Kao, a global manufacturer of daily necessities and cosmetics, already utilizes various SAP solutions, including SAP ERP solutions, at its domestic and overseas locations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. However, in a rapidly changing business environment, it is necessary to understand the actual state of global business operations, further improve business efficiency, optimize the cash conversion cycle (CCC), and enhance corporate value. Therefore, Kao has decided to adopt SAP Signavio solutions, which strongly support the visualization of their current operations using ERP data that they have accumulated through years of operational experience, helping to identify and resolve issues in business performance.
Currently, Kao is using business analysis services supplied by the SAP service team with SAP Signavio to build systems and conduct analyses related to global accounts payable and receivable management processes to improve CCC. Based on these analysis results, the company plans to work globally to streamline business processes and strengthen governance, aiming to improve CCC. Additionally, they intend to continuously analyze and improve other areas to enhance corporate value.
SAP Japan was established in 1992 as the Japanese subsidiary of SAP SE. SAP (NYSE:SAP) is a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, promoting the integration of business and technology. For over 50 years, SAP has been evolving alongside companies, integrating business-critical operations, such as finance, procurement, human resources, supply chain, and customer experience, supporting customers in leading their businesses to success. For more details, please visit the SAP Japan website. http://www.sap.com/japan
]]>In a continued effort to drive innovation and transformation for our joint customers, SAP Signavio solutions are now listed on AWS Marketplace.
This collaboration aims to create a powerful synergy for businesses looking to optimize their processes and accelerate their digital transformation journey. This also represents the ongoing collaboration with AWS, focused on bringing together the technology, solutions, and flexibility that customers need to succeed in the digital economy.
"SAP Signavio and AWS have developed a strong partnership over the years, working closely to deliver successful transformations to our customers. Joining the AWS Marketplace marks another significant milestone in our collaboration, further elevating our dedication to deliver exceptional value to our customers," said Mani Pirouz, Chief Business Officer, SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX.
SAP Signavio solutions, now available on AWS Marketplace, include:
This availability streamlines access for AWS customers, allowing for seamless subscription management. Customers will gain a unified view of their IT expenditures, simplify procurement processes, and benefit from flexible options such as private pricing and consolidated billing, enabling them to maximize pre-approved budgets and drive business performance.
"AWS Marketplace is a strategic part of our cloud business. We collaborate closely with our technology partners, such as SAP Signavio, to adopt AWS Marketplace programs to help our mutual customers accelerate their ERP cloud transformation. SAP Signavio, like our other partners, can expand their customer reach through the AWS Marketplace Growth initiatives. These include automated co-selling capabilities, private offers to simplify the co-selling process, and seamless invoicing and commission tracking. AWS Marketplace streamlines the sales cycle at scale, enabling us to deliver a frictionless experience,” said Chris Grusz, Managing Director, Technology Partnerships.
To see the SAP Signavio solutions now available on AWS Marketplace as part of this powerful, integrated transformation platform, visit AWS Marketplace: SAP Signavio, and get started today.
About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 102 Availability Zones within 32 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Canada, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
This is the second year in a row that SAP Signavio has been positioned as a Leader in the report. We believe that this positioning implies that SAP Signavio is a key driver for SAP’s growth and long-term strategy.
According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology, “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.’’
Our solutions solve today’s real and diverse customer use cases (operational excellence, compliance, automation, transformation, etc.), and recognizes that we have a compelling vision for a future in which process automation and process AI open up new opportunities for our customers and partners.
SAP Signavio continues to focus on ensuring the long-term success of all of our customers and partners.
In the Australian state of New South Wales, the tax collected by Revenue NSW accounts for more than 35% of finances, helping fund essential services from healthcare to education and policing. With a vision to be the world’s most innovative and customer-centric revenue agency, Revenue NSW set out with a very specific objective. It wanted to analyze cases in which clients had overpaid land tax to identify why these overpayments occur and what experience clients received when obtaining refunds. This analysis would not only help reduce overpayment volumes and improve the client experience but also enable the agency to work more efficiently for its diverse stakeholders.
According to Jocelyn Yem, Director Strategy and Innovation, Revenue NSW, “As part of our Aspire 2032 strategy, our vision is to be the world’s most innovative and customer-centric revenue collection agency. ‘Embrace innovation’ is one of our strategic focus areas, where we can respond to our customers’ needs by embedding a culture of continuous improvement. SAP Signavio Process Intelligence has helped us achieve our first stage in this journey.”
In addition, Sabrina Bazouni, Director Land Tax, Revenue NSW confirmed that “SAP Signavio Process Intelligence has painted a clear picture of why clients pay too much land tax and how we can process refunds smoothly, along with a detailed road map to help us put these insights into action.”
Recognizing the wide-ranging effect of business process transformation solutions, Fujitsu Limited has embraced SAP Signavio solutions across its operations and portfolio.
At one of its manufacturing plants in Japan, Fujitsu used the SAP Signavio Process Intelligence solution to gather process execution data directly from the shop floor into the continuous improvement model the company had been using for many years. Integrating process data into the Kaizen discussions delivered never-before-seen insights, which helped the company further optimize its shop-floor processes and transform their Kaizen from traditional to digital, using process mining to generate data-driven insights.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Process Mining Platforms, Marc Kerremans, David Sugden, Nick Duffy,
29 April 2024
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
]]>SAP tech leaders met at ASUG Tech Connect at a pivotal time. But what got them on a plane to New Orleans? AI is a corporate imperative, but S/4HANA deadlines also loom. Here's my take - with views from customers and on-site interviews, including SAP's Juergen Mueller.
SAP TechEd 2023 served up a slew of announcements, and the emphasis was no surprise: generative AI.
Thanks to candid (virtual) discussions with media and analysts, SAP brought more clarity to its AI strategy than I was expecting (I reviewed that last week in SAP TechEd 2023 news analysis - what did we learn about SAP's AI strategy, pricing, and developer engagement?)
But how does that match up with customer priorities on the ground? I had a chance to find that out last week - via a series of jugular conversations at ASUG Tech Connect 2023 in New Orleans - including an interview with SAP Executive Board Member and CTO Juergen Mueller, and in-depth conversations with ASUG and DSAG leadership (DSAG's Jens Hungershausen, Chairman, Board of Directors, was also on site in New Orleans).
Tech leaders are facing a crunch time of competing priorities. Mueller told me one CIO said he was "swatting a thousand mosquitos." The demands of generative AI, cloud transitions, and - in the case of SAP CIOs, S/4HANA go-lives - bring an onslaught of technical challenges.
Oh, and while you're managing all the risks/demands of these projects, make sure you deliver continual wins to the business - and create a technical architecture flexible enough for direct-to-consumer and subscription/service business models. Sound like fun?
I believe the urgency of these challenges accounts for the strong attendance for the inaugural ASUG Tech Connect event. You'd have to be some kind of superhero to get all of those things done, which may be why the marketing theme of ASUG Tech Connect revolved around becoming an SAP superhero. But the emphasis in New Orleans was really about strengthening teams: attendees were on a mission to get the info they needed, for whatever their teams were facing next.
I'll get to those priorities shortly, but first, for those who are wondering, ASUG Tech Connect was not intended as any kind of TechEd replacement in the US (SAP TechEd was on-the-ground in Bangalore, complemented by a global Virtual SAP TechEd event). But ASUG, in collaboration with SAP, perceived an opportunity to give SAP tech leaders a chance for peer-based learning and roadmap discussions with SAP - the kinds of experiences that are very hard to achieve via a virtual event (though, in my opinion, not impossible, but that's a debate for another time). As one attendee told me, "I got the TechEd news last week; now is my chance to learn what it means for my organization."
But what about those who weren't able to be in New Orleans - or at last week's TechEd events? What should they make of the news? That was my first question for my sit down with Juergen Mueller. Mueller responded:
Every developer is expected to be versed in generative AI. What we've done is we really made it simple for development roles. They don't need to be an expert, but to become a generative AI user, I would say. In SAP Build Code, you'll see it, and in the Generative AI Hub you'll see it, and then of course, the most technical announcement was the HANA Cloud Vector Engine.
But via the Generative AI Hub, we make it very, very easy. So if you saw the keynote on TechEd day two, where basically for every document you have, you can say, 'Embed this, embed this, embed this' - and that's all you need to know basically, to be able to use gen AI in combination with companies' documents.
SAP believes it now has the right data solution for AI also. That is crucially important to enterprise AI, where Large Language Model data goes stale quickly:
We talked about Datasphere significantly in the keynote as well. So we will put all SAP company-specific data there, and we'll be able - and our partners and customers will be able - to refer to that when they build Large Language Model-based applications.
Yesterday, GPT-4 Turbo was announced. That's really the latest model that has been announced. The training data has cut off in April. So it doesn't know anything about what's happened since April, and certainly it doesn't have access to any company's internal information. And that is where we come in, to really help build the bridge, and combine both worlds - the LLM world, and also company-specific information.
Mueller also shared the "concrete GA date" for the HANA Cloud Vector Engine: Q1 2024.
But are customers on the same page with SAP's AI emphasis? On the ground in New Orleans, the answer was mixed.
SAP's generative AI roadmap session was well-attended, as was ASUG's early reveal of its BTP customer survey. But SAP's "clean core" session was incredibly crowded. I believe that reflects the imperative of moving to S/4 effectively - and managing SAP's technical footprint in a more cost effective way. But don't overlook this clean core objective: the ability to capitalize on new business models - without as much technical friction
After the keynote, Josh Greenbaum and I did a session on decoding SAP, moderated by ASUG's David Wascom. During the talk, I did a hand poll, asking customers to say whether they were at Tech Connect primarily for S/4HANA, or for AI info. About 97 percent said S/4HANA.
Though this show was not primarily for hands-on developers, the future of SAP development was a hot topic here too; SAP customers want to make sure their development teams are on the right skills trajectory.
One of my favorite lines in the entire show came from the session by Paul Modderman and Jelena Perfiljeva, aka The Boring Enterprise Nerds. During the provocatively-titled The SAP Skillpocalypse: How To Not Become Extinct, Perfiljeva advised:
Use internal teams for strategic work, outsource mundane tasks (not the other way around).
Bingo! But in order to do that, you may need additional developer training, a topic I took up with Max Wessell, Executive Vice President, SAP Learning, who was also on site for a guest keynote (more on our conversation shortly). As for customers, here's the sum of what I heard:
This exact issue flared up at Constellation Connected Enterprise a couple weeks ago. We were in the midst of a sexy debate about generative AI possibilities, but a conversation about data governance broke out instead (CCE 2023 - the great AI debate shifts from content creation to...data governance?)
During my session with Greenbaum, it didn't matter whether we talked about AI, S/4HANA, or broader transformation - it all came back to data. As one customer told us:
We had a digital transformation roadmap first, to achieve our company's initiative. And we have all the other pieces underneath. One of them is our S/4HANA journey, which we are kicking off. And with that, we also have our data strategy. It all goes hand in hand, because you can't take the crap data we have right now in our ECC, and put it into S/4 0 harmonizing our data, cleaning our data; even knowing what data we have.
But data governance projects shouldn't just be about AI-readiness; they should be delivering other benefits. In the case of this particular customer, one of those benefits is data self-service. On the other hand, a steady diet of acquisitions makes data governance even more daunting:
We're creating that data dictionary, so that people can self-serve, and get the information that they want - and it's coming from one place. We're a company that's had a lot of acquisitions; we don't even use the same terminology for things. So we're building a glossary, so that when we call something 'this,' we can holistically, across the same company, have the same context. Those are the things we're working on. It's really hard. It's overwhelming. But we're just getting started.
One of the attendees said their AI pilot project was a fail. Why? Their data simply wasn't good enough:
I was just curious on your perspective on how much data cleansing efforts are needed. We did a small POC recently with AI on our blueprints and functional specs in Solution Manager - just throwing them all out there and then putting an AI engine on top of it. It was truly 'Garbage in, garbage out.' We have stuff out there, different versions of blueprints, giving wrong answers based on that. I'm dealing right now with a BI data load that was done years ago with bad data from a BI system. It was just masked by another load that had a timestamp above it. So I'm just curious on how much people were estimating: what is the data cleansing strategy before you start feeding an AI engine, before you start to expose that?
Another attendee explained the data/analytics obstacles versus business priorities:
We're expanding our business into some new markets, and we're struggling with capturing the data - the information we need. Our analytics - nothing is real time. We're exporting and importing spreadsheets, so we fundamentally believe we have to get to this data faster - if we want to be an AI-driven company. And to do this data strategy, we have to have governance around that.
Josh Greenbaum is one of the grouchiest analysts I know when it comes to AI, but what's important is why. As it turns out, there's a glass-half-full angle to Greenbaum's AI discontents: What if generative AI is the corporate push our neglected data quality efforts need? During our "Decoding SAP" session, Greenbaum hit on AI data issues early. As he said during our ASUG Tech Connect review podcast:
I was sort of joking when David Wascom introduced us and said, 'Well, I have this question about Gen AI.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's the only AI question I'm going to answer,' because I didn't want to talk about it. But you know, now I'm deciding this is a really good aspect of gen AI: whether you're for it or against it, whether you see the business case today or the future, the first thing you're going to have to do anyway is clean up your data.
Really do that data governance - that data management thing that probably should have been done a long time ago in order to be able to have clean data. Like that one attendee who said, 'Garbage in garbage out,' that's what you're gonna get. So if anything calls attention to data quality and data governance, Master Data Management, maybe I'll be a little more positive about what we're all doing with gen AI.
If we accept this imperative, where does the CIO go from here? Hands-on developers must now contend with ABAP Cloud, BTP, SAP Build Code and other low-code tooling. But the CIO has to find a way to lead that effort - and that's not all: 'Okay, I need to upgrade S/4HANA? I haven't done that yet. The deadline is coming. But I also need to address AI.' How do you think about all these things at once - and still serve your business stakeholders, who won't wait for a ticket to be heard? Mueller responded:
Yeah, it's a good question. Because a lot is coming at CIOs or Chief Digital Officers, and I'd say you need to pick a few strategic partners. Everyone is now coming at CIOs in a positive way, sharing that they want to help with bringing gen AI for this niche solution and for that niche use case, etc.
In the past, the pressures to transform seemed to vary by geography - but not so much anymore. In the past, I recall hearing from DSAG board members that the imperative to "transform" was more of a vendor sales pitch than a customer reality (and cloud was hardly a top priority). But during our talk at ASUG TechEd, DSAG Chair Jens Hungershausen told me that across the countries he visits, from the US to DSAG's home turf in German-speaking countries, the agenda is pretty much the same: make sense of your business transformation amidst economic pressures - and figure out how SAP fits into it. If you simply do a technical S/4HANA upgrade, you haven't necessarily transformed anything. Cloud may be the right answer for some projects - but a knee jerk move to the cloud doesn't necessarily "transform" your business either.
That raises the question of SAP innovation parity between on-premise and cloud - and whether SAP customers must move to cloud - and RISE - for innovation, such as SAP "Business AI." (I'll get to that further in my upcoming DSAG interview piece. For a flavor of that, see my April 2023 DSAG interview).
During our 1:1, I asked ASUG CEO Geoff Scott how this all stacks up. After all, Scott's day one keynote with Mueller and Microsoft's Scott Guthrie focused heavily on generative AI. But Geoff Scott believes SAP tech leaders need to think about this differently:
I believe that what's coming at us as technology practitioners and professionals is a world that is cloud-based. A world where we are consuming software as a service, and a world where the more customized you are, the less likely it is going to be for you to take advantage of innovation, and be able to be on the forefront of change - versus being on the way, way back end of it. So that is a stark commentary - and for most organizations who are in SAP and by the way, I don't think this is an SAP related thing; I think this is across everything.
I think if you're sitting there looking at where you are today, what I just said is a staggering, frightening concept because you have years and years and years of technical debt.
Here's a curve ball: Scott doesn't buy into the thinking that all technical debt is bad.
We have this notion that all technical debt is bad. I'm not of that opinion. I think there's good technical debt, reasonable technical debt and bad technical debt. I don't think people go into anything saying, 'You know what? Today I'm going to create technical debt. I think people make decisions based on the best information they have at the time - and we don't know what the next 20 years are going to bring.
Scott believes generative AI has disrupted tech leaders - because it forces the issue of tech modernization. He arrived at this position via feedback from ASUG members:
If you'd asked me that question a year ago, if ChatGPT hadn't been around and generative AI hadn't been around, I probably wouldn't have given you this answer. But as I'm looking at this and watching this, I'm listening to what people are saying. The only way you get to any of this is you've got to have, cloud-based, software-as-a-service based, low customization. It doesn't work any other way.
Is there such a thing as being "ineligible for AI" - if you are mired in an overly complex, on-premise landscape? Scott thinks the answer might be yes. This opens up the question: how should customers integrate SAP's ambitious AI plans into their own roadmaps?
Part of this is clearly understanding SAP's AI strategy and roadmaps. But as Scott alludes to, another central theme is emerging: there is such a thing as AI readiness.
As usual, I've run out of space before I've run out of ideas. Was ASUG Tech Connect a one-off thing? I don't think so. Despite a quick push to go-live, Tech Connect had a clear identity - and a palpable sense of community. There is room for even more informal, peer-led sessions at Tech Connect, but enterprise software vendors could learn from the Tech Connect playbook: concise one hour keynotes, then send you on your way, with bona fide time for networking (not lip service), and a choice between more conventional and more informal sessions (like the SAP Skillpocalypse).
Greenbaum and I talked to Mueller about an underrated TechEd issue: the need for reducing S/4HANA migration friction even further. Is this a matter of highlighting the partners making headway with innovative approaches, or does SAP need to go even further with its own tools? Mueller says it's both - and yes, there may be a role for AI here too, further automating the assessment of SAP landscapes pre and post-upgrade. And yes, we also talked with Mueller about public/private cloud innovation versus on-premise - a hot topic particularly with DSAG. I'll get back to that in my upcoming DSAG piece (for more context on S/4HANA upgrades, check ASUG Kris Turner's recent diginomica post, What are the biggest challenges to large scale ERP upgrades? Learning from SAP S/4HANA projects).
I was glad to see the presence of a BTP-only consulting partner at the show - the upstart BTP vendor sovanta (aka "the innovation factory for SAP BTP"). It was interesting to hear their take on how BTP has matured, what use cases are a good fit, and why BTP potentially stands out from other non-SAP options for app-building and integration (I was told for projects that leverage SAP data, or SAP business content, that BTP is often the best option, whereas customers are still using hyperscaler platforms for most customer-facing apps at this time).
This brings us to the future of SAP TechEd. For SAP to deliver for its customers' coding needs, SAP needs strong online education, along with hands-on skills training for both ABAP and new-to-SAP developers. It is my opinion that while ASUG Tech Connect should continue, SAP TechEd itself may need further re-invention. Perhaps there is one larger rotating TechEd, but logic tells me that you'll have much better luck reaching both new and 'classic' SAP developers by bringing coding/hackathon sessions to their local cities, SAP Code Jam style. Many of the developers SAP needs to reach are not flying to Vegas on SAP's behalf (TechEd Bangalore is different; thousands of developers live within driving distances).
I get the impression from Wessell that SAP is definitely looking hard at further ramping up its city-by-city code tours. Whatever the future of large scale TechEd, localized events are clearly a big piece of that puzzle. Add non-SAP and open source events into that mix also. If SAP relies too much on virtual training, it won't get there. Virtual events can also be more than they typically are, but that is a different blog post.
As usual, I've run out of word count before I've run out of topics, but I would be remiss not to mention a very interesting discussion Greenbaum and I had with Mueller about the potential for a different kind of RISE with SAP - one that brings in a strong integration between Signavio, the Lean IX acquisition, and Cloud ALM. Greenbaum has been championing the possibilities of this type of holistic process and landscape management tooling; we get into why in our ASUG Tech Connect review podcast. Part of the thinking here? Process debt is just as real as technical debt.
Though I have not heard anything from SAP directly on its intentions here - except some strong Signavio talk - if RISE went beyond hyperscaler management to include that type of integrated approach to process/landscape management, I don't think SAP would have to do the hardcore RISE pitch anymore. That type of product would sell itself, and make a much more persuasive argument for asking SAP to manage cloud hyperscaler footprints.
Whether that will materialize remains to be seen. Greenbaum thinks all the pieces are there, and he's looked at this closely; I've been burned before by imagining SAP will unite its disparate tools into something grand - and no, Solution Manager doesn't qualify, neither did NetWeaver - so I'll wait and see.
Only time will tell if SAP is making the right decisions on the future of TechEd. ASUG Tech Connect is an encouraging development, but now the needs of hands-on SAP developers need addressing. Wessell said that definitely happened at scale in India, at the largest SAP TechEd ever (4,000 hands-on tutorial sessions took place on the show floor terminals).
How will SAP address this across North America, and globally? I believe you can get a lot done with innovative online training - Wessell's team has taken SAP's online training to a significantly higher (and more accessible) level. SAP's Virtual TechEd also has a place - 30,000 registered this year - though there is still plenty of room for improvement in terms of imaginative online interactivity and Q/A. Either way, you need in-person training to bolster those online efforts; there is too much at stake for SAP and the ABAP developers who have more than paid their dues. It's too early to say how this part of the story will play out.
]]>A pivotal SAP event recently took place in Cairo, Egypt, serving as a convener for experts, leaders, and visionaries to discuss the intertwined future of green energy and digital transformation. The gathering underscored the imperative that SAP technology and sustainability go hand-in-hand in fostering an environmentally conscious and digitally savvy society.
In a world rapidly shifting towards sustainability, several Egyptian organizations are leading by example, embracing digital advancements to propel their sustainability initiatives. These enterprises are not merely transforming their operations; they are redefining the role of technology in achieving environmental stewardship.
Abu Qir Fertilizers, an industry vanguard in the fertilizer sector, has been notable in this digital sweep. By integrating advanced platforms like SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud and SAP Signavio into their infrastructure, the company has achieved significant enhancements in product costing precision, inventory management, and operational efficiencies. These strides are not only propelling Abu Qir towards sustainable profitability but are also aligning with Egypt’s broader Vision 2030 and the sustainable future it promises.
Abed Ezz El Regal, Chairman of Abu Qir Fertilizers, emphasizes the company’s commitment to a greener future, which is underscored by their investment in technology that champions both efficiency and sustainability.
Similarly, the Alexandria Mineral Oils Company (AMOC) has embarked on a robust digital overhaul. By implementing SAP’s infrastructure and security best practices, AMOC is sharpening its focus on efficiency and integrated, data-driven decision-making. This digital journey aligns with the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum’s modernization initiatives and sets AMOC on a path that promises heightened operational integration and intelligence.
Amr Lotfy, Chairman of AMOC, shares the company’s vision of a cohesive business operation enabled by SAP’s integrated system, which is pivotal for real-time, strategic decision-making.
During the SAP event, the spotlight shone on the suite of sustainability solutions offered by SAP, tailored to help organizations quantify and control their environmental footprints. These innovations align with SAP’s ethos of assisting businesses to not only run efficiently but also sustainably, demonstrating the company’s commitment to supporting Egypt’s sustainability ambitions under its Vision 2030 framework.
Mohammed Samy, Managing Director for SAP in Egypt, highlighted SAP’s dedication to steering the energy sector towards sustainable practices, emphasizing the company’s role in aligning the industry with global environmental standards and benchmarks.
Recent findings from a YouGov survey, commissioned by SAP, revealed an insightful trend: an overwhelming majority of Egyptian companies are gearing up to invest in both digital transformation and sustainability. These insights reflect a collective movement towards operational models that are not just efficient and modern but are also responsible and sustainable, mirroring the nation’s overarching objectives encapsulated in Vision 2030.
The momentum generated by SAP’s event is significant, coming at a time when innovative solutions are desperately sought to address global environmental challenges. SAP’s deep-seated expertise and its commitment to sustainability position the company as a key influencer in the evolution of green energy and digital transformation, with a reach extending well beyond the borders of Egypt.
The SAP event in Cairo was more than just a conference; it was a statement of intent from key industry players and a commitment to a future where green energy and digital advancement are inextricable. As Egypt strides towards Vision 2030, the union of sustainability and digitalization heralded by SAP’s initiatives promises not just a transformation in the energy sector but a revolution that could set a precedent for global practices in environmental responsibility and technological innovation.
]]>In a significant move towards revolutionizing the healthcare industry, Siemens Healthineers AG, a global leader in medical technology, has announced its strategic partnership with SAP, a renowned technology solutions provider. The collaboration aims to leverage SAP's cutting-edge cloud innovation through the implementation of RISE with SAP, facilitating Siemens Healthineers' digital transformation.
Siemens Healthineers will harness the power of SAP's cloud-based solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Signavio, and other cloud offerings. This integration is set to streamline data sources, enhance business process efficiency, and bolster sustainability initiatives.
Following a successful trial period, Siemens Healthineers witnessed firsthand how SAP's cloud solutions could standardize operations and improve process governance. CIO Stefan Henkel expressed his excitement about the partnership, emphasizing how SAP technology will simplify and standardize their processes while enabling the pursuit of groundbreaking healthcare advancements.
By adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, Siemens Healthineers gains the flexibility to scale its operations and swiftly adapt to evolving healthcare landscapes and customer demands. This move underscores Siemens Healthineers' commitment to driving innovation within the healthcare sector.
Thomas Saueressig, Executive Board member of SAP SE Product Engineering, expressed pride in being Siemens Healthineers' technology partner on this transformative journey. He highlighted the potential of cloud technology to fuel innovation, reduce costs, improve agility, and ultimately establish new standards in the healthcare industry.
The partnership between Siemens Healthineers and SAP exemplifies a shared dedication to fostering intelligent organizations across industries. It signifies a milestone in healthcare innovation, where two industry leaders are collaborating to drive meaningful change.
As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, the integration of SAP's cloud solutions will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Siemens Healthineers. By embracing digital transformation through RISE with SAP, the company is poised to not only enhance operational efficiency but also pioneer breakthroughs in healthcare.
The integration of SAP's cloud solutions is set to redefine industry standards, setting a new benchmark for intelligent, innovative healthcare organizations worldwide. This partnership marks a significant step towards a more efficient, agile, and sustainable future for Siemens Healthineers and the healthcare industry as a whole.
]]>Businesses are at a turning point, with the rapid evolution of technology compelling them to adapt or be left behind. At the heart of this transformation is the SAP Signavio Summit, where industry leaders and innovators come together to discuss strategies and solutions for the future.
Held against the scenic backdrop of Lake Como in Italy, the second SAP Signavio Business Process Transformation Executive Summit saw delegates from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa come together. At the conference, they discussed the future of business, how technology can drive growth, and how they can be better prepared for the inevitable changes that lie ahead.
Manos Raptopoulos, Regional President of Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa at SAP, emphasized the critical role that people and processes play in ensuring businesses not only adapt to change but thrive in it. Meanwhile, Florian Bauer from McKinsey & Company emphasized the importance of incorporating technology into business processes, asserting that AI can significantly expedite the process mining, thus leading to faster and more effective business transformations.
Gero Decker, General Manager and Head of Product and Engineering at SAP Signavio, detailed the evolution of the solution and emphasized the importance of agility in today’s fast-paced business world. He introduced the attendees to the new “plug and gain” approach, an innovative method that promises to reduce the time required for gathering insights and adapting to new business scenarios.
At the heart of the SAP Signavio Summit were tales of triumph, shared by businesses that have used SAP Signavio to achieve remarkable transformations. Emanuele Turra from AFV Beltrame expressed his optimism about the potential SAP Signavio offers in leveraging AI for process analysis, emphasizing the platform’s potential in optimizing processes and accelerating transformations.
Moreover, Dr. Sherif Farouk of the Egyptian Post, a recipient of the Transformation Champion award by SAP Signavio, expressed his enthusiasm for the future of digital transformation. He also applauded SAP’s commitment to environmental sustainability and lauded the role of AI in driving business growth across various sectors.
Paolo Pizzigati, representing Italy’s Alfasigma, highlighted the pivotal role SAP Signavio plays in process automation. For Alfasigma, the prospect of identifying bottlenecks and areas for optimization using SAP Signavio has been an enticing proposition.
Rounding up the insights were select SAP Signavio customers, including Fady Emad from MAGRABi UAE, who echoed the sentiments of many attendees, lauding the event as an invaluable opportunity to network, share experiences, and learn from peers.
The summit wasn’t just about looking back; it was also about looking ahead. The discussions were rife with anticipation of SAP’s acquisition of LeanIX, known for its prowess in enterprise architecture management software. This acquisition, in conjunction with Signavio, also promises to provide businesses with an exhaustive toolkit for seamless, efficient, and AI-aided process optimization.
Furthermore, Rouven Morato, the General Manager and Chief Revenue Officer of SAP Signavio, highlighted the integral role of systems, processes, and more importantly, individuals, in ensuring successful transformations. He also underscored the unique position of Signavio as a bridge between IT and business operations, emphasizing that the ultimate success of any transformation lies in the hands of the people driving it.
The summit was not just an event; it was a symposium of ideas, innovations, and insights. It provided a platform for businesses to look ahead, armed with the tools, strategies, and knowledge to ensure they remain at the forefront of their respective industries. The future may be uncertain, but for those in attendance, the path to success is a little clearer.
]]>Today’s digital technologies have given enterprises a way to move beyond luck and a little bit of hope when it comes to how well their business processes are serving their business goals. And these technologies are at the heart of SAP Signavio, an end-to-end solution designed to help enterprises manage business processes and enable continuous improvement programs.
In a recent ASUG webcast, "Introduction to SAP Signavio - Your Starting Point for Process Improvement," Chet Harter, Vice President of SAP Signavio Center of Excellence (CoE) at SAP, gave an overview of SAP Signavio and its core concepts and benefits, then detailing how the solution aids in SAP S/4HANA efficiency and contributes to continuous improvements.
Recalling his own experiences working on process improvement, Harter told attendees that there used to be very little data to support process improvement or performance improvement. “Sure, we might have had some KPIs that indicated we needed to make some improvements, but quite often we worked on things because we had a squeaky wheel in the organization, somebody who was screaming the loudest,” he said.
Signavio was created over 10 years ago and intended to enable business process improvement in both SAP and non-SAP environments. Its key objectives:
Business processes define how work is to be executed in order to achieve performance objectives, and they include not only the tools of applications and technology, but also the people and process inputs of data. The better a company manages their business processes, the less they have to rely on luck and hope for achieving excellent performance.
According to Harter, most enterprises have some type of continuous improvement program already in place for their processes, though some are much more formalized than others. For those not certain if their organizations have implemented continuous improvement programs, Harter advised exploring whether businesses practice Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, or process excellence, "all methodologies for continuous improvement that SAP Signavio is equipped to facilitate,” he said.
SAP Signavio provides a formal approach to process improvement by delivering measurement: the first step in allowing for control and eventually facilitating improvement. “If you can't measure something, you can't understand it," said Harter. "And if you can't understand it, you can't control it. And if you can't control it, you can't improve it. This [philosophy] really lends itself to getting away from the art of business process management, or the art of continuous improvement, and makes it a much more scientific and formal approach."
Specifically, SAP Signavio:
Without the formal approach and digital, data-driven capabilities of SAP Signavio, it is difficult to discern, at a granular level, how well processes are running. Certain KPIs might indicate that there is something broken in a process, but it will likely to take a lot of manual work to figure out exactly what is wrong.
SAP Signavio approaches analysis on ongoing monitoring basis, analyzing all processes and their performance by examining transaction logs, calculating process performance indicators to help users identify the biggest opportunities for improvement, and even making recommendations on how to improve processes.
SAP Signavio might recommend some SAP S/4HANA native capabilities, or prebuilt robotic process automation (RPA) bots, for example, to make a very quick fix to a particular process.
It's not just about quick fixes in the present, either. SAP Signavio can help users determine possibilities for how to run a process in the future. The central process repository within SAP Signavio Process Modeler allows for visibility of all existing, past, and future processes within a user's enterprise. “I can see how we did things a year ago before we made some significant changes,” explained Harter. “And I can also put together my future state. I can also say, 'Here is how we intend to make this change when we move to SAP S/4HANA. Here is the process flow we're going to put in place when that time comes.'”
Using Signavio gives users an opportunity to make necessary changes to prepare for a move to SAP S/4HANA by identifying future state processes, helping users to create an implementation scenario with a positive outcome. In effect, it determines improvement objectives and performance targets based on company strategy and assesses current processes and available capabilities.
“Maybe 90-95% of our processes in the future will be exactly what we did in SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), but here's that other five to 10%," Harter said. "These are where we're going to make changes. And this is where I'm going to bring together the right IT people and the right business users to say, 'How can we do this in the future?'"
SAP Signavio can also help greenfield users establish process flows using SAP best practices and/or previous system processes (in a brownfield approach) along with Signavio accelerators; the suite makes it possible to collaboratively design, evaluate, and finalize processes in accordance with objectives and improvement targets.
As SAP S/4HANA implementation progresses, users will also be able to establish a complete list of future state process models, which can then guide system configuration and other activities that involve landscape customization. After that, SAP Signavio’s collaborative capabilities can help guide the necessary change management, all the while moving an organization toward SAP Signavio’s core strength: monitoring for continuous improvement.
“Well-run companies manage operational performance by managing their business processes,” Harter told attendees. And Signavio can do the same for users' organizations, he said, by providing next-generation, digital applications for managing effective and efficient business processes and a data-driven foundation for a continuous improvement program. In addition, Signavio can significantly improve the effectiveness of users' SAP S/4HANA implementation and reduce some of the most common challenges associated with ERP implementations, Harter concluded.
]]>André Christ won’t say exactly how much he took home when he sold his baby, LeanIX, to software giant SAP earlier this month.
The deal is worth an estimated $1.2bn, the biggest in German tech history. Not bad for a company started in 2012 in Bonn, which isn’t typically considered a major startup hub like Berlin or Munich.
The deal is one of Germany’s largest ever tech acquisitions, topping Dr Oetker’s acquisition of Flaschenpost for $1bn in 2020. It has demonstrated that Europe can build software with global appeal, analysts say.
“I hope that it gives founders (in the region) the confidence that it is possible to make it outside of those big hubs,” says Christ, adding that SAP itself is headquartered outside the startup bubble in Walldorf.
The company, which helps enterprises track their IT architecture, was on a fast growth trajectory before it decided to get scooped up by the software giant — and didn’t necessarily need to get acquired. (In fact, investors in LeanIX’s 2020 Series D round told Sifted that they would have preferred to hang on to the company for longer.)
LeanIX has upped its revenue to just shy of €100m this year and has expanded to 600 people. It also cracked America early on in its journey — no mean feat for a European software company — with the US now responsible for 50% of its total revenue.
So what made LeanIX decide to sell?
SAP is one of the most valuable software companies in the world, with a market cap of $154bn and 24k partner companies worldwide, making it an attractive option for LeanIX.
SAP has been a customer of LeanIX since 2017 and the two firms established a partnership in June last year that laid the groundwork for bigger opportunities, says LeanIX’s Christ.
The software giant has thousands of enterprise and mid-market customers globally that LeanIX can tap into, each at varying stages of digital transformation.
Within SAP, LeanIX will join Signavio, a business process management software company acquired by SAP in January 2021, and form a business transformation suite within SAP that can help companies modernise their software stacks quicker.
This is a huge opportunity for LeanIX to grow inside SAP, as Signavio did, says Christ, though he couldn’t be specific about what that “growth” will look like. Signavio has grown from 450 people to over 1,500 since being acquired by SAP, according to the company.
LeanIX hopes to emulate this growth and is currently ramping up its hiring efforts — having more than doubled its headcount since 2020, says Christ.
Signavio provided LeanIX with a positive case study of how well an acquisition by a big player like SAP can go. When a larger company scoops up a startup, there’s a risk of it being subsumed by the corporate machine.
Christ is buoyed by the fact that Signavio has been able to retain its identity while being part of SAP. Its original cofounder and CEO, Gero Decker, is still in his position after two and a half years.
M&A bankers tell Sifted that cofounders usually leave after 12-18 months maximum after being bought by a bigger company.
The acquisition, which is expected to close by the end of this quarter, is not just a big deal for Germany, but for Europe too, says Christian Resch, managing director of Goldman Sachs’s growth equity investments.
“It shows that Europe can build extraordinary quality software that scales and sells globally with a very large footprint in the US and in Germany. And that’s excellent for the ecosystem,” he says.
The deal generates cash for VC funds and for LeanIX’s employees too, who will hopefully use the proceeds to found their own companies. This virtuous cycle is “what Europe desperately needs”, says Resch.
Let’s not forget that the deal also means a payday for LeanIX’s shareholders.
“For VCs wanting to make returns to LPs, this was a compelling exit option in an environment that has seen extremely little exit activity,” says an investor who backed LeanIX in its 2020 Series D round.
“Let’s call a spade a spade. There’s a lot of money being made in this whole deal. This is a huge transaction,” he adds.
It’s also crucial that this billion-dollar acquisition was achieved by a company headquartered in Bonn — a city in the west of Germany that doesn’t have the same reputation as Berlin or Munich as a major startup hub.
“This means there’s a chance that a good amount of cash will end up in the local ecosystem,” says Resch.
It also proves that “great companies can be founded anywhere”, says Christ, who admits he struggled to decide whether to base the company in Berlin or Bonn back when it was first founded in 2012, though he now sees the company’s location as a competitive advantage.
Correction: This article has been updated to show that Signavio's employee base has grown from 450 to 1,500 employees since being acquired by SAP.
]]>Thought leaders and industry professionals recently gathered for the two-day SAP Signavio Business Transformation Forum 2023 (Sept. 11-13; Scottsdale, AZ), which provided a valuable platform for them to share key insights and lessons learned on the evolving landscape of business transformation.
“Don't sit back,” Rouven Morato, General Manager for SAP Signavio at SAP, advised attendees in his opening keynote. "Challenge yourself, and embark on the journey of reinventing your organization for the future."
Morato demonstrated SAP Signavio’s journey by taking off layers of t-shirts one-by-one, from a top-layer “transformation” shirt to, finally, an "SAP Signavio + LeanIX" reveal. (You can see the t-shirt reveals yourself in this on-demand recording.) Morato then ended his keynote with a surprise, as SAP CEO Christian Klein joined virtually for a live interview, in which Klein spoke to the role of SAP Signavio in ensuring successful and holistic transformation journeys.
Gero Decker, General Manager for SAP Signavio, went into more depth on the LeanIX merger, also discussing his proven track record in predicting the future and the soon-to-be-released AI features in the SAP Signavio platform. In addition to these dynamic keynotes, customer stories, live demos and workshops abounded across the two days. Not to mention a mechanical bull. Wait? Maybe I’m not supposed to mention the mechanical bull…
All this excitement, and I haven’t even told you about the ASUG research I was invited to share! I had the privilege to present ASUG research alongside SAP's Dee Houchen, Head of Market Impact for SAP Signavio, on stage during day two. In its second year, this collaborative research shed light on the challenges and opportunities facing organizations in their quest for more efficient SAP implementations.
Research results, which will be officially revealed in the coming weeks, demonstrate the enduring importance of change management processes, which can expedite transformations, but also revealed a critical challenge: organizations still struggle to bridge the gap between people, processes, and systems in their pursuit of successful SAP implementations.
Here are the three key takeaways from my conversation with Dee Houchen:
The core message of our presentation was that people are still the linchpin of any successful business transformation. Organizations are motivated to transform primarily to enhance operations, and this involves empowering their workforce. Understanding and addressing the human aspect of change management is vital for a successful transformation, particularly as research respondents who cited change management as a challenge spiked to 58% in 2023 (from 43% in 2022).
Another standout issue was the skills gap, which includes the lack of essential skills, inadequate skills, or a shortage of skills and its hinderance on organizational transformation efforts. The top three missing skills identified in the research were SAP S/4HANA expertise, business process transformation, and training and onboarding management. Organizations are grappling with learning on the job or relying on external resources to fill these crucial skill gaps.
While numerous potential benefits can be gained from a business transformation, the research emphasized that these benefits take time to materialize. Organizations should maintain their commitment to the journey, even when immediate results may not be apparent. A long-term perspective is essential for realizing the full potential of transformation initiatives. A key insight from the research was that nearly half of respondents required more than six months to start to realize the benefits of a business transformation.
The research revealed that business process management tools are underutilized resources in the pursuit of transformation benefits. Organizations can harness the power of these tools to streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and drive efficiencies. Recognizing the value of such tools is critical for optimizing the benefits of transformation efforts.
I look forward to next year’s research collaboration with the SAP Signavio team as we continue to understand organization’s business transformation journey and of course evaluate the role of AI in the journey. Expect more insights from ASUG Research in the weeks to come.
Marissa Gilbert is Director of Research at ASUG.
]]>SAP said it will acquire LeanIX GmbH, an enterprise architecture management software company, in a move that will optimize processes connected to system migrations.
The acquisition of LeanIX will give SAP another process optimization piece to combine with SAP Signavio. In addition, LeanIX will give SAP a path to more easily migrate SAP customers to S4/HANA and cloud operations.
Use cases for the LeanIX platform include application rationalization, portfolio assessment, migration and modernization and ERP transformation.
Indeed, SAP noted that "many CIOs rely on LeanIX's offerings as part of their digital transformation with the RISE with SAP solution." SAP has a lot riding on migrating customers smoothly and the company can use Signavio to continuously improve processes based on the output of LeanIX.
Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:
"A key challenge for SAP customer to upgrade to S/4HANA utilizing the vendor's Grow and Rise initiatives, is to understand their system landscape. LeanIX can help here, and with that help SAP customer assess, plan and access their SAP upgrades better. How well this will work in practice needs to be seen, as the details to be considered and the degree of automation expected as an SAP company are significantly higher than as an independent vendor. Time will tell."
SAP said the acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
It's also notable that Celonis and UiPath also offer system transformation using process mining. Many of those migrations involve SAP systems.
During UiPath's second quarter earnings call, co-CEO Rob Enslin said:
"We are also making great progress with SAP, engaging with customers and building a joint pipeline. During the quarter, a German agricultural company challenged by their S/4 migration, selected UiPath in a competitive win based on our holistic integrated platform. They are in the process of implementing test suite for regression testing on their S/4 migration and testing of all SAP modules. They also plan to automate processes in their finance department and incorporate process mining and AI into their automation program."
SAP said that LeanIX complements SAP Signavio and gives customers "unique clarity on IT landscapes that they need to reap the full benefit of business transformation."
SAP CEO Christian Klein said systems and processes go together and "we'll embed generative AI to offer self-optimizing applications and processes that can help businesses achieve key goals such as maximizing cash flow while minimizing their environmental impact."
LeanIX has about 1,000 customers for its IT visualization software. LeanIX also recently launched an AI assistant for enterprise architecture management.
According to SAP, LeanIX will be combined with SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite, RISE with SAP, and SAP Business Technology Platform. The company did note that LeanIX will continue to serve non-SAP architectures. SAP also has Demosphere, which aims to optimize and automate processes for multiple systems beyond SAP.
]]>An organization’s capacity for change has become a competitive differentiator, and the ability to quickly respond to change of any type is now viewed as a foundational competency for any business. This need for ongoing adaptability is one of the key drivers behind today’s announcement of SAP’s intention to acquire LeanIX.
LeanIX, as a market leader in enterprise architecture management, will further enhance SAP’s ability to digitize and simplify business transformations.
With the drivers of change – customer behaviors, market conditions, innovation disruption, talent shortages, environmental conditions, etc. – transformation has become an imperative. This is backed up by survey data that show that 90% of organizations link their own performance with the progress they have made on transformation.*
As SAP we are at the heart of business execution for so many companies out there. When talking to them, we hear that they clearly understand this need to transform. But we also hear that they struggle on how to get there. Their reality of business processes, data quality, and system landscape has grown over the last 10 to 20 years into a complexity that is hard to undo, let alone transform to an agile and dynamic set up.
When we as SAP reinvented our strategy three years ago, we elevated this need of our customers to get more help along their transformation journey to one of our key priorities. We acquired Signavio and established SAP Signavio as a very successful business unit to help our customers transform on the process side. We know that when our customers adopt a process-centric approach, they are able to visualize the impact of technology architecture on the day-to-day flow of work and business outcomes, giving them a clearer foundation for change and ongoing optimization.
In the two years since acquisition, we have listened closely to our SAP Signavio customers and engaged in their transformation project. They want to digitize the transformation journey as much as possible – the rewards of digitization are better collaboration and business buy in, accelerated time to value, and data-driven decision making. They look to us to deliver solutions that accelerate and de-risk their transformation journeys. They want better integration into operational systems to ease deployment and roll out of new processes, and they crave information on best practices and industry standards. We listened and the constant theme we saw was bringing together the process world with the IT world.
At the center of what’s needed is a stronger connection between IT landscape and business processes, the ability to identify the impact of technology on business outcomes. IT landscapes, like process landscapes, have exploded in complexity and have become webs of interconnected applications, data, and workflows, making it nearly impossible to predict the consequences of any change, large or small.
That is where LeanIX comes into play. With LeanIX’s ability to have full transparency into the IT landscape and ideal planning capabilities for the future design of the applications we are perfectly complementing the transformation capabilities of SAP Signavio in the process world – like two sides of the same coin: process and systems.
The addition of LeanIX will allow CIOs and IT leaders to gain the transparency and planning capabilities for their enterprise architecture to own the transformation and proactively drive the conversation with the business stakeholders. As SAP Signavio for the process world, LeanIX will give CIOs and IT leadership more relevance in critical business decisions and their impact on core operations, and greater ability to react to market trends and seize new opportunities such as generative AI.
Our vision is the creation of a complete business transformation suite. SAP’s market leading technology platform and our broad and innovative application portfolio are already helping our customers become future-proof, agile and intelligent enterprises. We are now on our way to delivering the most complete business transformation portfolio to help all of our customers on their transformation journeys.
With the addition of LeanIX’s IT-centric transformation capabilities to our existing portfolio of RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP, SAP Signavio solutions, cloud application lifecycle management, and SAP Business Technology Platform, we are uniquely suited to deliver for our customers a clear path to success.
Change, whether incremental or revolutionary, is constant and inescapable. Effectively managing change requires trust – trust in people to do their best, trust in technology to seamlessly and securely support work execution, integrations and new business models, and trust in the long-term purpose and vision.
At SAP, we strive to be a trusted advisor, working hand in hand with our customers as they manage their transformation journeys. We are excited to bring LeanIX’s people and capabilities together with our own, giving us a stronger foundation for helping our customers seize the opportunities inherent in the changes that are coming, whatever those changes may be.
Rouven Morato is general manager and chief revenue officer of SAP Signavio.
]]>In our latest ASUG Asks the Authors feature, we conclude our conversation with Nitin Singh, a senior principal and director of the Industry Value Advisory team at SAP America, and Gerry McCool, a value advisor with SAP.
Co-authors of the recent SAP Press “E-Bite” publication “Introducing Business Process Transformation with SAP Signavio,” Singh and McCool provide their readers with an overview of the SAP Signavio portfolio and dive into each tool. Guiding readers through SAP Signavio's business process intelligence, process mining and analysis, and SAP S/4HANA integration capabilities, their publication represents one of the first SAP official guides to the business process management platform, which SAP acquired in March 2021.
“We approached it as a non-technical book for businesspeople, to answer those very basic questions about what this technology suite does, in very practical terms,” said McCool. “We tried to stay true to that.”
You can read the first part of our conversation here. Below, in the second half of our interview, Singh and McCool discuss the Customer Value Journey, where SAP Signavio sits in, and what matters most in value realization for customers.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
ASUG: In introducing SAP Signavio to readers, how did you set a frame and figure out the right structure and tone?
Nitin Singh: As our team was working in the field, leveraging SAP Signavio and discussing transformation with customers, things were changing fast for the business transformation suite of solutions at SAP. There was no point of reference for anyone; you’d have to browse 20 different links to get your questions answered, and even those answers would have to be interpreted in certain ways. We wanted to provide the right information and insights for our customers; that became our motivation to write the book.
Our team touched 500 customers every year, so we had that collective knowledge, and we focused on transformation, both orchestrating it and creating a case for it. With SAP Signavio, we saw how it could accelerate business-case creation, time-to-value, and value realization for our customers. I sent a proposal to SAP Press, and they initially were reluctant given that it’s still an evolving topic, but they eventually accepted.
Even though writing the book fell outside of our day jobs, we committed to working on weekends and late at night, to ensure that we could place this book in the hands of our customers, colleagues, and partners, who do deserve to simplify their life and simplify the customer’s life.
ASUG: In what phase of digital transformation should customers consider SAP Signavio, in your view? Perhaps you can place this in the context of the Customer Value Journey, SAP’s latest customer engagement model, which is aimed at allowing SAP and its partners to collaboratively achieve optimal outcomes for customers.
Gerry McCool: From my standpoint, there’s really not a wrong time, other than not to do it at all. It's relevant in all the phases of the Customer Value Journey.
NS: SAP Signavio is system agnostic. Most of the Signavio suite of solutions work with both SAP and non-SAP technology stacks. You don’t have to be an S/4HANA customer. You could start leveraging most of its components at any time to get that end-to-end picture. That said, if you are planning for S/4, it becomes a must to invest in figuring out how to best use S/4; that’s why Signavio is embedded in RISE with SAP, as an additional benefit for those customers.
Amid planning for an S/4 migration, one of my customers was recently analyzing the overall business case for their CFO. When we started looking at the system, they had an automation rate of their purchase orders noted as 2-3%. We asked, “Why do you have such a low rate of automation?” It was not because they couldn't automate in the system; they had some programs they could quickly write to automate. It was more that they didn’t trust their purchase requisitions (PRs), which were created from Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) run every morning. MRP came from their demand forecasting, and their forecast accuracy was 50%, so they did not trust the forecast accuracy and therefore did not trust the quantities on purchase requisitions and therefore introduced a manual intervention while converting those PRs to purchase orders.
So, the root cause was not automation; until they improved their demand forecasting, they couldn’t improve their automation rate. The interconnectedness of multiple applications and multiple processes becomes critical at the modern enterprise. That’s why we always recommend leveraging both SAP Signavio and experts who understand it, to figure out which areas need to be invested in and prioritized amid digital transformation.
ASUG: Can you provide a few examples of customers who have operationalized their way of working with SAP Signavio? What lessons can be learned from their success?
NS: Every customer is unique. Some are customers are going through mergers and acquisitions, and they want to know what synergy they have in processes across two different company types. Other customers are looking to move to the cloud and leverage best practices, rather than just taking their technical debt with them. Other customers are already on their S/4HANA journeys but want to leverage tools so that they can see what other ERP systems offer, how closely aligned they are with what they currently have and what they want to do in the future; they want a business-process-management tool for that analysis. And other customers are simply not aware of SAP Signavio and how it can be leveraged to create business cases for transformation.
Customer executives, today, need to quickly pivot based on changing market dynamics. In the last three years, they have seen all the ups and downs: when COVID hit, they went down, and they had to meet pent-up demand amid inventory and inflation issues. In these circumstances, they need quick insights to determine what’s going on with their businesses. How can they move quickly? What capabilities do they need to prioritize? To answer those questions, they need a technology layer, without doing expensive and time-consuming business process reengineering exercises, through which they can quickly apply these tools. Leveraging those tools, executives can gain those insights and start taking corrective action.
GM: Many of the challenges are age-old. Where can we get detailed information about how to improve our business: where to improve, and what to improve? How do we transform, fundamentally, or de-risk transformation? You say the word “transformation,” and it sounds expensive, risky, and scary, as if people are going to lose their jobs. How do you put wood behind the arrow and put real fact into transformation, using objective information? And how do we get the most out of our investments, in general? SAP Signavio is a valuable response to those challenges.
NS: We also speak with customers at $2-5 billion companies that want to become $10-20 billion companies. If they want to scale quickly, based on their growth rates, they will hit roadblocks where they’re throwing more bodies at work and using a Band-Aid approach. Once they start customizing systems, those systems won’t be able to scale further. If 100 people are managing a $10 billion company’s finances, and the company wants to be a $20 billion company, it could need 200 more people. Will that give them economies of scale? Perhaps not.
So, the question becomes, "How can companies scale further by optimizing the way they operate?" Customers are struggling with this. How do we optimize the value delivered to customers, with fewer resources? And do we scale that for the future state? How many more resources will we need if we continue doing what we're doing today and don’t transform? Customers reach these limits where they can’t scale further without taking urgent action aimed at optimizing how they operate.
In those situations, customers are trying to leverage a business process management approach and then see where to prioritize, where they can continue to improve, where they can outsource, where can we invest more, where we can adopt new capabilities, and where they can apply robotic process automation (RPA) or AI Innovations to simplify processes. Scale, mergers and acquisitions, system consolidations, and cloud transformation are four key use cases you could think about for SAP Signavio.
ASUG: Any parting thoughts on SAP Signavio and its role in the SAP suite of solutions?
NS: We want to enhance the value realization that’s front-and-center in transformation. We want to ensure that customers, when signing up for large cloud transformation projects, are reaching the right outcomes.
In one of the last chapters of our E-bite, we discuss setting a framework for transformation and identifying areas that become the backbone of business cases. You want to measure the success rate, and you want to measure improvements in process performance indicators (PPIs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) in an iterative fashion, every six months or so.
You can do this using Signavio tools that directly plug into your systems, whether that’s S/4HANA or another system, and give you insights into which of those PPIs or KPIs are improving and which are not. What are the capabilities you need to activate, and what action plan do you need to take, to address those areas that are not improving?
ASUG: What else would you say to the ASUG community?
NS: Gerry and I have been part of the SAP family for a long time. Our passion is to ensure our customers are successful. That’s what our purpose is. As value advisors, we feel that our job is not done until customers see real value from their transformation. The chapter of value realization is included in our book, because we went back and forth with SAP Press and pushed the point that we needed that chapter, believing our customers need to read about it.
Value realization is key to our customer value journey framework which ensures our customers are getting the desired value from their SAP investment. It is important for our customers to understand how key it is to our approach. I would like to conclude by thanking our customers and partners for adopting process transformation and value mindset and we are very excited for the future!
GM: We see that the business process improvement space is underserved. It is underserved in the sense that there are a lot of misconceptions about throwing tools at problems, whether customers think it’s just about process mining or models or bots. At the end of the day, what tends to be problematic is that organizations lack a systemic approach to change, improvement, and transformation.
Only by really considering how systems, tools, principles, and results all interact and come together cohesively can you really get to the right kinds of answers. That’s what brings us together every day to do what we do for our customers and help to manage value throughout that journey.
“Introducing Business Process Transformation with SAP Signavio” is now available from SAP Press.
]]>In our latest ASUG Asks the Authors feature, we sit down with Nitin Singh, a senior principal and director of the Industry Value Advisory team at SAP America, and Gerry McCool, a value advisor with SAP.
Co-authors of the recent SAP Press “E-Bite” publication “Introducing Business Process Transformation with SAP Signavio,” Singh and McCool provide their readers with an overview of the SAP Signavio portfolio and dive into each tool. Guiding readers through SAP Signavio's business process intelligence, process mining and analysis, and SAP S/4HANA integration capabilities, their publication represents one of the first SAP official guides to the business process management platform, which SAP acquired in March 2021.
Below, in the first half of our conversation, Singh and McCool define business process transformation and discuss the critical role SAP Signavio can play in enabling it for customers. You can read the second half of our conversation here.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
ASUG: Tell me about your careers in SAP and what led you to this project.
Nitin Singh: I’ve been with SAP for 17 years, always in process transformation. Our roles currently involve orchestrating the benefits that technological improvements have on process improvements for customers. The integration of technology and process always fascinated me, whether on the shop floor, for our SAP customers working in customer sales, or our SAP customers in financial billing departments. How can technology simplify their life and give them more time on their hands so that they can focus on strategy?
I connected with like-minded thought leaders, and we came together to drive a process transformation mindset across our teams. Eventually, we decided to share what we learned on the ground with a broader audience, to leverage our insights from the field and create a simply structured guide that could be easily consumed by our customers, partners, and colleagues.
Gerry McCool: Coming from the industry side, with a background in manufacturing and supply chain, I found myself thrust into a world of improvement and transformation and was fortunate to lead a number of transformations.
Being a part of those, both on the industry and consulting sides, was a natural flow for me into the world of value advisory at SAP. Along with Nitin and several of our other colleagues, writing this guide provided a natural extension of the [work] that we do, with a community behind it and the right enablement for it.
ASUG: We’ve all heard the term “business process transformation,” but I’d ask for you to define it and discuss its mission-critical role in an enterprise's success or failure.
McCool: At a basic level, it’s about how companies are aligning their business process and their performance to provide the required cost, quality, speed, safety, and environmental outcomes. It’s about having an operating model that aligns to the business model they want, that they want to go to market with and touch customers with.
When you talk about transformation, it’s about how you move to ever-higher levels of sustained performance. It’s not just hitting it once. It’s being able to routinely, repeatedly achieve that level of performance.
Singh: We refer to SAP Signavio as a “transformation journey partner,” but one tool is not enough to bring about process transformation. It is always about people, processes, and technology. The term “business process transformation” has many connotations.
ASUG: Can you provide an example of what you’re talking about?
Singh: A few weeks back, I was working with a customer at a $5 billion company that was struggling to stock the right inventory in the right place. Either they had too much inventory in one place, or they had too little in another place. When they were shipping goods to their customers, those customers weren't happy, as they were receiving products they didn’t want, the wrong products were shipped, or deadlines were not met. Even if you have inventory in your system, you need to place that inventory correctly.
We started by tracing that problem back through their system and found that it was not only about inventory issues at particular points in time. It was connected to sourcing strategies: who the customer was sourcing with, where those suppliers were based, where the customer was placing sourced materials, to what degree they were effectively forecasting demand, and how quickly they could pivot if market dynamics changed.
All of these interconnected, cascading pieces speak to how connected the world is, and to the fact that all of these processes need to come together at the same time. If one process isn't efficient, that impact will cascade and impact customer experience. We see this day in and day out.
Businesses need a tool that can identify the weakest link in their operations, a tool that can do the root cause analysis and figure out where processes or capabilities aren't working. Once you know the root cause, you can implement new technology or improve a process. How do you close the gap and also measure what impact it had? It's about a journey of transformation: identifying the root cause, fixing the problem, measuring the problem, and governing the problem end to end.
ASUG: How does SAP Signavio specifically address common challenges encountered in the process of business transformation?
McCool: Quite often, when you see a transformation in motion, it’s lacking key ingredients. There are a lot of moving pieces to transformation, and you need to have them all in place. You need to be able to analyze your processes and understand what's going on: how the process performs, and to what level. You need to be able to map, model, and manage processes, so that you know what they look like, have a common understanding of their flows, and so on.
You need to manage change and govern processes, so that change can happen in a controlled manner. You need to be able to implement, view, and improve smart automations along the way. Lastly, you need to be able to do this in a collaborative way, because large enterprises operate across geographies, divisions, and businesses. Change at scale doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens with large groups of people. It’s important that people collaborate on change. I’m bullish about SAP Signavio, because it’s not only a complete, comprehensive approach and solution to a vexing problem, but it brings together these considerations in a collaborative, holistic manner.
Singh: We want to simplify the customer’s journey. “Simple can be harder than complex,” Steve Jobs said. He also spoke about marrying technology to the humanities and said that doing so “yields us the results that makes our hearts sing.”
Technology has advanced in demonstrable ways: machine learning, RPA, AI. You can scale out and scale down cloud capabilities but, at the ground level, what does that technology provide for our customers? How do you know which technology to invest in, to fulfill value?
Our answer is that it’s about how you apply technological improvements to execute your operating model. It’s a combination of technical advancement, operating models, and day-in-the-life utility. The people who operate these operations require assistance. Cloud transformation is not only about taking data loads and moving them to the cloud; it’s not only about technology or about total cost of ownership. It’s about the value you unlock and the outcomes you achieve.
That’s why SAP Signavio is becoming crucial to SAP’s RISE and GROW strategies; when we ask our customers to leverage cloud, it’s not only about technology and infrastructure but about more effective business outcomes. And how do you create those business outcomes? By prioritizing the right opportunities and being able to execute on them, being able to measure and govern those opportunities.
Recently, I was walking around the shop floor of a multi-billion-dollar manufacturing company that makes large industrial machinery. I noticed quite a few large components in one staging area, several hundred million dollars of inventory, and asked why they were waiting there. I learned that all these pieces of large machinery were waiting for a single part, for the weakest link in their value chain.
They had been waiting for a week because they missed their MRP run, the sourcing strategy was late, and the company couldn’t find an appropriate supplier. By the time they found the right product, it caused a multi-week delay and added $700 million worth of work-in-progress inventory in their books. On top of that, they had to do expedited shipment, investing more money to ship to the customers.
ASUG: How would SAP Signavio solutions have helped solve that value chain issue?
Singh: Finding those process breaks early and connecting dots all the way from strategy to operations to process capabilities can help determine areas that perform sub-optimally.
Signavio Process Explorer provides industry-standard capabilities, giving you point-of-reference capability models and help to know what other companies are adopting. Using Signavio Process Intelligence and Signavio Process Insights, you can then determine where your processes are not being executed correctly and where process performance is lagging against your peers, as per industry benchmarks.
After identifying those areas, you can perform a root cause analysis using Signavio Process Intelligence, to determine how each step is executed and which is a bottleneck. You can also simulate potential solutions.
Then, with Signavio Process Modeler, you can adopt a best-practices process map and use Signavio Process Insights to realize value. It’s a prescribed set of steps we provide as part of the RISE with SAP journey, so that customers can measure their business health, identify gaps, and understand how to improve in a continuous manner. We call it a “continuous improvement mindset,” and it;s also an outcome-based mindset: in other words, a growth mindset we want our customers to adopt while they adopt Signavio end-to-end.
"Introducing Business Process Transformation with SAP Signavio" is now available from SAP Press.
]]>Rouven Morato, general manager of SAP Signavio, met with Acceleration Economy to address the top five buyer questions developed by our practitioner analysts representing the modern executive buying committee, as part of the vendor Q&A portion of the Process Mining Battleground.
Morato spoke in detail about the ways customers can benefit from the wealth of data and business process expertise available to SAP Signavio customers because of the parent company’s massive footprint in enterprise business applications. He positioned process mining as a component of a turnkey suite that helps manage application migrations, among other business functions. He spoke to customer experience benefits of using the company’s process mining, as well as its competitive differentiators and artificial intelligence (AI)/generative AI approach.
The “North Star” metrics that SAP Signavio uses to deliver customer success are fast time to insight and fast time to adapt so they can realize maximum value from process mining.
These priorities play out across use cases including application-driven transformation, and Morato cites the ongoing wave of enterprise resource planning (ERP) transformations going on, including those among SAP ERP customers, as an example; the SAP S/4 HANA ERP cloud grew 74% in the fiscal second quarter, a figure that validates customers’ push to make this transition. The company offers an “end-to-end transformation suite in which process mining serves to identify strengths and weaknesses in the current implementation and automate the transformation process,” he says. Morato and other officials explained the company’s goal is not just to execute a streamlined transformation but to also help customers continuously optimize performance of the ERP system and the underlying processes.
Another major use case is applying process mining for operational efficiency in terms of how processes impact customers (as measured, for example, through the widely used Net Promoter Score) and how process mining can help effect changes to improve those processes. “Our mining solution allows customers now to bring these two together to really understand the process performance in conjunction with the impact on the experience of customers, suppliers, and also employees,” Morato explains.
From an industry perspective, SAP Signavio is experiencing strong demand across industries, but Morato points to industries that are experiencing the greatest demands for change, citing energy, automotive, and life sciences, as three prominent examples embracing SAP Signavio.
In today’s challenging macroeconomic environment, customers need greater agility to react to market changes, as well as greater resilience, particularly within supply chains. To do so, they need to adapt at their “process layer,” he says. “It’s not about getting the next $500,000 out of a process and then stopping, it’s really about establishing process excellence as a discipline.”
With SAP’s more than 50 years in business and hundreds of thousands of customers — Morato says that “75% of the world’s GDP [gross domestic product] is touching an SAP system” — SAP Signavio has accumulated a treasure trove of data on business processes and process execution through its core applications, and can leverage that knowledge to provide best practices, benchmarks, and methodologies to customers to accelerate their transformations.
SAP Signavio positions process mining as an important component of an “end-to-end transformation tool chain” and as being vital to ensuring changes happen in IT systems that support processes. “We differentiate because we believe that we are the strongest offering in the market on that end-to-end transformation suite,” Morato says.
Speed to insight is also an important differentiator, and the company recently launched an approach it calls “Plug and Gain.” Because of its presence in many of the underlying applications, SAP can provide customers with fast insights and then focus on realizing the gains that are possible.
There’s also a focus on customer experience or what Morato calls “being able to blend process and experience analysis and being able to bring these two worlds together . . . Giving them tooling that allows them to analyze processes in the context of a customer experience has become extremely important.”
A final differentiator is SAP Signavio’s relationship with parent SAP and its 300,000 worldwide customers. The vast amounts of data and insights this yields help customers benefit from resources including best practices, benchmarking data, and reference models.
SAP Signavio allows customers to start small and scale up as they register wins with the technology. To that end, Plug and Gain brings the entire offering of SAP Signavio into one suite. Morato says there’s a transparent pricing structure that allows customers to know clearly what they do and what they buy, making use of the software “very reliable and very plannable.”
A set of accelerators provide customers with predefined content and connectors to realize value more quickly. One customer that started out with the company was siloed and lacking a strong process orientation. Working with SAP Signavio, that customer has identified more than $50 million in potential process improvements and now has a community of more than 50 process mining practitioners.
SAP Signavio aims to combine the power of generative AI with business process context to turn generic information into results that are tailored to the customer’s business. SAP Signavio calls this Process AI: It’s built on process models and large language models and then fine-tuned by leveraging SAP datasets, content, and knowledge of industry best practices from engagements with thousands of customers.
What differentiates algorithms such as OpenAI is the data underneath, and SAP believes it has the data to be a major differentiator. “Our engine will have exceptional capabilities to answer, in this case, specific process questions, process performance questions like ‘Where can I improve my procurement process in Europe?'”
AI can be used to predict future outcomes of process execution, leveraging data and the patterns that the AI can currently detect around execution. “We believe this will have a huge impact on the way process transformation, process excellence will be lived by our customers in the future, and not so far out,” Morato says, explaining that timelines for AI applications and use cases have accelerated dramatically this year.
]]>MIDDLETON, Mass., June 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quadrant Knowledge Solutions announced today that it has named SAP Signavio as a 2023 technology leader in the SPARK Matrix: Digital Twin of an Organization Solution, Q2, 2023.
The Quadrant Knowledge Solutions' SPARK Matrix™ includes a detailed analysis of global market dynamics, major trends, vendor landscape, and competitive positioning. The study provides competitive analysis and ranking of the leading technology vendors in the form of its SPARK Matrix™. The study offers strategic information for users to evaluate different provider capabilities, competitive differentiation, and market position.
According to Sofia Ali, Analyst, Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, "SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite controls processes through process data management, process discovery & conformance, process analytics and investigations, and process insights. The company provides comprehensive integration with data management & governance tools and products such as LeanIX, FortressIQ, SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Solution Manager to create a DTO solution."
"SAP Signavio is capable of catering to the diverse customer needs across industry verticals, with its comprehensive capabilities, compelling customer references, comprehensive roadmap & vision, and product suite with high scalability, have received strong ratings across technology excellence and customer impact and has been positioned as a leader in the SPARK Matrix: Digital Twin of an Organization, Q2, 2023," adds Sofia.
Quote by SAP Signavio: "Digital Twins of Organizations are evolving rapidly, becoming more prevalent as they become more useful and accurate," said Rouven Morato, General Manager, Chief Revenue Officer, SAP Signavio. "We are focused on helping our customers maximize the value of their entire application and process landscape. It's a heterogeneous world, and we understand the need to provide best-in-class process transformation solutions that connect and integrate with a variety of data management, enterprise architecture, analytics, and enterprise applications. This is the basis for a robust and reliable DTO, and we are proud to be recognized by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions as a leader in this market."
"Quadrant Knowledge Solutions defines Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO) solutions as the virtual and real-time dynamic representation of an organization involving the end-to-end organizational systems, business models and relevant applications. The DTO solutions gather contextual data in relation to the current operational state, appropriately reacting to changes and enabling significant improvements in the process performance by deploying relevant resources. This helps enterprise architects and business strategists in prioritizing, planning, monitoring, guiding, analyzing, predicting, and making data driven strategic decisions to meet business objectives."
DTO solutions undertake a multi-pronged approach of sequentially generating - optimized business operations models, a business performance management framework, an efficient real-time data enabled operations intelligence model, followed by appropriate business actions. These ultimately promote robust use-cases and benefits ranging from enhanced business transformation through optimum resource utilization, digital business optimization and operational excellence, optimized overall enterprise cost, value monitoring of newer capabilities incorporated into the organization, and elevated overall customer experience enabling improved customer interactions.
Additional Resources:
About SAP
As a market leader in enterprise application software, SAP helps companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies turn businesses into intelligent, sustainable enterprises and SAP applications and services enable business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably and adapt continuously. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people's lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
About SAP Signavio
SAP Signavio solutions help companies develop agility and strengthen collaboration across business and IT. By giving companies the ability to discover, understand, benchmark, improve, and transform their business processes, SAP Signavio Business Process Transformation Suite accelerates the journey to digital transformation, operational excellence, and customer centricity. For more information: www.signavio.com.
Media Contacts:
Kate McNeel
SAPSignavio
k.mcneel@sap.com
+1-484-624-2256
About Quadrant Knowledge Solutions
Quadrant Knowledge Solutions is a global advisory and consulting firm focused on helping clients in achieving business transformation goals with Strategic Business and Growth advisory services. At Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, our vision is to become an integral part of our client's business as a strategic knowledge partner. Our research and consulting deliverables are designed to provide comprehensive information and strategic insights for helping clients formulate growth strategies to survive and thrive in ever-changing business environments.
For more available research, please visit https://quadrant-solutions.com/market-research/
Contact:
Mr Ajinkya Ingle
Middleton Massachusetts 01949 United States
Email : ajinkya@quadrant-solutions.com
Phone : (+1) 978-605-1066
A few weeks ago, Quadrant Knowledge Solutions published its 2023 SPARK Matrix™ Report for Digital Twin of an Organization (DTO) Solution, naming SAP Signavio as Leader in this market with the highest rating for Technology Excellence. This validates our commitment to provide our customers with the solutions, methodology, and best practices they need to be successful.
While digital twins are not a new phenomenon, as the world grows more unpredictable and more interconnected, more companies are starting to support the evolution of their operations and processes fast and at scale. In addition, as analytics, modeling, and simulation tools have become more sophisticated, these digital doppelgangers are becoming more robust, providing richer insights and feedback.
As companies seek instant and ongoing adaptability in response to changes in their markets or customer behaviors, they need a way to minimize risk and disruption. That’s the value of a digital twin – giving organizations the ability to quickly determine where they stand, model and simulate the impact of planned changes, and then measure actual results of the model, learn, and adjust, thereby establishing a continuous improvement loop.
According to the report, “The first step in creating a DTO is to map an accurate and comprehensive virtual representation of the organization’s processes” as a way to balance inside-out and outside-in perspectives of the business. From there, a number of potential tools and technologies are required for the creation and ongoing management of a robust digital twin, including:
These criteria align with our own vision for helping companies gain complete end-to-end process observability. According to Sofia Ali, analyst, Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, “SAP Signavio is capable of catering to the diverse customer needs across industry verticals, with its comprehensive capabilities, compelling customer references, comprehensive road map and vision, and product suite with high scalability.”
But we won’t be resting on our laurels. We continue to innovate, working with partners and customers to increase the value of our solutions while simplifying implementation and providing better integration into key operational systems and data sources. Already this year we have released two unique solutions to the market. SAP Signavio Process Explorer, released in January, can provide best-in-market guidance on how to quickly identify and prioritize next steps in business process optimization projects. In May, we introduced our unique plug-and-gain approach, created to help bridge the gap between business and IT, enabling organizations to prepare faster, deploy faster, and realize continuous value.
Expect to see more cutting-edge developments coming within the SAP Signavio portfolio in the near future as we continue to expand our automation capabilities, integrate with other data sources, leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to extend the value of our solutions, and ease the planning process.
Quadrant Knowledge Solutions’ SPARK Matrix™ includes a detailed analysis of global market dynamics, major trends, and the vendor landscape as well as evaluates 19 leading DTO vendors. Each market participant is analyzed against several parameters of Technology Excellence and Customer Impact. Download a free copy to learn more.
Gero Decker is general manager at SAP Signavio.
Rouven Morato is chief revenue officer at SAP Signavio.
Just over two years ago, SAP acquired Signavio with the stated aim of helping customers “quickly understand, improve, transform, and manage their business processes at scale” to gain a competitive edge in their markets. Today, we are delivering new integrations, automation, and innovative approaches that deliver on that promise.
The combined power of SAP and SAP Signavio allows customers to achieve radical reductions in the costs and time it takes to plan, deploy, and optimize any business process transformation and continually identify and adjust processes to run at their best given current company and market conditions.
Customers using our enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can now radically accelerate transformation projects by leveraging a new approach called “plug and gain” that brings together the combined value of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite in a way that allows ERP customers to prepare faster, deploy faster, and continually optimize value.
With the new “plug and gain” approach, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence uses data gathered by SAP Signavio Process Insights, dramatically shortening the set-up time for in-depth process mining. Customers are able to easily go beyond the initial findings from SAP Signavio Process Insights and within a few days get the full benefit of the market-leading process mining capabilities of SAP Signavio Process Intelligence and the rest of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite. Conversion of process mining from a months-long project to a task that takes a few days means that SAP customers can now have a unique ability to quickly and continually optimize processes to meet new business goals or changing customer behaviors.
For example, with this approach customers can quickly get the results of variant analysis to gain a clearer view of the flow of work. From there, they can use our reverse-engineered process models as the starting point for comparison with best practice models and drive informed discussion on next steps. Our process models are now integrated with SAP Cloud ALM via the state-of-the-art SAP Solution Manager connector, creating the foundation for a smooth implementation. This also allows customers to take a data-driven approach to process monitoring and refinement.
Our vision is to fully integrate SAP Signavio solutions with key SAP solutions so that customers can more easily maximize the impact of their SAP investment and simplify the user experience. New integrations from SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite into SAP solutions include:
While tight integration with SAP is an obvious imperative, we are fully committed to integration with non-SAP systems and delivering on the promise of end-to-end process transformation no matter what solutions customers are using to run their businesses.
The combined strengths of both SAP and non-SAP integrations allow organizations to create a powerful ecosystem that caters to the diverse needs of their end customers. This approach empowers businesses to be as process centric as possible, enabling them to choose the tools and processes that align with their workflows. With our commitment to non-SAP integrations, businesses can provide comprehensive solutions that maximize customer satisfaction and support their individual requirements while still benefiting from the efficiency and operational advantages offered by SAP integration.
Automation has high potential for improving business processes, freeing up companies to deploy their people in more strategic or complex tasks. The SAP Signavio Process Intelligence and SAP Build Process Automation integration can now trigger automations directly from SAP Signavio solutions when inefficient processes are detected. Furthermore SAP Signavio solutions, SAP Build solutions, and SAP Integration Suite can accelerate your path to autonomous enterprise automation by SAP.
SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite is a key pillar in SAP’s efforts to help customers become more future proof. These new integrations, automations, and methodologies, in combination with unique offerings like SAP Signavio Process Explorer and SAP Signavio Journey-to-Process Analytics, establish SAP as a true visionary in the field of process transformation, providing customers with access to data, insights, and value that no other vendor can provide.
Gero Decker is general manager for SAP Signavio.
Rouven Morato is general manager for SAP Signavio.
The cornerstone of a digital transformation journey begins with implementing a business-oriented platform that brings together all applications, processes, and data into one unified environment. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is the foundation for our customers to accelerate their innovation and unlock business outcomes.
This week at SAP Sapphire Orlando, we introduced a host of new SAP BTP capabilities that span application development, automation, integration, data and analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). For those who missed out on attending the event in person or virtually, be sure to check out the SAP BTP keynote replay and read the full list of announcements in the SAP Sapphire News Guide.
Today, most automation projects are repetitive, task-oriented, lower-value work, such as logging into systems and copying and pasting data. While these automated tasks save thousands of manual hours and dollars, there is still more to be done in this space.
Enterprise automation is a new solution that uses multiple advanced technologies — integration, automation, low-code, and AI — to help connect and automate complex end-to-end business processes. This solution leverages the best-in-class SAP Integration Suite, SAP Signavio solutions, and SAP Build solutions to enable users to quickly and easily connect any on-premise or cloud IT landscape, gain visibility into business processes, and then automate those processes seamlessly.
The best part? You can jump-start your enterprise automation journey with thousands of pre-built and reusable components for integration and automation that are available in SAP Business Accelerator Hub. And RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP customers can access the SAP Signavio portfolio and SAP Build solutions at no additional cost.
True digital transformation requires organizations to have seamless access to their mission-critical business data, no matter where it resides. Yet, with data landscapes distributed across various applications and IT landscapes, organizations spend countless hours and resources extracting, rebuilding, and integrating their data. When organizations fully harness the power of their data, they become enterprises that use it to innovate faster, create new revenue streams, and adapt to unanticipated changes.
That is why SAP Datasphere enables users to simplify the data landscape with a unified experience for data integration, data cataloging, semantic modeling, data warehousing, data federation, and data virtualization. And by closely integrating SAP Datasphere with our open ecosystem of data partners – Databricks, Collibra, Confluent, DataRobot, and now Google – mission-critical business data can be accessed across any cloud infrastructure.
Additional solutions like the extended planning and analysis capability for SAP Analytics Cloud and intelligent data applications help give data purpose. Extended planning and analysis helps align financial, strategic, and operational plans into one single plan. And intelligent data applications can transform core business functions into self-adapting, real-time, data-driven apps that automatically provide insights and recommended actions.
Explore SAP data and analytics solutions on sap.com.
An increasing number of organizations are leveraging AI to enhance their employee productivity, process efficiency, and business foresight. In doing so, they become more efficient and agile to serve customers, remain competitive, and stay in business. Yet, many companies lack the in-house expertise to apply AI effectively across their business processes and ensure it continually delivers relevant and responsible outcomes — a necessity to maximize business impact.
At SAP, we deliver AI that is available from day one, as it is already built into the SAP applications that power the most critical business processes. In fact, we have built ready-to-use AI scenarios into SAP applications that span across cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP), spend management, customer relationship management, and human capital management. SAP AI works for businesses because it is developed using extensive industry-specific data, deep processes knowledge, and the most responsible AI practices. We use an ecosystem of strategic partnerships for general-purpose AI tooling. In essence, SAP AI is AI built for business.
Wherever you’re at in your journey, there are easy ways to get started: check out SAP Learning Journeys for SAP BTP, the free tier model for SAP BTP, and new SAP BTP use cases. Additionally, RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP can help SAP BTP customers migrate their ERP to the cloud.
JG Chirapurath is chief marketing and solutions officer for SAP Business Technology Platform.
]]>SAP Signavio is attempting to write the playbook for process mining projects with the release of a new tool called Process Explorer.
SAP Signavio Process Explorer builds on the process mining data that Signavio has gathered from thousands of business transformation projects delivered by SAP and partners, presenting this as recommendations that can help customers initiate, run and complete similar projects.
Process Explorer users can access more than 7,000 process models, capability maps for 20 business domains and value accelerators for 13 industries, according to the company. Process Explorer can work with SAP and non-SAP systems, and includes a number of system-independent process models. It also has a collection of practices and models specific to projects for SAP systems, such as SAP S/4HANA implementations aimed at accelerating deployments and reducing customizations.
SAP Signavio, based in Berlin, is a pioneer in process mining software, a technology that was built to help organizations understand and improve business operations by analyzing their processes. SAP acquired Signavio in 2021, and its process mining software has been a central component of Rise with SAP, SAP's two-year-old initiative to move customers from legacy systems to the cloud.
"With Process Explorer, you now see not only findings on where you stand today, but also solution alternatives going into the future -- what other people have done right about this, what are the best practices for projects," said Gero Decker, general manager at SAP Signavio.
Process Explorer is a promising step in the evolution of process mining, analysts said.
It takes on an overlooked part of business transformation projects -- getting them over the finish line, according to Jon Reed, co-founder of Diginomica, an enterprise technology analysis firm.
Anything that helps customers initiate and complete transformation projects is a positive step and long overdue, he said.
"In our personal lives, we have things like health check devices that we can consult all the time. Why don't we have that for our projects?" Reed said. "This looks like a genuine and serious attempt by [SAP Signavio] to provide that to their customers."
However, Process Explorer is a new product, so there are questions about how costly it will be for customers, and if there will be partners with enough education and experience to use the tools, Reed said. SAP environments, in particular, can vary widely in complexity, and the more complex a landscape is, the more challenging it will be to derive relevant recommendations, he added.
"You can sometimes flummox systems like this with situations they haven't seen before, and their recommendations may not be completely foolproof," Reed said. "That's where customer feedback around this is going to be very important."
The more the system gets used, the more data it can access, and the more accurate it will become, he added.
"A system like this doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful," Reed said. "It will provide recommendations and point you to things that you should fix, but you're still going to make the final decisions."
Process Explorer should give a boost to the adoption of process mining, which has suffered due to the complexity in starting projects and deriving valuable use cases, according to Reetika Fleming, executive research leader at HFS Research.
"Overall, it's a good step forward that will help customers -- both SAP customers and Signavio users," Fleming said. "One key challenge area at the start of a process mining project is that people don't know how this technology relates to their function and what should they do with it."
Data mining can provide information about how processes are working, but users don't usually have the ability to make sense of it or use it well, she said. Process Explorer is about bringing that data together in context to provide examples of how companies have used the data, giving users a firmer start on their projects.
"If you're in oil and gas or manufacturing or logistics, this can show some of the domain-specific processes that could make sense for you to start using process mining based on your SAP data," Fleming said. "It's a good foundational base for somebody to get started with process mining."
Because SAP Signavio is primarily focused on SAP systems, she said, it's best suited for companies that are deeply embedded there, such as an SAP-centric lead-to-cash functional process transformation or an S/4HANA migration project.
"This is great for SAP-specific transformations, and it makes total sense that this is the direction that SAP Signavio is now taking to help clients make the most of that particular platform," Fleming said. "But we see the way this industry is going is in finding points of intersection between different business functions and different technology platforms. So it's a step forward, but can't remain contained or siloed."
Customers should cast a wide net when evaluating process mining systems, Reed said.
"Process Explorer looks like a slightly unique take right now, but the process mining industry is a very fast-moving space right now with a lot of players," he said. "A lot of these tools are working hard to not be proprietary because even SAP customers run some non-SAP software, so the system needs to look at both to be effective."
Jim O'Donnell is a senior news writer who covers ERP and other enterprise applications for TechTarget Editorial.
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