Even with the best of intentions — and plans, consultants, employees, hardware, and software — business transformation projects can go awry.
And that is frustrating because we have the technology and the capability to be faster, better, stronger. But somehow we do not get the impact, the sense of true transformation, we expected. To add fuel to the fire, some companies do make it through, leveraging legacy solutions alongside emerging technologies to run better.
Why, in 2023, is there not a better way to handle digital transformation?
That sense of frustration has been made clear to SAP in many ways over many years. Today, we announced the release of SAP Signavio Process Explorer to address exactly this. This new solution is a first step in opening up access to our library of information — best practices, benchmarking data, industry standard processes — to customers and partners. By doing this, we provide best-in-market guidance on how to quickly identify and prioritize next steps in business process optimization projects.
SAP is known for revolutionizing enterprise software by digitizing key financial processes, thereby creating the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, in the same way that Ariba changed procurement and SuccessFactors modernized human resources. More than 50 years of experience working on the world’s biggest and most complex problems alongside the world’s largest and most innovative companies has given SAP a unique place among software vendors. No other company has such deep and proven experience with so many organizations across so many industries. But until now, SAP’s vast library of accumulated experience has only been accessible by sending our value advisors and consultants to customers.
With unpredictable and abrupt change happening more frequently, customers look to us for guidance on how to improve their processes — quickly and with confidence. And with the growing use of process mining and related tools for the mapping, analysis, and diagnosis of problematic business processes, we find customers need guidance on how to improve. They are hungry for more information on what next steps could be and should be, where they lead or lag behind competition, and on identifying differentiating processes.
Since SAP acquired Signavio in March 2021, we have eagerly delved into the company’s massive trove of resources, knowledge, and data with an eye to creating a way to deliver it to customers.
With the release of SAP Signavio Process Explorer, we have organized and centralized the collective knowledge from thousands of transformation projects delivered by SAP and its partner ecosystem. It provides a single gateway for exploring and accessing value accelerators and other resources, such as business capability and solution maps, process models, metrics, and industry best practices, as well as SAP product best practices and recommendations. With this information at their fingertips, customers have a starting point to adapt and tailor the process models for their specific situation, moving them more quickly to more effective and usable end-to-end processes.
Successful transformation projects should not be singular and non-repeatable. We want our customers to be able to become better, stronger, faster at any and all times, threading a clear path to success no matter challenges come their way.
We will continue to invest in finding more ways to make SAP’s 50 years of accumulated knowledge accessible to guide customers on their transformation journeys.
Gero Decker is general manager of SAP Signavio.