LeanIX and Signavio Help SAP Manage Business Transformation

⇨ SAP has now completed the acquistion of LeanIX.

⇨ EAM tools can help manage both landscapes and business processes.

⇨ LeanIX and Signavio together bring comprehensive process transformation capabilities to SAP.

Initially announced in September, SAP has successfully completed the acquisition of LeanIX, bringing a comprehensive enterprise architecture management (EAM) solution into the SAP ecosystem. The acquisition allows SAP to bring together a suite of business transformation products that will provide significant capabilities for business process and architecture transformation when combined with existing SAP Signavio offerings. But how will LeanIX and SAP Signavio’s capabilities help organizations?

EAM tools have been gaining popularity as they enable organizations to address multiple challenges. The first is complexity arising out of mergers and acquisitions or simply the introduction of cloud-based solutions and environments. Managing complexity is critical for the smooth running of an organization, as when systems are added or integrated, complexities often lead to delays in ongoing projects or increased administrative overhead, and managing them can be time-intensive.

Beyond landscape complexity, diverse ecosystems also pose a challenge. Few organizations run a single ERP instance, while many have ERP offerings from multiple vendors. Managing such environments and their interfaces requires insights into how business processes flow across the enterprise. Effectively managing these process flows with an EAM solution can help organizations streamline and improve architecture efficiency, and ultimately cost savings.

While EAM tools can help organizations model their IT landscape, including business-led IT deployments that may not be mapped into existing models, it is possible to use these tools to associate systems to business capabilities. This can then facilitate ERP transformation, such as the move to SAP S/4HANA. LeanIX capabilities can also be used to accelerate cloud transformation, which can be achieved through a better understanding of landscapes and how processes flow across them.

Any transformation should start with an approach that enables processes like change management, training, and motivation—a toolbox that executes the processes and identifies areas of potential improvement, and accelerators that provide process models, KPIs, and recommended variants to track.

SAP Signavio offers data-based tools for understanding systems and processes and the capabilities to map and model systems across the enterprise. SAP Signavio Process Insights is pre-built in SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA and provides a high-level overview of an ERP system and how well processes are being completed including link blockers and performance indicators, and correction recommendations. At a lower level, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence can plug into different sources of information and connect to both SAP and non-SAP technology.

On the other hand, SAP Signavio Process Manager can be used to help model business processes, simulate and compare processes, outline process interconnections, create process reports, and has a bi-directional connector with LeanIX. Used in conjunction with SAP Signavio Process Collaboration Hub, it is possible to have a complete view of information from SAP Signavio Process Insights and SAP Signavio Process Manager. SAP Signavio Process Collaboration Hub acts as a single source of truth and allows users to stay up-to-date on changes and provides a complete view of key metrics and process content. These three tools are also part of RISE with SAP premium and RISE with SAP premium plus editions.

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

While no details are available yet on the transformation suite that CEO Christian Klein mentioned in the press release announcing the LeanIX acquisition, more details are expected, considering the acquisition is complete. Although this will likely be a separate suite of products similar to SAP’s enterprise performance management product suite, multiple new capabilities have been added to RISE with SAP over the last few months. It would not be surprising to see limited LeanIX capabilities added to RISE with SAP premium or RISE with SAP premium plus. But how can SAPinsiders best utilize these offerings?

• Evaluate the capabilities that LeanIX offers. The LeanIX solutions are comprehensive EAM solutions that can model processes including systems and infrastructure. SAP has been using LeanIX tools for several years to manage their own environments. Understanding the tools SAP acquired will provide the necessary insights that can be used for deciding if they can help better manage environments.
• Understand where SAP Signavio capabilities fit in the RISE with SAP construct. SAP originally positioned just one RISE with SAP offering that provided SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Business Network Starter Pack, SAP Business Technology Platform consumption credits, readiness tools, and business transformation tools from SAP Signavio. That has now been split into a RISE with SAP base, premium, and premium plus editions and the SAP Signavio tools are only available in the premium and premium plus editions.
• Look for information on an upcoming transformation suite. No details are available yet, but SAP is likely to be releasing more information on a planned transformation suite now that the LeanIX acquisition has been completed. Keep an eye on announcements from SAP and articles from SAPinsider that will keep you up to date on what happens.