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Companies’ teams need trusted data to bring out their best but not everybody’s data management architecture is necessarily up to the task, according to SAP.

During the webinar “Business Data Fabric Primer in 30 Minutes,” SAP product experts and customers showed viewers how they can deliver trusted, meaningful data to every user with a business data fabric.

Those viewing the webinar, which was part of the SAP Webcast Series, heard why the business data fabric is becoming the industry standard for data management.

Viewers were then able to see it in action with an SAP data and analytics product demo.

Among the specific areas that viewers learned about were connecting data across cloud providers, data platforms, and on-premises systems; simplifying access to all data while retaining valuable business content; and enabling seamless and scalable data access without duplication.

Ammar Naji, senior director of SAP Data Warehousing, started off the webinar by talking about the cloud infrastructure.

“Managing cloud landscapes is more important than ever,” he said. “But most companies are finding that they have more complexity in their cloud data landscape, not less.”

Everybody from IT teams to business users are realizing that managing their infrastructure is becoming significantly harder now, he added.

Applications, artificial intelligence (AI) and planning all “require context from quality, trusted data,” according to SAP.

Meanwhile, “business context and logic, especially metadata, has been removed from business data,” SAP says.

Generative AI (GenAI) can be the “next revolution in productivity, but it requires context and quality data,” according to SAP.

Another issue is that most business users “lack data context necessary for data to be useful,” SAP says. As a result, there are too many “wasted resources,” according to Naji.

One major advantage of a business data fabric is that it “maintains the data’s DNA” and gives data consumers the ability to make decisions with “trust and confidence,” he added.

Real-world applications include customer service, fraud detection and compliance, he said.

For customer service, it anticipates customer needs based on usage data, according to SAP.

“By unifying data from all your customer touch points, a business data fabric provides a comprehensive map of the customer’s journey,” Naji told viewers. “This helps in offering personalized services, identifying challenges, predicting behavior, and enhancing the overall customer experience.”

He added: “Your analytics don’t just provide historical data. They can help you anticipate customer needs based on usage data, improving customer satisfaction and reducing churn.”

For fraud detection, it can monitor transactions in real-time, identify unusual patterns and take action, the company says.

When it comes to fraud detection and risk management scenarios, Naji said: “Real time data access combined with AI can detect and prevent fraudulent activities as they threaten your system.”

A business data fabric can “monitor transactions in real time, identify unusual patterns, and take immediate action to mitigate them,” he added.

For compliance, it maintains an audit trail of data access and modification and automates reporting, according to the company.

And when it comes to compliance and regulation scenarios, Naji said: “It is no longer enough for data to be secure. In the age of AI, the use of data must also be well governed. A business data fabric helps to ensure security, privacy, ethical usage and regulatory compliance.”