and tune performance across your BW stack. For systems approaching the 2027 deadline, we keep everything running while you plan your next move.
Assess and rationalize
Landscape assessment and decommissioning
Typically 60–80 percent of a mature BW landscape is unused. We identify what can be safely decommissioned—dramatically reducing migration scope, cost, and risk.
Modernize within SAP on-premise
BW/4HANA conversion
We deliver BW-to-BW/4HANA conversions—in-place, shell, or remote—simplifying your data model to HANA-native architecture with support guaranteed until 2040.
Move to SAP's cloud ecosystem
SAP Datasphere and BDC modernization
We architect migrations to SAP Datasphere or BDC—preserving institutional knowledge in your BW models while unlocking modern cloud capabilities.
Exit to cloud-native platforms
Cloud-native platform migration
We handle the hard part—converting decades of encoded business logic into cloud-native models on BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks, or your platform of choice. Every rule, hierarchy, and report comes with you.
Unlock analytics and AI
Production analytics and AI enablement
Replace static reports with real-time, self-service dashboards—then extend your modernized foundation into predictive analytics and GenAI.
Cascades unlocks SAP data in Google Cloud for advanced analytics
Modernizing toward cost savings and advanced analytics capabilities.
Pythian built an enterprise data platform on Google Cloud using Cortex Framework and BigQuery, connecting multiple SAP modules and additional data sources. Cascades moved from a costly, rigid BW environment to cost-effective cloud-based reporting and advanced analytics capabilities that were impossible on the legacy platform.
SAP BW modernization frameworks that streamline migration success
A phased, SAP-aware approach that keeps financial reporting running during transformation.
We assess your BW environment end to end—performance, security, and utilization. We identify the 60–80 percent of unused objects that can be decommissioned before migration, and stabilize mission-critical workloads for systems approaching the 2027 deadline.
We recommend the right path—BW/4HANA, Datasphere/BDC, or cloud-native exit—based on your workloads, S/4HANA timeline, and priorities. Your modernization roadmap aligns with your broader SAP strategy so you don't rebuild tomorrow what you build today.
The hardest phase. We reverse-engineer ABAP routines and convert them to cloud-optimized SQL, preserving business logic that took decades to refine—currency conversions, inter-company eliminations, fiscal period mappings. This is where deep SAP BW expertise matters most.
We extract data at scale and validate every migrated report against BW before cutover—coordinated with your financial close cycles for zero disruption.
We rebuild static reports as interactive dashboards, enable self-service analytics, and deliver AI-ready pipelines. We provide 24/7 managed services for both legacy and new environments so your team can focus on extracting value.
Turn your SAP BW landscape into a modern, AI-ready data platform.
Pythian's related SAP BW services
Integrated expertise across every layer of the data stack.
Migrate platforms end to end
Data platform modernization
End-to-end SAP BW migration and refactoring—from landscape assessment through production cutover, including Cortex Framework for accelerated SAP analytics.
Govern and secure your data estate
Data strategy and governance
We replicate SAP's authorization model in your target platform, establish data lineage from legacy to cloud-native objects, and build compliance frameworks for regulated industries.
Deliver real-time insights
Production analytics
From static reports to real-time, self-service insights on your BI platform of choice. Business users get answers in seconds, not batch cycles.
SAP BW consulting services frequently asked questions (FAQ)
This is one of the most common challenges we see—and the reason coordinated planning matters so much. We architect target environments using a medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) that treats ECC and S/4HANA as separate sources. This means the analytics platform you build today absorbs the future S/4HANA data model without requiring a rebuild when your ERP migration completes. We align BW modernization milestones with your S/4HANA timeline so both programs reinforce each other instead of competing for resources and risk budget.
ROI comes from multiple sources. Landscape rationalization alone—decommissioning the 60–80 percent of unused BW objects before migration—dramatically reduces scope and cost. Customers typically see significant reductions in total cost of ownership by eliminating HANA licensing, specialist staffing, and on-premise infrastructure. Beyond cost savings, organizations gain capabilities that were impossible on legacy BW: Real-time analytics, self-service BI, integration of non-SAP data sources, and AI-ready pipelines.
Simple 1:1 field mappings and formula-based transformations can often be converted programmatically. However, the real challenge is in expert routines—fully custom ABAP programs that replace standard transformations entirely. These routines encode critical business rules like currency conversions, inter-company eliminations, and fiscal period mappings that often exist nowhere else in the organization. They require manual reverse-engineering by engineers who understand both ABAP and the target platform. This is precisely where Pythian's dual fluency in SAP internals and cloud-native data engineering makes the difference—we've done this work across complex, multi-decade BW environments.
It depends on your workload characteristics, S/4HANA timeline, and strategic direction. BW/4HANA is a strong choice for organizations that want to preserve existing BW investments with support guaranteed until 2040. SAP Datasphere and BDC make sense if you want cloud scalability while staying within SAP's analytics ecosystem—especially with BW Bridge providing transitional compatibility. A full cloud-native exit to BigQuery, Snowflake, or Databricks is best for organizations ready to break the SAP data silo and gain elastic scaling, modern BI integration, and AI-ready infrastructure. A fourth option—phased hybrid—lets you migrate high-value workloads first while maintaining BW for lower-priority reporting during the transition. Pythian provides vendor-neutral assessment based on ROI modeling and your S/4HANA timeline, not vendor loyalty.
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