Learn how data quality is different from data observability, see the basics of both concepts, and understand how to handle them successfully in SAP systems.

Data Observability vs. Data Quality: Key Differences and Purposes Explained

Data observability and data quality are two similar yet different concepts. The key thing is that both of them are important for informative, valuable insights from the collected data.

In this post, we’ll discuss the differences between data observability and data quality, learn how they contribute to each other, and show how to handle both successfully in SAP systems.

What Is Data Quality

Data quality refers to how accurate, complete, relevant, valuable, compliant, and reliable your data is, and how effectively it can be used in your business. Certainly, data should be high-quality, empowering companies to make relevant, informed decisions, maintain operational efficiency, and comply with regulatory requirements.

Data quality encompasses six key dimensions:

• Accuracy: This dimension assesses how many errors the collected data contains. Inaccurate data can lead to mistakes in service offerings, decision-making, miscommunication, and increased costs on fixes.
• Completeness: Completeness evaluates whether all required data is present. Missing information can cause difficulties in data analysis, providing a distorted understanding of the real situation and leading to wrong decisions as a result.
• Consistency: Consistency ensures that data remains uniform across different systems and datasets. Inconsistencies, like varying formats for dates or discrepancies across platforms, can cause confusion and errors in data processing.
• Timeliness: Timeliness measures whether data is up-to-date and available when needed. Outdated information can lead to being unable to make prompt decisions and, as a result, falling behind the market competition.
• Uniqueness: This dimension checks that each entity is represented only once within a dataset. Duplicate records can result in system computing capacities overload, slowed processes, and skewed analytics.
• Validity: Validity examines whether data conforms to defined formats and standards. Deviations in data formats might lead to errors, data unreadability, and disruptions in system operations.

What Is Data Observability

Data observability is the ability to monitor, understand, and maintain the health and reliability of data systems. This is ensured by comprehensive visibility into data pipelines, infrastructure, and usage. Data observability allows organizations to proactively detect, diagnose, and resolve data issues, making sure that all the company’s data remains trustworthy and systems operate efficiently.

Data observability includes the following five pillars:

• Freshness: Freshness ensures that data is up-to-date and reflects the most recent information.
• Distribution: This aspect shows whether data goes up or falls below the trustworthy range and detects anomalies.
• Volume: Volume indicates whether the amount of data flowing through systems is full and complete, allowing businesses to spot issues in data sources due to inconsistent flows.
• Schema: Schema tracks and records changes to data structures, as well as who made them and when.
• Lineage: This pillar is a historical visibility into the data path like source, transformation, and end purpose.

Real-World SAP Scenarios: Data Quality and Observability in Action

Understanding these concepts becomes clearer when we examine specific SAP scenarios where data quality and observability challenges commonly arise:

Case 1 — Master Data Management.

In SAP Material Master (MM), data quality issues often emerge when multiple plants create similar materials with slight variations in descriptions or specifications. For example, "Steel Pipe 10mm" vs "Steel Pipe 10 mm" vs "Steel Pipe (10mm)" represent the same item but appear as different materials, leading to inventory inefficiencies and procurement errors.

Data observability helps by monitoring material creation patterns, detecting duplicate entries in real-time, and tracking data lineage from creation through usage across different SAP modules (MM, SD, PP).

Case 2 — Financial Close Process.

During month-end financial close in SAP FI/CO, data quality problems can delay reporting when cost center assignments are incomplete or GL account mappings contain errors. Missing or inconsistent profit center data can make consolidation impossible.

Data observability provides visibility into the financial data pipeline, monitoring posting patterns, detecting anomalies in account balances, and ensuring all required data flows from operational modules (SD, MM, PP) to financial reporting are complete and timely.

Case 3 — Supply Chain Integration.

When integrating SAP with external suppliers through EDI or APIs, data quality issues arise from format inconsistencies, missing mandatory fields, or invalid reference numbers. A single incorrect material number can disrupt the entire procurement process.

Data observability tracks these integration points, monitors data volume and freshness from external sources, detects schema changes in supplier data formats, and provides lineage visibility from external systems through SAP processing to final business outcomes.

How Data Quality and Data Observability Are Related

Both data quality and data observability relate closely to data management, and both serve to ensure data unity, accuracy, and reliability. Still, in terms of “what was first”, data observability is a second-level concept that is based on data quality. In other words, data quality ensures the health of the initial data that enters an enterprise’s system, while data observability is aimed at continuous monitoring and analysis of this data throughout its whole lifecycle.

Because they are closely interconnected, data observability and data quality have some similarities:

• Single purpose: Data observability and data quality help establish and maintain data health, reliability, and usability for data-driven, informative decision-making.
• Advanced toolkit: Both require sophisticated solutions for proper work to automate complex processes.
• Teamwork: Data observability and data quality need coordinated teamwork to ensure that the whole ecosystem of data is functioning properly.
• Decision-making drivers: Data observability and data quality help businesses make accurate and relevant decisions due to real-time data delivery and completeness.
• Continuity insurance: Both data observability and data quality facilitate seamless processes and uninterrupted operations by providing data cleanliness and maintaining data health within pipelines.

Data Quality vs. Data Observability Differences

Yet, data quality and data observability are different. Despite their core goal being the same, they target different aspects of data management.

First, data quality and data observability have different objectives. Data quality focuses on ensuring data itself is accurate, complete, reliable, consistent, and valid, while data observability emphasizes visibility into the health and reliability of data systems, monitoring pipelines, infrastructure, and usage patterns to detect and fix problems proactively.

Besides, data quality is primarily concerned with data accuracy, completeness, validity, uniqueness, consistency, and timeliness. Data observability expands monitoring to the overall data ecosystem, tracking freshness, distribution, volume, schema changes, lineage, pipeline health, infrastructure performance, and user behavior.

Data quality and data observability also have different approaches. Data quality takes a reactive approach, correcting data once an issue is identified, while data observability usually takes a proactive approach, foreseeing, diagnosing, and addressing data issues before they significantly impact operations.

As may be seen from the name, data quality focuses on the quality and accuracy of data records themselves, while data observability is focused on visibility into the entire data infrastructure: pipeline stability, data movement, transformations, system performance, and usage patterns.

Data quality directly impacts decision accuracy by ensuring that the data is trustworthy. Data observability impacts operational efficiency by reducing system downtime, quickly diagnosing failures, and maintaining continuous data flows.

These two also rely on different techniques. Data quality uses validation rules, cleansing techniques, quality audits, and data profiling, while data observability relies on continuous monitoring, alerts, metrics tracking, anomaly detection, and automated root-cause analysis.

The summary table below will help you determine the key differences between data observability vs. data quality.

How DataLark Handles Data Quality and Data Observability in SAP Systems

Data quality and data observability issues can occur in many data systems, and SAP is no exception. Finding the right solution to the problem is the key to keeping your SAP environment operational capacity stable and accurate, allowing you to make data-based decisions, and stay ahead of the market.

DataLark, a sophisticated data management solution, focuses specifically on data quality and data observability in SAP and non-SAP systems. Its data management capabilities and user-friendly interface allow companies to successfully maintain data quality and ensure data observability, even without a coding background.

DataLark ensures exceptional data quality within SAP environments due to:

• Automated data profiling and validation: DataLark integrates automated data profiling and data validation methods that analyze SAP data structures and highlight inconsistencies, anomalies, and missing data.
• Rules-based cleansing and enrichment: Using tailored rulesets explicitly designed for SAP datasets, DataLark systematically cleanses incorrect or redundant data.
• Continuous quality monitoring: DataLark continuously monitors data quality metrics, offering real-time insights and alerting SAP administrators to any deterioration in quality metrics, which enables prompt corrective actions.

As for the data observability within SAP systems, DataLark offers the following:

• Pipeline health and flow monitoring: DataLark ensures smooth and uninterrupted SAP data pipelines by continuously tracking their health, performance, and data flow to identify bottlenecks or issues in real time.
• Anomaly detection: The platform utilizes advanced anomaly detection mechanisms that quickly identify unusual patterns or unexpected changes within SAP data systems, proactively mitigating risks.
• Data lineage and traceability: DataLark offers comprehensive visibility into the origin and transformation of data across SAP systems, facilitating transparency and enabling efficient issue resolution and compliance.
• Schema change detection: DataLark can monitor and immediately detect any schema changes in SAP systems, providing alerts to maintain system integrity and avoid disruptions.

Conclusion

Data observability and data quality are different, yet they have a common goal: to ensure data consistency, compatibility, and health, and to make SAP systems process only valuable data that drive results.

We hope that this has helped you to understand the differences and key ideas of data quality and data observability, as well as to find a solution to possible data management issues.