A leader in design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts such as motor­cy­cles, off-road vehi­cles, auto­mo­bile engines, and more for over 50 years, Yama­ha Motor Cor­po­ra­tion USA recent­ly found itself at a crossroads.

Between the rapid evo­lu­tion of elec­tric vehi­cles and the advent of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies reshap­ing its indus­try, the com­pa­ny knew it need­ed to adapt tra­di­tion­al sys­tems and frame­works to remain com­pet­i­tive and fuel future innovation. 

With that objec­tive in mind, busi­ness lead­ers launched Yamaha’s Next Phase, a glob­al ini­tia­tive aimed at trans­form­ing the way the com­pa­ny operates. 

One of the first steps in this jour­ney involved doc­u­ment­ing busi­ness process­es across the orga­ni­za­tion; in doing so, Yama­ha quick­ly dis­cov­ered that more than sim­ply map­ping process flows was required to dri­ve last­ing change. Busi­ness lead­ers need­ed a solu­tion that would help them iden­ti­fy improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, plan enhance­ments, and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate these changes to stake­hold­ers through­out the organization. 

Enter SAP Sig­navio, the core of SAP’s soft­ware suite for busi­ness process management. 

“It was a real ​‘wow’ moment when we first saw SAP Sig­navio solu­tions,” recalled Chuck Bohan­non, senior man­ag­er of SAP and parts/​accessories at Yama­ha Motor Cor­po­ra­tion, USA, in an ASUG inter­view. ​“We imme­di­ate­ly felt they would add a sig­nif­i­cant amount of val­ue, not just for indi­vid­ual process­es in key busi­ness areas but for the orga­ni­za­tion as a whole. I wish we’d had these solu­tions sooner.”

Shift­ing Gears: Over­com­ing Chal­lenges and Set­ting the Right Foundation

Before imple­ment­ing Sig­navio, Yama­ha faced sev­er­al obsta­cles that hin­dered its abil­i­ty to dri­ve process improve­ments effec­tive­ly. The lack of process vis­i­bil­i­ty across the orga­ni­za­tion led to com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­downs between depart­ments, with dif­fer­ent teams using vary­ing process flows to achieve the same goals — a road­block that made it chal­leng­ing to iden­ti­fy and imple­ment nec­es­sary improvements. 

Yamaha’s jour­ney with Sig­navio began with the SAP Sig­navio Process Man­ag­er solu­tion. Ini­tial­ly view­ing the tool as ​“Visio on steroids,” the com­pa­ny real­ized Sig­navio offered much more than mere process map­ping after a deep­er explo­ration of its capabilities.

Lead­ers learned ear­ly on the impor­tance of start­ing with a clear strat­e­gy and approach. ​“If we had it to do ever again, we would have start­ed with a plug-and-play approach, much more so than our begin­ning point, which was basi­cal­ly Visio dia­grams inside Sig­navio,” not­ed Bohannon. 

“The first step you take is always the most important.”

Paul Mears, man­ag­er of SAP OTC appli­ca­tions at Yama­ha, echoed this sen­ti­ment: ​“The first step you take is always the most impor­tant. We would def­i­nite­ly start with process min­ing and plug-and-play.” 

The com­pa­ny real­ized it was cru­cial to famil­iar­ize them­selves with busi­ness process mod­el and nota­tion (BPMN) stan­dards and imple­ment an orga­ni­za­tion­al strat­e­gy before cre­at­ing hun­dreds of dia­grams. By fail­ing fast and gain­ing insights from the expe­ri­ence, lead­ers learned to refine their approach and began to gain trac­tion with Signavio.

Throt­tling Up: Pow­er­ful Fea­tures and Tan­gi­ble Benefits

As Yama­ha made head­way in its SAP Sig­navio imple­men­ta­tion, man­agers uncov­ered the val­ue of var­i­ous fea­tures with­in the solution. 

Process sim­u­la­tion, for instance, allowed Yama­ha to mod­el an as-is process, assign dol­lar val­ues to tasks, and then cre­ate a new revi­sion with automa­tion applied. This capa­bil­i­ty helped build a com­pelling busi­ness case for lever­ag­ing robot­ic process automa­tion, demon­strat­ing the poten­tial effi­cien­cy gains and cost savings.

Mean­while, fea­tures like the reusable data dic­tio­nary ele­ments and object attrib­ut­es, col­lab­o­ra­tion hub, process gov­er­nance, and report­ing capa­bil­i­ties proved use­ful. SAP LeanIX con­nec­tiv­i­ty was a sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit that allowed Yama­ha to main­tain a sin­gle source of truth for its busi­ness applications.

The impact of SAP Sig­navio was not just qual­i­ta­tive but also quan­ti­ta­tive. Yama­ha antic­i­pates a 25% val­ue addi­tion to key process­es through improve­ment actions and a 15 – 20% annu­al recur­ring busi­ness ben­e­fit in cost sav­ings and efficiency.

Signavio’s impact went beyond process opti­miza­tion, play­ing a vital role in empow­er­ing Yamaha’s work­force and cul­ti­vat­ing a mind­set of ongo­ing improvement.

By for­mal­iz­ing an orga­ni­za­tion-wide effort to doc­u­ment busi­ness process­es, team mem­bers gained vis­i­bil­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty of process infor­ma­tion for all employ­ees, which enhanced train­ing and onboard­ing of new staff, as well as increased col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion between busi­ness and IT teams.

“Any giv­en busi­ness per­son, secu­ri­ty per­son, or key per­son can go into Sig­navio, and they’ll know exact­ly what secu­ri­ty a stake­hold­er needs, what roles they are going to play, and what process­es they will be involved with,” said Bohan­non, dis­cussing how the solu­tion enabled Yamaha’s employ­ees to work more effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly. ​“They’ll have vis­i­bil­i­ty to all of that.” 

Despite Yamaha’s expand­ing knowl­edge and uti­liza­tion of SAP Sig­navio, the val­ue of oth­er inte­gra­tions became evi­dent, lead­ing the com­pa­ny to lever­age SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er and SAP LeanIX to stream­line its process man­age­ment efforts.

“It’s going to be a fan­tas­tic tool, but you need some exper­tise to ful­ly under­stand what you’re get­ting out of it.”

Hav­ing a fresh under­stand­ing that any dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tive is not with­out its chal­lenges, lead­ers were pre­pared to over­come what­ev­er obsta­cles lay ahead. ​“We came into LeanIX much like we came into Sig­navio,” explained Bohan­non. ​“It’s going to be a fan­tas­tic tool, but you need some exper­tise to under­stand what you’re get­ting out of it fully.”

Mears empha­sized the impor­tance of hav­ing an enter­prise archi­tec­ture design and under­stand­ing the links between tools. ​“Hav­ing a gen­er­al mud map [dia­gram] of what you want to achieve and the time­lines around it, rather than imple­ment­ing on the fly,” will help teams stay focused and avoid back­track­ing, he not­ed. ​“It’s beyond impor­tant to know how they all con­nect and what that’s going to look like before you jump too far down the path,” added Bohannon.

Accel­er­at­ing Dig­i­tal Transformation

Ulti­mate­ly, Yama­ha found SAP Signavio’s inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties to be a game-changer. 

With a suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of SAP Sig­navio under its belt, Yama­ha is now look­ing toward the future. The com­pa­ny plans to imple­ment the SAP Sig­navio Process Intel­li­gence solu­tion and fur­ther inte­grate LeanIX to pro­pel its busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion forward.

Fur­ther­more, Yama­ha is prepar­ing for its glob­al SAP S/4HANA roll­out, with the first go-live sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary next year. The under­tak­ing is as far-reach­ing and mul­ti­fac­eted as the company’s diver­si­fied port­fo­lio and geo­graph­i­cal footprint. 

“We’ve got 12 waves of this S/4 roll­out, and that’s pri­mar­i­ly just here in North Amer­i­ca,” said Bohan­non. ​“But then quick­ly fol­low­ing that will be our golf cart divi­sion, oth­er affil­i­ates, pro­peller com­pa­ny, and some of our boat builders. We’ve got a host of con­tin­u­a­tions with­in our region­al roll­out model.”

Although this process is ongo­ing, Yamaha’s jour­ney with SAP Sig­navio under­scores not only the val­ue of the solu­tion but also the impor­tance of embrac­ing change and uncov­er­ing new ways to dri­ve growth and optimization.

The com­pa­ny antic­i­pates that SAP Signavio’s inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties with tools like Tri­cen­tis and SAP Enable Now will facil­i­tate more effec­tive and effi­cient process enhance­ment activ­i­ties, fos­ter­ing bet­ter align­ment between busi­ness leads and IT.

“We want to use the col­lab­o­ra­tion hub as a one-stop-shop for peo­ple to view and under­stand our process­es,” explained Mears. ​“To have that, we need to have a very flu­id tran­si­tion from work­stream to work­stream.” By run­ning work­shops with dif­fer­ent work­streams and expos­ing peo­ple to these con­cepts, Yama­ha is mak­ing progress in build­ing the nec­es­sary skill sets and aware­ness to sup­port their trans­for­ma­tion efforts.

Anoth­er crit­i­cal aspect of Yamaha’s future-focused approach is lever­ag­ing such tools to keep train­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion up-to-date and in sync with the lat­est process­es. As Bohan­non point­ed out, ​“As soon as train­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion gets writ­ten for an appli­ca­tion, it’s basi­cal­ly obso­lete because some­thing will have changed with­in the next day.” By inte­grat­ing Sig­navio with Enable Now, the com­pa­ny can ensure that new hires are onboard­ed with the most cur­rent infor­ma­tion, mak­ing the train­ing mate­ri­als ​“per­pet­u­al doc­u­ments and always in sync.”

Reflect­ing on the jour­ney thus far, both Bohan­non and Mears expressed sat­is­fac­tion with the progress made and lessons learned along the way. ​“We have no regrets what­so­ev­er because it’s got­ten us to where we are today,” con­clud­ed Bohan­non. ​“I will tell you, we’ve learned a sig­nif­i­cant amount over the last year and a half.”

Cross­ing the Fin­ish Line: Take­aways and Con­tin­ued Innovation

Yamaha’s jour­ney with SAP Sig­navio high­lights sev­er­al take­aways for orga­ni­za­tions embark­ing on their own busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion initiatives:

1. Start with a clear strat­e­gy and approach, focus­ing on process min­ing and plug-and-play solutions.
2. Famil­iar­ize your­self with indus­try stan­dards and best prac­tices to ensure a sol­id foundation.
3. Embrace a holis­tic approach to trans­for­ma­tion, con­sid­er­ing the inte­gra­tion of mul­ti­ple tools and systems.
4. Empow­er your work­force by improv­ing process vis­i­bil­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and collaboration.
5. Learn from expe­ri­ences and adapt your approach along the way.

As Yama­ha Motor con­tin­ues to dri­ve inno­va­tion and growth, its uti­liza­tion of SAP Sig­navio will play a role in nav­i­gat­ing future chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. With a strong foun­da­tion in place and a com­mit­ment to ongo­ing improve­ment, Yama­ha is well-equipped to scale its trans­for­ma­tion efforts and main­tain its posi­tion as a leader in the industry.

For busi­ness­es look­ing to dri­ve their own trans­for­ma­tions, Yamaha’s suc­cess sto­ry serves as an inspi­ra­tion. By lever­ag­ing the pow­er of SAP Sig­navio and embrac­ing a cul­ture of ongo­ing improve­ment, com­pa­nies can mod­ern­ize oper­a­tions and achieve new lev­els of effi­cien­cy, agili­ty, and innovation.