SAP Information Steward Reviews

SAP Information Steward is a data quality tool. We use the solution to build data quality rules to detect issues in source systems. The solution has many components, the data inside that is being used for data quality and data that is being used for the business glossary and metadata management. 

Information Steward has a component called, 'Metapedia' that describes technical fields in business terms. It is equivalent to a business glossary in other systems. 

When we see a business intelligence report, we want to be sure that the figures we are seeing are consistent with the transformation. We want to be able to see where the number is coming from. For example, we want to know if the data is from an ERP and is being transformed by an ETL and then loaded into a warehouse. Using metadata management in the Information Steward, we can see all of these steps. 

SAP Information Steward also has a cleansing package that helps in the matching process in data services. For example, the name of a person. In many systems, the same person can have their name displayed in many different ways. In one system an individual could be Bob Smith, in another system it could be Bobby Smith and another could show Robert Smith. The cleansing package will try to get all of these synonyms in one place and link it to a standard one. By applying these cleansing packages in data services, we are able to consolidate all the different terms into just one.

For most SAP customers, Information Steward is enough because it is able to build quality data rules to detect issues in the source systems like SAP HANA, Business Warehouse, or other systems.

A business user can first organize their data into several data domains. For example, procurement, human resources, and logistics setup. The domains can build data quality dimensions where you can describe the kind of rule that you are going to use. The user then can immediately see if something is wrong with their data using traffic lights.

Another great feature of SAP Information Steward is the accuracy that the content is followed by validating against the reference tool. With the solution, you are creating data quality dimensions. Within these dimensions, you are creating business data quality rules that are looking for specific fields. From these rules, you can create a scorecard. The scorecard will highlight the percentage of good data and ensure the user can feel confident that the data is accurate within predetermined limits.

SAP tables have field names that are very cryptic, making them hard to understand the meaning of the fields. Metapedia helps describe these fields in business terms.

SAP Information Steward could be improved by offering a cloud version of the product. Rather than creating an evolution of this product, they have created a completely different solution with Data Intelligence that can work in both environments, on the cloud and on-premises.

In future releases of SAP Information Steward, I would like to see an easy way to deploy security because currently, it takes too much time.

I have been working with SAP Information Steward since 2006.

SAP Information Steward is an older product, it is very stable. The only thing you need to take care of are the upgrades. 

This product is scalable. SAP Information Steward is most suited for medium to large-sized organizations.

I would rate customer service and support a four point five out of five.

Positive

For the initial setup you require an IT background, however, Information Steward is built for end users. Once you learn how to build a rule, the way you create a data point rule is very easy. You don't need to know SQL or have an IT background because you are building your own rule in a very easy way. 

Smaller-sized organizations may not be able to invest in SAP Information Steward because of the cost.

Overall, the product is good and stable. SAP Information Steward provides us with our expected results.

My main use case is to further our data quality monitoring. We are also using this solution to write business rules for the data in clients' systems and find the quality of the score they have in their system.

The most valuable features are data quality insight, metadata management, and metadata dictionary.

It is very easy to deploy. 

The data that they give us is good. We use it in our data quality domain.

An area for improvement is that Information Steward doesn't filter out bad data, so any corrections must be made manually.

Their support is not very responsive. They are going to meld this product with other products. They don't plan to offer any more support for this solution. 

I've been using this solution for three years.

Information Steward is stable - I never had any big challenges with it.

Good experience with support team

Information Steward is very easy to deploy.

Information Steward can be deployed into your business with a standalone system, so it won't impair or impact your ongoing processes. You don't require a lot of coding or developer knowledge to start with this product - the product is designed so that even the business team can go into the system and check the quality of the data without requiring any technical people or developers to be involved. This product is good for newbies, as it is less costly, requires less maintenance, and is usable by non-IT people. I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

My primary use of SAP Information Steward is for S/4HANA business progress.

The most valuable feature is that I can centralize data in cloud form with multiple connections and then consume that data from HANA database data connections.

An area for improvement would be for the product to be more powerful on its rules and how they link with tables or sources. In the next release, I would like to see a simple view of the data - currently, I have to do some work on the data myself before I can use Information Steward, which I would prefer the product did for me.

I have been using this solution for approximately two years.

I would say this is a stable product - we have no problems with the connection when I use the web environment.

This is a scalable product - it gives the possibility to connect with different targets from different sources, which gives me several possibilities for resources.

The technical support team is timely and responsive.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. Three people were involved in the deployment, which took around a month.

This product is better suited for large companies as you need to have a mature process for your data in order to get the best results. I would recommend this product only for companies that need to connect with different targets and to have a structure and specific form for data. I would rate it as seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for data quality assessment. We are partners with SAP and I'm the senior manager, SAP Data Services. 

Data insight is the most valuable feature. The solution is user-friendly even for those who are dealing with it for the first time. 

The user experience of metapedia could be improved. I'd like to see integration with data inclusion.

I've been using this solution for around four years. 

The solution is stable. 

We have around 40 users and the scalability is good. The solution is maintained by an admin. 

The customer service is okay. 

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward, deployment took us a couple of hours and was carried out in-house. 

I recommend this solution and rate it eight out of 10. 

We were developing the profiling reports on the basis of the source data that we were getting from our legacy system, and those profiling reports we shared with the business. Once we got the input from them, once they validated the data, that would be the kind of data that we have to access accordingly.

We were using SAP BODS and gathering extraction criteria. Similarly, there were a couple of rules that we were validating in the SAP Information Steward as well.

The ability to analyze the data even before we start the transformation of it, and generating the user-friendly interface, giving analytical reports, and helping create the transformation rules before we proceed with the data migration part was the most helpful part of the solution for our company. The user was moving from a legacy system to S/4HANA version. It was really helpful in collating the reports and getting the data inside.

The data profiling was excellent, as was the ease of generating the dashboards. It allowed the user to view the data, including what kind of data they had.

It was easy to see the source at the data level itself for reporting and analysis purposes. 

I primarily have a data migration background. Information Steward was very helpful from the perspective of a legacy data report generation, whatever the data we are getting and in terms of what kind of data we are getting.

We can just play around with the data and generate the reports on whatever data we have. However, we cannot modify anything in the data level itself and proceed accordingly. I would say SAP Data Intelligence is better in that sense. That provides the ability to modify the data and it has the same functionality as SAP Information Steward.

We'd like to see some manipulation techniques included in SAP Information Steward. That would be helpful for anyone working on any migration object. It would be beneficial for those who have to generate some dashboards for the business perspective and all.

When we work on the legacy data, we can do everything else in SAP BODS. However, in SAP Information Steward, whatever the possibilities are there to manipulate the data should also be in Information Steward. If we are asked to share the report or create a dashboard, we can just do it right from Information Steward. We would like some data manipulation tools for whatever the minimum transformations are. To do the extensive transformations we have other tools. We can use SAP Data Services also. However, these kinds of minimal transformational tasks, if they were available in SAP Information Steward, would be really great.

I used the solution up until two months ago.

From a performance perspective, sometimes it behaves weirdly. When we are connecting with the file-based system, it doesn't give us the correct results, or it somehow shows us there is this issue with the data or the file connectivity. And yet, there is no issue. It starts working after a couple of minutes or maybe after half an hour or so. Those kinds of intermittent issues were a little bit frustrating. I didn't expect them. That said, we did not escalate them to technical support.

We have six to seven people on the solution currently.

I haven't attempted to scale the product directly. We were the end-users who were using the tool, however, we were not enhancing it. Whatever the functionalities were available inside the system itself or in the tool itself was we were using.

We used the solution quite extensively.

On some other tools, I have been in touch with SAP support. With this particular solution, we've only had intermittent performance issues. If these kinds of problems could be avoided, that would be helpful from an end-user perspective. However, it didn't require the assistance of technical support.

Overall, in terms of SAP technical support, I was satisfied with them in a couple of areas. However, they were not helpful at all in other areas. In some areas, they just say, "Can you please upgrade the version?" We already looked into this, and the version that we were using was compatible with the other tools and functionalities that we were using from other tools. When they give that advice, we always say, "Okay, these are the things." Yet, they'll reply, "Okay, please upgrade to this version." without analyzing the issue themselves. 

The SAP technical support team should be vigilant about what they are communicating. Once we had to escalate on the ticket itself, and their standard reply is "Just show us the documentation or the proof as to why we cannot use the current version."

We were forced once into a heated argument with the SAP technical support person, and he admitted, "Okay, sorry, I must say I haven't analyzed it. I will get back to you after analyzing it in detail, and we will provide you with a solution." So we rectified it and were able to proceed.

I've also worked with a similar SAP product known as SAP Data Intelligence. We've also used SAP Data Services or BODS, which can be used in conjunction with SAP Information Steward.

SAP Data Services is from a data transformation perspective, quite helpful. SAP Data Intelligence has features that are not included in SAP Information Steward.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward. From my team, there were six people involved in the process.

There was a person from the vendor team who just installed it. I know how to install it. However, there was another team as well, and it was their primary task to install the tools, both SAP Information Steward and SAP BODS, and SAP Data Services.

We have been working on the deployment for quite a long time. It was a data migration to SAP. In Release One, we were working on the finance data. In Release Two, we moved onto other areas, such as the supply chain, et cetera. It took around eight to nine months. During that time, however, we were using SAP Information Steward.

From a maintenance perspective, it doesn't need much maintenance unless there is some issue with the remote server where the tool has been installed. Every client has their own view. They are not just giving the tool to anyone who can use it on their local system. If I'm working for a vendor, then the client will install the tool on their respective machine where there is limited access for other users; no one else can use that.

We had a vendor assist us with the process.

I can't speak to the pricing as I am not directly involved with those discussions. However, my understanding is that the solution has competitive pricing. 

We are working with the solution from a vendor perspective. We have a partnership with SAP.

Many of the business users are not aware of how Information Steward works. They just shouldn't expect everything to come from or be available from SAP Information Steward. Someone from the vendor side also should be available to explain "These are the functionalities that can be implemented with Information Steward."

If the client is expecting something more, then they should be aware before they implement anything. They need to look at other options and say "Okay, these are things that are going to be provided by another tool." In our case, we had SAP Data Services, BODS, that can be used for the data transformation part while SAP Information Steward we can't even do the minimal transformation.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

My primary use case is writing and implementing rules for customer information across our enterprise.

Data integration is much easier with Information Steward - irrespective of the data sources, integration is very smooth and easy.

The feature I have found most valuable is the scorecard, which allows me to see how much data has been validated correctly.

One area for improvement is that currently, you have to check tables column by column to check whether the rules are being applied or not. In the next release, I would like to see an improvement of the product's interface, particularly the representation of data and interactivity. 

I have been working with this solution for three to four years.

Sometimes when executing a large amount of data, the tool takes more time to process and generate the profiling, so the performance could be improved.

Information Steward is easy to scale.

The tech support is responsive but sometimes slow, even on time-critical projects.

The setup is straightforward, especially when compared to other tools. The amount of time needed for deployment varies according to the number of rules, but I would say it will not take any longer than an hour.

SAP is a bit pricey, and better tools are available for a lower price.

I would recommend this product for organizations using SAP systems, as integration will be smoother, but not for those using other systems. I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

I do not recall which version we are using. 

We use the solution for data profiling for customers and contacts in respect of contact data.

A problem with the solution is that it does not allow us to review the results of Information Stewards for other analogies. All data resulting from Information Steward remains there, which prevents us from utilizing it to do more deep analysis. We would like to see the export of the resulting data and this is something we have requested from SAP but, as of now, without effect. We wish to be able to extract the resultant information. 

We used SAP Information Steward until around two months ago. 

The solution is very stable. 

The solution's technical support is pretty good, which likely owes itself to the enterprise contact we have with SAP. They are immediately responsive to any issues which may arise. 

The solution is very easy to use and straightforward. It has no complexity. 

The deployment took around two weeks. It is very fast. 

I do not know if there were additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees.

Prior to going with SAP Information Steward, we were using Informatica Data Quality for data profiling, but encountered difficulty with its configuration, which is why we switched. Ultimately, we realized that with our current tools we can achieve the same result without having to pay for an additional tool. 

We do cloud-based deployment. 

The solution is very fast. It is a good tool. 

We have several data engineers who are responsible for the connections and configurations of certain rules. We also have around 10 data stewards who are in charge of reviewing the data and results in Information Steward. 

I rate SAP Information Steward as an eight out of ten. 

For the most recent project that I was working on with SAP Information Steward, we did the data profiling and created the rules, and then eventually presented the results on the scorecard.

As a client, they will want to look at their data and the quality is important. We do the data profiling to show them how their data looks. Eventually, we will be facilitating the rules from the business, the other business users, and the functional people. We incorporate those rules into SAP Information Steward which allows us to show the clients the data versus the rules that they have given us. We show them through a scorecard, it is like a dashboard.

The Data Cleansing and the scorecard dashboard are very valuable. Additionally, the financial aspect of SAP Information Steward is very good. When a rule is incorrect then it will show how much is it costing the business. These features are very valuable.

It shows the business how that data looks like. When they link the financials it shows them if the data is dirty, and how much it costs the business. There are special features for cleansing the data that are beneficial. It is a huge task to cleanse data manually, automating it through the Data Cleansing package is very valuable.

The user interface is user-friendly and is object-oriented. It is simple for the user to interpret what is happening. I am very happy with the product.

The solution could improve by incorporating other applications, such as Power BI to show more visualization. More interaction with other solutions would be a good benefit.

I have only used SAP Information Steward for a short period of time.

The stability is very good. It has a high performance.

The solution is flexible, it can be used for many sized companies. It can be used for small, medium, and large companies, it's quite a good tool it scales easily.

In the most recent project, because I was a data lead, I wasn't using SAP Information Steward very much. It was our data stewards that were using it. However, I used it extensively in my previous project which was a few years ago when I was a data steward.

I have not been in contact with the technical support directly. For most issues that we've had, we provide them to our administrator, and our administrator was the one who was usually in touch with the technical support.

There were times where they were able to quickly resolve issues. They have their own SLA to follow. Sometimes they do not follow their SLA but and this is because their SLA does not match ours because ours is shorter and theirs is longer. 

The implementation is straightforward. The size of the team to do the implementation of SAP Information Steward depends, a typical team would be approximately five data stewards and one administrator. The time it takes for the implementation is approximately two days, it is not complex.

There is some maintenance that is required for SAP Information Steward, such as patching and updating.

SAP Information Steward is an expensive solution compared to others.

After I used SAP Information Steward, I used others solutions, such as Ab Initio and Informatica.

I believe ETL tools are ETL tools. They are all object-orientated, and only from different companies. It goes to the preferability of a client if they want to use one or the other. However, pricing is different when compared. Most clients would choose the other tools rather than SAP because SAP is a bit pricey. They'll probably opt for another tool because it's more cost-effective for them.

I would recommend SAP Information Steward because it delivers good work when it comes to our business requirements and is fast.

I rate SAP Information Steward a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case of SAP is for data governance, access management, and historical reporting. We're a global enterprise company that uses multiple solutions. We have about five or six of them in place right now, some of which are direct competitors to SAP. 

We are customers of SAP and I'm the information protection senior adviser.

The product has improved company efficiency because we're able to categorize the need for user access at the folder level across storage enterprise wide.

The most valuable feature is the ability to collect information from devices, to monitor user access and to plan storage capacity upon those devices.

I would like to see the granularity of the configuration reduced from a global or an application level to the object level, together with the ability to archive data retention and make reporting and indexes faster. I'd also like the ability to get inside the individual information collections on a more specific level and to get information directly related to a topic. They currently have BIRT, a business information reporting tool and I'm forced to use that to extrapolate information unless I want to go through the command line which has very poorly documented access. They put out a syntax and then you have to experiment to figure out how it actually works. 

One area of improvement would be the documentation on the application, its third party dependencies, and the functionality of the command line features. I think improvements could be made in performance. I have some situations where I can throw more resources than the application can handle, and I will not get better performance. The issue is that indexing is single-threaded so I'll never be able to make one thread faster. If it could be done in parallel threads, it would all be more efficient. With a date timestamp I'm limited to a single thread, those are the limitations in the threading model of the application. The threading model creates bottlenecks all over the application. 

I've been using this solution for nearly two years. 

I currently have a support case open for four indexes that are failing miserably out of tens of thousands, so the percentage rate is very small. The degree to which that's a problem for me is massive in those four cases. To rate the functionality that we're seeking and the ability for the application to perform, with appropriate resources and access points to the objects that I'm trying to scan and track, it's quite reliable.

The scalability is limited by single-threadedness, and by the ability to keep data over a longer period of time. They use sequel-like databases, which is a flat file database that's non-relational, and therefore slower in querying or pulling data back. It's faster in committing data because whatever the last line is, it adds one and commits the next piece of data. If I'm manipulating or modifying data, it uses the half by half model of indexing. If I never get rid of my data over time, that's a severe limitation and if I continually expand that index, it becomes unmanageable at some point. 

I am the technical support for this solution in the company and I constantly engage the solution's technical support. My position is unique since I trained most of them, including their back line and I know more than the current technical support at SAP. In some cases they do well being able to navigate their internal systems and gaining access to the engineering, or the customer focused team, to get answers. And in some cases they have given extraneous or erroneous information, which is completely useless. I'm not sure that somebody who doesn't know the application well, would be enthralled with their support. I'm not.

Some components in the solution require manual installation, and some allow for push installation. Depending on what I'm installing, I will push installs, updates and upgrades across my environment so I don't have to install manually or locally. Dependent upon the environment there will be different domains with different rights that force me to use an external user versus a user with access to the enterprise. I might be required to access other departments or other users to get their administrative access. Functionally, if I had complete access, I could do the deployment with one person. It would likely be an IT administrator implementing the solution. 

Deployment time depends on what I'm deploying. If I'm pushing out to hundreds of nodes across multiple domains, I could anticipate it's going to take hours. If I'm going to install locally to those same nodes, then potentially I would do them in batches, and it could take weeks. The deployment or upgrade of an individual node takes around 15 to 20 minutes, depending upon the resources in the machine.

I'm rarely involved in ROI assessments, but I would venture to say that in general, returns are in direct proportion to cost. If I was measuring them as a layman, I would say that generally, over the lifetime of an application, ROI is exceeded many times, otherwise most organizations would get rid of the solution.

As a value proposition, the solution is an expensive one but the benefits of having it as a cost-benefit analysis to prevent intrusion, breaches, inappropriate access, is warranted. So I would venture to say that what they're offering is expensive but in long-term benefits, it's probably cheaper than having that information exposed through a breach or the wrong people internally getting access to it. There's a lot of value, although it's a very expensive solution.

Total cost is rarely just the cost of a license. There's also hardware, staff, the cost of a downtime window or a defect in the application so there are additional costs beyond the application itself. And that would be true with any application I've ever worked with in my 31-year career. 

The key is to assess your needs and plan, plan, plan. If you plan in advance, you'll likely avoid the pitfalls of putting this kind of an application into production.

I rate this solution a seven out of 10.