Finance controller reviewing a live Power BI report fed from SAP S/4HANA with Financial Accounting, Controlling, and Materials Management modules visible on a second monitor
SAP integration, governed in Power BI

SAP Power BI integration: SAP data in Power BI without the SAP tax, without the Excel exports

Our sap power bi integration connects Power BI to SAP ECC, S/4HANA, and BW with the right extractor strategy, builds a governed semantic model your finance team trusts, and replaces the nightly Excel ritual with reports the CFO can open from a phone.

Submit your brief → SAP source review within 48 hours → scoped proposal in 5 days → first integrated report within 3 weeks of sign-off.

38 SAP integrations shipped
Microsoft Solutions Partner · Data and AI
ECC · S/4HANA · BW · BW/4HANA
The reporting bottleneck

Your SAP holds the numbers. Your CFO holds the spreadsheet.

Finance exports tables out of SAP every Monday morning, pivots them in Excel, emails a PDF, and waits a week for the next refresh. Decisions get made on data that is already four days old.

finance.redefine.local · Monday morning report
SAP table export
FBL3N.csv
12.4 MB · opened in Excel
Refresh latency
4 days
Monday cut for last Friday
Analyst hours
11 per week
Manual pivot rebuild
Friday close email thread
CFO:Why is the EBITDA off by $84k from last week's PDF?
Financial Planning and Analysis:Different SAP company code filter, will rebuild and resend.
CFO:Send by end of day please. Board meeting tomorrow 8 AM.
SAP S/4HANA via OData
Live
Hourly refresh · Row-Level Security
Refresh latency
58 min
Down from 4 days
Analyst hours
1.5 per week
9.5 hours returned
Live from SAP · one source of truth
Monthly EBITDA, SAP general ledger · reconciled to T-account close
Live from SAP, rendered in Power BI

Switch SAP modules. Watch the numbers re-render.

A real Power BI semantic model fed by SAP. Click any module to swap the report context. We auto-cycle every 4 seconds; click to pause.

app.powerbi.com · Financial Accounting (FI) Live from SAP S/4HANA
Year-to-date Revenue
$0
+12.4% versus prior year
EBITDA Margin
0%
+2.1 points
Days Sales Outstanding
0 d
-6 days
Open Accounts Receivable
$0
12 company codes
Profit and Loss by company code · SAP table BKPF / BSEG
Top accounts by balance
  • 400000 Sales$18.2M
  • 500000 COGS$12.8M
  • 600000 Payroll$4.6M
  • 700000 Marketing$1.9M
Cost centers tracked
0
Across 6 plants
Year-to-date versus Budget
0%
Under budget
Internal Orders
0
Open: 38
Allocation accuracy
0%
Within 0.6%
Cost center variance · SAP table COSP
Largest variances
  • CC 4200 Plant Ops+$182k
  • CC 5100 R&D-$94k
  • CC 7300 IT-$48k
  • CC 8100 Logistics+$26k
Inventory value
$0
+4.8% month over month
Stock turns
0x
Target 5.5x
Open purchase orders
0
$3.1M committed
Stock-outs
0
Critical: 3 SKUs
Inventory by plant · SAP table MBEW
Critical stock alerts
  • SKU-48270 days
  • SKU-61932 days
  • SKU-20415 days
  • SKU-88147 days
Orders (month to date)
0
+9.6% month over month
Order value
$0
+$420k
On-time delivery
0%
Target 93%
Backorders
0
$184k value
Sales by region · SAP table VBAK / VBAP
Top customers
  • CUST-1108$842k
  • CUST-2244$618k
  • CUST-7716$542k
  • CUST-3382$496k
Headcount
0
+42 year to date
Attrition (12 months)
0%
Below 13% target
Open requisitions
0
38 in interview
Average tenure
0 yr
Manager: 7.2 yr
Headcount by org unit · SAP table PA0001
Attrition flags
  • Engineering18%
  • Sales14%
  • Operations8%
  • Finance6%
SAP S/4HANA OData v4
SAP ECC Table extractor
SAP BW MDX
SAP BW/4HANA InfoProvider
SAP HANA ODBC direct
SAP CDS view discovery
SAP RFC and BAPI via gateway
Azure Data Factory landing
What you actually get

A governed Power BI SAP layer, not another export macro

Every engagement ships these six artefacts. You sign off each one. Your IT team owns the source, your finance team owns the report, and we own the model and the pipeline in between.

Extractor strategy and source map

We choose between OData, CDS views, BW MDX, HANA direct, or table-level extraction per data domain. You get a documented decision per SAP module, signed off by IT.

  • Source inventory across Financial Accounting, Controlling, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution, Human Resources
  • Refresh strategy per domain
  • Authentication and gateway plan

Secure gateway and ETL pipeline

On-premise data gateway, service-account scoping, and Azure Data Factory or Fabric pipelines for heavier transformations. No analyst laptops in the loop.

  • Gateway cluster with high-availability failover
  • Incremental refresh policies
  • Delta extraction where source allows

Governed semantic model

A star-schema Power BI model your finance team actually trusts. SAP company codes, controlling areas, and chart-of-accounts modelled once, used everywhere.

  • Certified shared dataset
  • DAX measures versioned in Git
  • Time intelligence on SAP fiscal calendar

Power BI SAP dashboards and report build

CFO-grade financial reports, controlling variance views, supply-chain operations dashboards, and HR analytics, themed to your brand and reconciled to the SAP close.

  • Mobile-first executive views
  • Reconciled to SAP S ALR / FBL3N
  • Drill-through to SAP document number

Row-Level Security and access

SAP authorization objects translated into Power BI Row-Level Security. Sales leaders see their region. Plant managers see their plant. The CFO sees everything.

  • Dynamic Row-Level Security by Entra ID
  • SAP company code and profit centre rules
  • Audit log review with IT

Handover and enablement

A documented runbook, video walkthroughs, and a four-week shadow period. Your team can extend the model without us. We stay on retainer only if you want us.

  • Architecture and lineage documentation
  • DAX style guide for your team
  • 4-week post-launch shadow

What you do not have to do

Write a single SAP RFC or ABAP extractor

Open SAP S/4HANA support tickets for connector fixes

Rebuild the dataset every time SAP releases a service pack

Train your analyst on SAP table semantics

Maintain a side database to flatten SAP joins

Email weekly PDF reports to the board

Real engagement, real numbers

A textile processor that retired the Excel close

Finance controller at a laptop inside a textile processing plant reviewing a live SAP Power BI report
Textile processingEnterprise · Multi-plantSAP and Power BI

A growing textile processor operating across multiple plants ran finance and operations on a legacy ERP with Excel as the reporting layer. They engaged Redefine to integrate Power BI with the upgraded ERP and replace the manual close.

The problem

The ERP environment was fragmented and slow. Finance relied on manual Excel exports to produce monthly profit and loss, inventory movement, and cost variance reports. Numbers shifted between versions, the close took eleven days, and the board never saw a single source of truth.

  • 11-day month-end close cycle
  • Three full-time analysts maintaining Excel pivots
  • Daily reconciliation disputes with operations
  • No mobile access to financial key performance indicators for plant managers
close v11 FINAL final.xlsx
Plant
Output
COGS
Variance
A-1
#REF!
$182k
err
A-2
42,108
$214k
-$8k
B-1
#N/A
$96k
err
The solution and result

Redefine connected Power BI to the upgraded ERP through a governed semantic model, built financial and operational reports reconciled to the chart-of-accounts, and trained the finance team to extend the model without us.

0%
Faster month-end close
11 → 3
Days to close
0
Analysts redirected to Financial Planning and Analysis
0%
Reports mobile-accessible
app.powerbi.com · Plant performanceLive
Output trend last 6 months · reconciled to ledger

Source: Redefine engagement record. Sector and metric specifics summarised from a live project, not invented.

The cost of staying put

What 11 hours a week of SAP exports is really worth

$0
Annual analyst cost burned on Excel exports per full-time employee (US loaded rate)
0
Analyst hours per year returned to Financial Planning and Analysis work
0 min
Refresh latency from SAP to Power BI on hourly schedule
0 weeks
From sign-off to first integrated SAP report in production
The math the CFO actually cares about

Pricing scoped before any work starts

SAP integration is rarely the cheapest line item on a Power BI roadmap. It is also the line item that, when done right, eliminates the most ongoing analyst cost. We scope it like a CFO would: every artefact priced separately, every refresh frequency justified, every gateway counted.

Foundation
$28 to 48k

Single SAP module (Financial Accounting or Controlling), one semantic model, three reports, gateway setup, Row-Level Security, four-week shadow.

Enterprise
$80 to 180k

Multi-module (Financial Accounting, Controlling, Materials Management, Sales and Distribution), Data Factory pipeline, BW or HANA direct, executive and operations and plant report suites, multi-environment.

Scoped before work starts · line-by-line pricing · no commitment to receive a proposal. We share a fixed-fee statement of work within five business days of your brief.

Why Redefine for SAP

We integrate Power BI with SAP the way the CFO would buy it

Claim 01

SAP knowledge, not just Power BI knowledge

Most business intelligence shops can connect Power BI to a SAP source. Few understand SAP's controlling area, fiscal variants, profit centre hierarchies, or why FBL3N totals differ from BSEG aggregates. We have a team that has lived inside SAP modules, not just queried them.

FI / CO depth
MM · SD coverage
BW and HANA experience
S/4HANA migration aware
Claim 02

Power BI SAP connector consulting, not just a connector list

Other implementation partners drop a list of supported SAP connectors and call it expertise. We walk you through a decision matrix per data domain: OData, CDS view, BW MDX, HANA ODBC, or table extract. You leave the workshop knowing exactly which method we use and why.

connector decision.xlsx
Domain
Connector
Refresh
Why
Financial Accounting ledger
OData S/4HANA
60 min
Native API, low load
Materials Management stock
Table extract MBEW
15 min
High frequency need
Controlling actuals
CDS view
Hourly
Pre-aggregated
Human Resources org
BW MDX
Daily
Historized in BW
Claim 03

You own the model. We earn the retainer.

The typical partner billing model keeps the model opaque so you keep paying. We hand over the PBIX file, the DAX style guide, the Data Factory pipeline definitions, and the gateway runbook. If your team can run it without us, brilliant. If you keep us on retainer, it is because we earned it.

Real questions, real answers

The things every CFO asks before signing

For the first connector workshop, yes. Your Basis admin signs off on the service account, OData scope, and gateway access. After that, we operate inside the granted permissions. We never ask for system administrator or SAP ALL access.

No. We extract on a schedule, never live against production tables. Heavy loads route through Azure Data Factory into a staging layer, with delta extraction wherever the source supports it. Your SAP team approves the refresh window per domain.

It changes the connector mix, not the deliverable. For ECC we rely more on table extracts, BW MDX, and RFC-based discovery. For S/4HANA we lean on native OData and CDS views. The semantic model and reports look identical to the end user.

For a single SAP module engagement, the first production report typically lands in week three from sign-off. Multi-module enterprise builds reach a phase-one production cut in six to eight weeks, with additional modules layered on top.

A documented impact assessment runs as part of every SAP upgrade. We use a non-production replica to validate extracts and DAX against the new release before cutting over. Service-level agreement support customers get this as part of their retainer.

Yes. Several recent engagements land SAP data into a Fabric lakehouse via Data Factory pipelines, then expose certified semantic models for both Power BI reports and downstream AI workloads. We will recommend Fabric only when the scope justifies it.

You do, contractually. PBIX files, DAX scripts, Data Factory ARM templates, gateway runbook, and architecture diagrams sit in your repository under your tenant. If we part ways, your team continues without us.

Is this the right next step?

Tick what is true. Be honest.

If three or more of these describe you today, a SAP integration engagement will pay for itself within the first refresh cycle. If fewer than three, you may need an audit first. We will tell you.

Your fit score
0 / 7
Tick the rows above to see your readiness.

Not sure? Tell us your situation and we will be straight with you. If a Power BI audit is the better first step, we will say so.

Start with a brief

Book a connector workshop

Tell us your SAP version, the modules in scope, and what your team is doing manually that the integration should handle. We will review your sap power bi integration brief and come back with a scoped proposal within five business days.

No commitment. No pitch. If SAP integration is not the right next step, we will say so and recommend what is.

Response
Within 48 hours
Proposal
In 5 business days
First report
3 weeks after sign-off
Code ownership
Yours, contractually

Call within 48 hours · scoped proposal in 5 days · first integrated report within 3 weeks of sign-off

Get on a call with us to see how we can help you

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