The Customer
Nexus Water
The Project
Nexus Water embarked on a digital transformation journey to modernize its enterprise data warehouse. The company migrated from a legacy on-premises SAP BW environment to SAP Datasphere, a cloud-native platform that simplifies data modeling and analytics while preparing the business for future innovation.
Overview
As a leading integrated water-utility, Nexus Water manages vast volumes of operational, financial, and customer data. Its aging SAP BW landscape had become costly to maintain and could no longer keep pace with growing reporting demands. Analysts depended on BEx Analyzer workbooks and offline spreadsheets, resulting in version conflicts, delayed insights, and limited self-service. To remain competitive and compliant, the organization needed a modern, scalable data foundation.
Challenges
Aging & Rigid BW System – Custom infocubes and complex ETL chains slowed development and introduced technical debt.
A Siloed Analytics – Finance, Sales and other teams each maintained separate reporting logic, leading to inconsistent KPIs.
Manual Reporting Effort – Over 40 BEx workbooks required manual refresh, distribution, and formatting every month.
Limited Data Exports – Critical data extracts for data scientists relied on ad-hoc ABAP programs, hindering advanced analytics
Our Solution
Nexus Water partnered with Improving to deliver a BW Modernization program completed in just 5 months. Key milestones included:
Foundation in SAP Datasphere – 14 re-engineered analytical models covering Sales, Finance G/L, Finance AR, Contracts, Energy, and more, leveraging Datasphere’s Data Builder and space-based architecture.
Reporting Modernization – 40 interactive reports rebuilt as SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) Stories and Data Analyzer views, replacing BEx workbooks with intuitive, realtime dashboards.
Python Data Export Framework – A reusable Python notebook library orchestrated in DSP to automate secure data extracts for advanced analytics and integrations.
The Business Benefits
Faster Insights – Query runtimes improved by up to 60 %
Unified Data Model – A single governed semantic layer eliminated KPI discrepancies across departments.
Self-Service Analytics – Business users create ad-hoc analyses in SAC without IT assistance, reducing report backlog
Lower TCO & Future-Ready – Cloud infrastructure and simplified data flows cutting maintenance hours and pave the way for AI scenarios.
Client Testimonial
"Pulling data out of Datasphere is a lot faster than BW and crashes less. I work with a lot of transactional data, so to be able to run parameters and pull data within 5 seconds is a big step up. The team also developed a script that automatically adds GL accounts to the hierarchy, whereas in BW, we had 500 accounts from our reports because we did not add it in BW."
Alhaj Chaudhry, Accounting Director
Why Improving
Improving’s BW2SPHERE migration accelerators bring deep expertise in utilities data, and a pragmatic agile approach. Our team:
Delivered value in weeks, not months
Ensured knowledge transfer with hands-on enablement for Nexus Water’s analytics team.
Combined data engineering, SAC design, and Python skills to cover the full analytics stack.
