A System Change Creates an Opportunity
The approaching end of support for STAEDTLER’s existing SAP Business Warehouse prompted the company to rethink its data strategy. Before the project, functions such as management accounting, logistics, manufacturing, HR, and sales accessed data from many different sources, ranging from SAP systems to Excel files. The legacy systems alone supported more than 200 reports, making a unified view of the data difficult to achieve. STAEDTLER therefore used the upcoming transition to establish a modern foundation for data analytics and artificial intelligence.
“b.telligent guided us confidently through the decision-making process for a new data and analytics platform using a structured approach,” says Heiko Stranghöner, Head of Enterprise IT Solutions at STAEDTLER SE. “We see significant potential in building this platform to support future data-driven decisions and deliver valuable insights.”
From an Opportunity Map to a Phased Roadmap
b.telligent structured the project as a “Data & AI Strategy Kickstart” comprising five sequential steps, each building on the last. An initial workshop brought all relevant business functions and IT together. This produced a company-wide opportunity map showing where data could deliver the greatest value. In parallel, the team documented and assessed the existing data landscape. In subsequent workshops, participants developed and prioritized more than 40 use cases across six business functions, from HR to sales.
On this basis, b.telligent compared Microsoft Fabric with SAP Business Data Cloud. The evaluation covered support for the use cases, integration effort, total costs, and strategic fit. Microsoft Fabric stood out primarily for its open, flexible, and extensible architecture. Other strengths included close integration with familiar tools such as Power BI and Excel, as well as its capabilities in AI and advanced data analytics. The final element is a roadmap with four phases spanning 2026 through 2027. It follows the guiding principle “Business leads—people and technology enable.” Alongside technical implementation and the replacement of legacy reporting systems, the roadmap places particular emphasis on preparing the business functions to work with the new platform.
A Clear Mandate for the Next Two Years
The most valuable outcome for everyone involved was a shared direction. IT and the business functions are now aligned on the data strategy, with a concrete roadmap in place for the next two years.
“This project once again demonstrated that a data strategy can only be truly effective when the needs of the business functions are considered from the outset,” says Kai Kalchthaler, Managing Director of b.telligent. “STAEDTLER consistently approached platform selection through the lens of specific use cases. That is precisely why IT and the business functions now jointly support the decision.”
Learn more: The full STAEDTLER success story
