Puratos
How SQLI Helped Puratos Modernize Its Global Data Warehouse with BW/4HANA
For a company like Puratos, active in more than 100 countries, operating production sites in 52 of them, and supported by over 10,000 employees, data is not simply a by-product of operations. It is the foundation that feeds decisions across finance, supply chain, product innovation, manufacturing, quality, and customer experience.
Since 2017, SQLI has been supporting Puratos in building and growing a solid business intelligence foundation: from data engineering to dashboarding and analytics. Over the years, Puratos’ SAP BW 7.5 data warehouse became the central source for insights across the entire organization.
But as Puratos continued its steep global growth, the limits of the existing technology surfaced. Data volumes ballooned (some tables grew beyond two billion rows!) while the business requested faster development cycles and increasingly advanced insights. To continue delivering full, up-to-date reporting several times per day, a technological leap was needed.
The Challenge: Modernize a Mission-Critical Data Warehouse Without Disruption
Two years ago, Puratos and SQLI embarked on a large-scale migration project: moving the entire SAP BW 7.5 warehouse to SAP BW/4HANA, an in-memory platform designed for speed, scalability, and streamlined data modeling.
The stakes were high. The BW system powers reporting domains across the company: finance, stock management, sales, e-commerce, CRM, supply chain, inefficiency tracking, service levels, integrated profitability, and more. Hundreds of business users rely on it every day. A disruptive migration was not an option.
The goal was clear:
Modernize the platform
Preserve every KPI, transformation, and business rule
Deliver measurable performance improvements
Avoid any impact on day-to-day operations
A Carefully Orchestrated Migration
The project started in October 2024. The technical migration began in January 2025, and by August, Puratos went live with the new BW/4HANA environment. The transition was invisible to the business: employees left for the weekend on Friday and returned on Monday to a fully upgraded system, without realizing the machinery underneath had changed.
Behind this seamless experience was months of meticulous engineering by SQLI:
Extensive data sampling ensured every dataset behaved identically in both
environments.KPI-by-KPI comparisons validated that calculations, transformations and
logic remained consistent.
Optimization during migration reduced data footprint while enabling faster
parallel processing.System performance improvements significantly accelerated data refresh and
report execution times.A faster development cycle will empower the Puratos’ BI team to deliver new
insights in record time.
Despite the complexity, the result was remarkable: not a single ticket was received related to the migration.
Why BW/4HANA Makes a Difference
By transitioning to an in-memory warehouse, Puratos now benefits from:
Higher speed: Reports execute in under two seconds, even against massive
datasets.More frequent updates: Data can be refreshed multiple times per day without
performance degradation.Scalability: The platform handles large data volumes while enabling many
users to work simultaneously.Future-proof architecture: Fully aligned with SAP’s long-term roadmap.
A leaner data footprint: BW/4HANA requires significantly less storage and
eliminates outdated layers.
The migration also lays the foundation for Puratos’ next step: the ongoing move towards S/4HANA. SQLI continues to manage the impact of this transition, ensuring BI remains robust as core systems evolve.
A Success Story, Confirmed by the Business
Across Puratos, the BI ecosystem is widely regarded as a reference point within the IT organization. Different departments actively promote the BI team because of the reliability, speed, and accessibility of analytics.
The BW/4HANA migration strengthened this reputation. It delivered exactly what the business needed: a faster, future-ready system that maintained full continuity and data accuracy.
Conclusion
With SQLI’s guidance, Puratos has transformed a key pillar of its digital backbone. The new BW/4HANA environment offers the speed, flexibility, and resilience required to support a fast-growing, innovation-driven global company.
More importantly, it positions Puratos to continue scaling its digital and analytical ambitions, from predictive insights to advanced automation, while keeping day-to-day operations running smoothly.