1999-2000, the company I worked with gave a smallish number of key users full read rights to the SAP minus HR, briefly after introducing SAP to the global supply chain of that company. The key users came from all orgs using SAP, basically every department had one or two key users.
I was part of this and "saw the light". We had such a great visibility into all the processes, it was unreal. It tremendously sped-up cross-org initiatives.
Today, I guess, only agents get that privilege.