“We need a con­sis­tent, reli­able, mea­sur­able approach to gath­er­ing process insights that is reli­able and in which ​‘every­body’ is in.”

A clear, stat­ed goal that is now in sight for Gen­er­al Motors Co., based on past and ongo­ing work across dif­fer­ent SAP Sig­navio capa­bil­i­ties.

Dur­ing an inter­view to pre­view a GM ses­sion at last month’s SAP Sig­navio Forum, Melis­sa Antovs­ki, Glob­al Process Trans­for­ma­tion Man­ag­er, and Sam Floyd, Request to Pay Trans­for­ma­tion Ana­lyst, described the busi­ness con­text, the focused request-to-pay (RTP) trans­for­ma­tion project, ear­ly find­ings, and the SAP Sig­navio growth path at the Detroit-based auto company. 

To set the pace, Antovs­ki and Floyd talked of the orga­ni­za­tion-wide focus to stan­dard­ize and sim­pli­fy process­es; essen­tial work as GM pur­sues its major strate­gic shift from inter­nal com­bus­tion to elec­tric vehi­cles. GM in 2021 achieved $114B in auto­mo­tive rev­enue, and count­ed 6.3 mil­lion vehi­cles sold, 146,000 employ­ees, and near­ly 19,000 sup­pli­ers, among oth­er stats.

Source of Truth

GM seeks to achieve a ​“Glob­al Process Own­er gov­er­nance mod­el” to enable ​“KPI vis­i­bil­i­ty, own­er­ship and clear account­abil­i­ty, agili­ty, and end-to-end benefits.

“One source of truth across the com­pa­ny helps users func­tion and per­form more effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly,” Antovs­ki said.

She described GM’s search for a process min­ing tool that would deliv­er ​“reli­able, con­sis­tent and mea­sur­able” data and insights, while Floyd added that because of GM’s size and scope, trans­for­ma­tion is a mul­ti-year journey.”

Proof of Con­cept (POC) Approach

The search paused last year when GM decid­ed to test how SAP Sig­navio could sup­port GPO and process min­ing through a POC; focused on the end-to-end Request to Pay process. From June through Decem­ber of last year, POC activ­i­ties includ­ed devel­op­ment; build­ing process mod­els; data min­ing; sce­nar­ios and analy­sis; and shared findings. 

Antovs­ki and Floyd quan­ti­fied the POC work, not­ing the goal of one end-to-end RTP process involved 200 data ele­ments; 100 hours of work­shops; more than 50 con­trib­u­tors; more than 100,000 cas­es; and more than 10 func­tion­al groups. They also recalled a few ​“light-bulb moments.” These includ­ed doc­u­ment­ing the cycle time for the over­all process and con­for­mance issues relat­ed to rework/​rework reduc­tion, Floyd said.

The efforts also achieved an ​“RTP on a page” process snap­shot and a RTP val­ue chain mod­el. Both were used to assess per­for­mance and under­stand variation.

Floyd also list­ed POC lessons learned, namely:

• Data integri­ty and security
• Cross-func­tion­al team and con­trib­u­tor value
• Time and effort investments
• Lead­er­ship sup­port — busi­ness and IT.

SAP Sig­navio Becomes GM’s Foundation

Speak­ing of lead­er­ship, Antovs­ki said the ongo­ing work since the POC, more recent­ly on Process Insights, is dri­ving strong lead­er­ship back­ing to move for­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Peter TomHon, GM Request to Pay Trans­for­ma­tion Leader, who said ​“SAP Sig­navio will be a foun­da­tion­al set of appli­ca­tions for our GPO pro­vid­ing the trans­paren­cy and capa­bil­i­ty to over­see and gov­ern our busi­ness process­es in order to dri­ve ongo­ing improve­ments and to achieve indus­try lead­ing KPIs.”

The duo said GM’s process min­ing jour­ney con­tin­ues across the RTP work­stream being deployed through­out the com­pa­ny, imple­ment­ing both SAP Sig­navio Process Intel­li­gence (Sig­navio Process Min­ing Solu­tion) and SAP Process Insights. 

“We are using SAP Sig­navio for enabling trans­for­ma­tion and improved gov­er­nance through Glob­al Process Own­er­ship,” said Antovski.