The pace of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is accel­er­at­ing at orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes and across all indus­tries, as com­pa­nies seek to imple­ment oper­a­tions more agile and respon­sive to a con­stant­ly chang­ing landscape. 

How­ev­er, this wave of trans­for­ma­tion has often come up emp­ty-hand­ed. Between 35 – 50% of the per­ceived val­ue of a project falls through due to poor pri­or­i­ti­za­tion, inef­fi­cient exe­cu­tion, and lack of adop­tion and val­ue track­ing. It is there­fore crit­i­cal to have a clear mark­er for suc­cess pri­or to div­ing into an ini­tia­tive and to build a gov­er­nance struc­ture with clear account­abil­i­ty to deliv­er quick time-to-value.

It is in this con­text that SAP’s acqui­si­tion of Sig­navio in 2021 rep­re­sents a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion of our val­ue propo­si­tion and our cus­tomers’ capa­bil­i­ties. SAP Sig­navio is an end-to-end process man­age­ment solu­tion that helps users: 

• Iden­ti­fy process bottlenecks; 
• Orches­trate process­es in diverse ways
• Sim­u­late the impact of changes; 
• Gov­ern process­es to ensure changes and improve­ments are documented. 

At the cen­ter of busi­ness process man­age­ment is the orga­ni­za­tions’ need to accu­rate­ly see, under­stand, and dynam­i­cal­ly man­age the crit­i­cal busi­ness process­es under­pin­ning enter­prise oper­a­tions, as well as to ana­lyze those process­es and improve them. Process improve­ment is an in-depth under­tak­ing, and a full cycle requires tech­ni­cal skills in addi­tion to busi­ness and IT col­lab­o­ra­tion to ensure sus­tain­able and last­ing change. It is impor­tant our cus­tomers know how to lever­age SAP Sig­navio solu­tions one step at a time. 

In that spir­it, I rec­om­mend Process Dis­cov­ery, a free analy­sis tool designed to help you get start­ed with SAP Sig­navio and SAP S/4HANA, as a nat­ur­al start­ing point. Before we know what to fix in our busi­ness process­es, we must know our start­ing posi­tion, or base­line, and a rel­e­vant com­par­a­tive set, or benchmarks. 

It is impor­tant at this point to high­light that busi­ness process insights can be broad­ly cat­e­go­rized in two ways: as process per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (PPIs) and as key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs). The for­mer refers to tech­ni­cal indi­ca­tors that are close­ly relat­ed to sys­tem per­for­mance, such as over­due and open finance accounts-payable (AP) items or deliv­ery items shipped and not billed. The lat­ter rep­re­sents broad indi­ca­tors that go beyond the sys­tem and often include strate­gic deci­sions embed­ded in the way an orga­ni­za­tion oper­ates, such as cost of finance (as per­cent­age of rev­enue) or days sales outstanding.

PPIs most­ly rep­re­sent par­tial val­ue (15 – 30%) of over­all val­ue, but their tie-in with the larg­er sys­tem makes them eas­i­er to track and gov­ern than oth­er broad indi­ca­tors. It is there­fore crit­i­cal that orga­ni­za­tions con­sid­er baselin­ing their per­for­mance on Sig­navio-gen­er­at­ed PPIs and track them across the project life­time to assess val­ue realization.

By fol­low­ing a straight­for­ward process of Down­load, Pri­or­i­tize, and Con­tex­tu­al­ize, which I will out­line below, we can iden­ti­fy mean­ing­ful improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to PPIs, which will move the nee­dle with­in impor­tant KPIs for your respec­tive organization. 

Step 1 – Download 

To begin, it is crit­i­cal we can down­load a report to help cus­tomers ascer­tain the matu­ri­ty of their process­es for ECC and S/4. Process steps for extract­ing the report­ing can be found here. Long-time SAP users can also iden­ti­fy these reports by search­ing for them under their pre­vi­ous name, Busi­ness Sce­nario Rec­om­men­da­tions or Pathfind­er. Process Dis­cov­ery fea­tures a sub­set of the full uni­verse of PPIs avail­able with Sig­navio Process Insights. A few exam­ples below illus­trate this. 

These reports have many oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions and analy­ses that make down­load­ing them worth­while. Even if you do not do much in the way of pri­or­i­tiz­ing and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing, it will always be use­ful as you pro­ceed along your SAP Sig­navio jour­ney to make a habit of tak­ing peri­od­ic snapshots. 

Step 2 – Pri­or­i­tize

Not all PPIs have inher­ent val­ue to a com­pa­ny. You may have sev­er­al open items in accounts payable (AP) or accounts receiv­able (AR) due to an instance that was sub­se­quent­ly decom­mis­sioned. In anoth­er sce­nario, a poor­ly per­form­ing PPI might reflect a strate­gic deci­sion rather than an over­sight. It is crit­i­cal to car­ry out a sys­tem­at­ic effort to speak to the own­ers of each instance. 

This step requires a con­ver­sa­tion with sys­tem and process own­ers to under­stand which PPIs reflect true pain points that are worth solv­ing, and which are best left behind. 

Step 3 – Con­tex­tu­al­ize

Through SAP Sig­navio solu­tions, we offer SAP cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to high­light their PPIs in the con­text of rel­e­vant KPIs. In addi­tion, we offer cus­tomers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to track a point-in-time snap­shot, both at the PPI and KPI lev­el, to mon­i­tor con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. As part of our Val­ue Advi­so­ry offer­ing, includ­ed in these capa­bil­i­ties are quan­tifi­ca­tions at both a PPI and KPI lev­el, with guid­ing cal­cu­la­tions for each. Here are some examples: 

This lev­el of infor­ma­tion both helps pro­vide a tar­get to aim for and sup­ports align­ment between process and IT own­ers. Doing the same peri­od­i­cal­ly can help ascer­tain improve­ments, white­space, and next steps that are crit­i­cal for con­tin­ued success. 

Under­stand­ing your cur­rent busi­ness process per­for­mance is a vital com­po­nent of con­sid­er­ing your over­all dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, and Process Dis­cov­ery is one key analy­sis tool to assist you along that jour­ney. If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the dif­fer­ent mod­ules of the Process Dis­cov­ery solu­tion and how they work, you can find more here.