ASUG recent­ly inter­viewed SAP lead­ers for year-in-review high­lights and com­men­taries on what’s next in key tech­nol­o­gy areas, solu­tion port­fo­lios, and indus­tries. Here, we explore 2022 progress and the 2023 out­look for SAP Sig­navio with Was­sil­ios Lolas, Glob­al Vice Pres­i­dent, Head of the Cen­ter of Excel­lence, SAP Signavio.

Ques­tion: It has been a huge year for SAP Sig­navio. We want you to recall what you believe were the 2022 high­lights and milestones.

Answer: There were a few. One is the fact that SAP’s Busi­ness Process Intel­li­gence and Sig­navio is becom­ing ​“SAP Sig­navio.” In this sense, the orga­ni­za­tion­al con­sol­i­da­tion has been mov­ing ahead very, very quick­ly. This move­ment is the fastest acqui­si­tion SAP has ever done. We see that the teams are com­ing togeth­er and grow­ing organ­i­cal­ly. With twice the amount from a year ago, we cur­rent­ly have more than 1,100 people.

Inte­grat­ing the SAP Sig­navio suite with the SAP prod­uct and ser­vices offer­ing is anoth­er thing we are mov­ing ahead with very quick­ly. Besides a com­pre­hen­sive set of tools, SAP Sig­navio offers a vast library of best-prac­tice con­tent and inte­gra­tion accel­er­a­tors and ser­vices. Stay tuned because there is more to come in 2023.

For our cus­tomers who are mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Sig­navio starter pack in the RISE with SAP is essen­tial. Every cus­tomer can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve and accel­er­ate their tran­si­tion to SAP S/4HANA and the busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion that goes with it. With SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP, Sig­navio is includ­ed as a starter pack in the bill of mate­ri­als to help cus­tomers get start­ed with the busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion. We’ve seen this picked up quite well by our customers.

Also, we launched Expe­ri­ence-dri­ven Process Trans­for­ma­tion, with the pilot­ing of Jour­ney to Process and Jour­ney to Process Ana­lyt­ics — the capa­bil­i­ty to bet­ter under­stand the expe­ri­ence and the jour­ney of our cus­tomers or employ­ees — mean­ing the end cus­tomers’ jour­ney and the expe­ri­ence of employ­ees. We iden­ti­fy what is impor­tant for the end cus­tomer, the moments that mat­ter, and under­stand whether they had a good or bad expe­ri­ence. And then, we com­bine these insights with the under­ly­ing oper­a­tional process­es, chang­ing them to adjust to the cus­tomer’s expe­ri­ence and expec­ta­tions. This is what Expe­ri­ence-dri­ven Process Trans­for­ma­tion is about, and it’s very pow­er­ful. This has been a major theme for SAP Sig­navio this year. 

And final­ly, I would like to high­light two things: through the Cen­ter of Excel­lence, we deliv­ered over 400 aware­ness and train­ing ses­sions with more than 20,000 par­tic­i­pants so far this year for our cus­tomers, part­ners, user groups, and SAP col­leagues. We pro­vid­ed hun­dreds of par­tic­i­pants with a hands-on expe­ri­ence with the SAP Sig­navio suite through the SAP Sig­navio sim­u­la­tion game. 

My sec­ond high­light start­ed in 2020 when, in par­al­lel to the CoE, I was also the prod­uct man­ag­er for SAP Sig­navio Process Insights until it became gen­er­al­ly avail­able last year in Sep­tem­ber. This prod­uct is run­ning very well. At our SAP Sig­navio Busi­ness Process Trans­for­ma­tion Forum in Orlan­do in Sep­tem­ber this year, we made a live con­nec­tion for a cus­tomer on stage. In less than 14 min­utes, that cus­tomer con­nect­ed Process Insights to his ERP sys­tem and could see process flows, results, and process per­for­mance indi­ca­tors. This was one of the high­lights as well. 

Q: Two fol­low up ques­tions to this. The 1,000 peo­ple: what are their func­tions and focus areas? Also, for the Jour­ney to Process Ana­lyt­ics pilot: What are the next steps for that pilot?

A: To your first ques­tion: SAP Sig­navio oper­ates like a start­up with­in SAP. So, we are like our own com­pa­ny. We have all the func­tions with­in SAP Sig­navio. So the 1,100 peo­ple are in all func­tions — devel­op­ment, sales, sup­port func­tions, cus­tomer suc­cess, etc. At the same time, we also ben­e­fit from being part of SAP.

Regard­ing the pilot around Jour­ney to Process and Jour­ney to Process Ana­lyt­ics, we focus on the capa­bil­i­ties and the method­ol­o­gy of apply­ing this. It’s one thing to get the data; the oth­er thing is, what do I do with the data now? We are work­ing on both, and the direc­tion is to help our cus­tomers make this process trans­for­ma­tion expe­ri­ence dri­ven. This will prob­a­bly be anoth­er high­light next year when we go to gen­er­al availability.

Q: How would you assess the increased aware­ness and adop­tion of SAP Sig­navio this past year?

A: Strong increase in aware­ness and inter­est, and lots of orga­ni­za­tions are using SAP Sig­navio suc­cess­ful­ly, but has yet to be where we would like it to be, hon­est­ly. This is because we are the first and, so far, only play­er in the mar­ket to offer a com­pre­hen­sive suite for busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion: SAP Sig­navio is talk­ing about trans­for­ma­tion, cov­er­ing the entire end-to-end transformation:

• Ana­lyz­ing the cur­rent process­es with their real exe­cu­tion and performance
• Iden­ti­fy­ing process defi­cien­cies and decid­ing where to act
• Design­ing the future processes
• Inte­grat­ing busi­ness process­es man­age­ment with IT con­fig­u­ra­tion and enter­prise architecture
• Gov­ern­ing and the automa­tion of processes

If you want to be suc­cess­ful in your trans­for­ma­tion, you must have all this integrated.

This con­cept still needs to be ful­ly digest­ed by the mar­ket. Many ana­lysts, until recent­ly, looked at process min­ing and busi­ness process man­age­ment as sep­a­rate mar­kets. Busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion was not on the radar. That is incom­plete. This is one of our lit­tle chal­lenges. We are get­ting com­pared to play­ers cov­er­ing only one part of our port­fo­lio. The good news is when we explain our holis­tic trans­for­ma­tion approach, our cus­tomers and part­ners imme­di­ate­ly under­stand. And every­one says, ​“Yes, of course, I need that.”

Anoth­er area we arrived at first is expe­ri­ence-dri­ven process man­age­ment (I men­tioned Jour­ney to Process ear­li­er). This is new, and there is no sin­gle own­er in an orga­ni­za­tion. An exam­ple: Typ­i­cal­ly, in a com­pa­ny, who is respon­si­ble for the jour­ney part, the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence? Well, it’s some­body in mar­ket­ing or sales. Who is respon­si­ble for process exe­cu­tion? Well, it’s oper­a­tions — two dif­fer­ent broad areas.

Now we come in to say, ​“Please work togeth­er to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence while at the same time improv­ing your mar­gins and oper­a­tions. We’re giv­ing you the tools and the method­ol­o­gy to do this.” Every­body under­stands the need and sees the ben­e­fits of such an approach, but many orga­ni­za­tions are still oper­at­ing in siloes. 

Despite all the chal­lenges, I’m 120% con­vinced offer­ing SAP Sig­navio is very rel­e­vant and very valu­able for all orga­ni­za­tions because every cus­tomer is trans­form­ing. Any indus­try, any size, any geog­ra­phy, they’re all trans­form­ing. And with SAP Sig­navio, they can think end-to-end and include their employ­ees, cus­tomers, and part­ners in this transformation. 

Q: When a cus­tomer’s light bulb goes on relat­ed to SAP Sig­navio, what busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenges can they see they can overcome?

A: Let’s use a few con­crete cas­es to illustrate: 

Exam­ple num­ber one: Let’s assume I lead a busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and move from ECC to SAP S/4HANA. Along the way, I need to har­mo­nize my busi­ness process­es. I may have 10 ECC sys­tems today, which will go into one SAP S/4HANA sys­tem. This means that I will stan­dard­ize the soft­ware and con­sol­i­date my land­scape. I also need to har­mo­nize the process­es: peo­ple who worked in one way until yes­ter­day will work dif­fer­ent­ly tomor­row. How do I do this? What are best prac­tices? Where are the pit­falls and the inef­fi­cien­cies in how I work today that I should cor­rect? How can I pri­or­i­tize where and when to change? How to decide with con­fi­dence? And once I make the deci­sions, can SAP Sig­navio help me with the roll­out? How to secure the buy-in of the peo­ple who the change will impact? 

Many will resist change if they don’t under­stand why and what. It’s absolute­ly human. These are areas where SAP Sig­navio helps to decide with con­fi­dence, thanks to data and best prac­tices, and then to adopt change faster thanks to a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach with all peo­ple involved and a sole source of truth for processes.

Exam­ple num­ber two:

Enter­prise archi­tec­ture. Let’s assume there are changes in the busi­ness process designs. What is the impact on the IT sys­tems? What is the impact on the enter­prise archi­tec­ture? One of the high­lights this year was also the part­ner­ship with LeanIX. LeanIX is a major enter­prise archi­tec­ture facil­i­ta­tor. SAP Sig­navio col­lab­o­rates and inte­grates with LeanIX at the enter­prise lev­el and with SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er and SAP Cloud ALM at the SAP level. 

Q: What would you list as unfin­ished busi­ness with SAP Sig­navio for this year?

A: I’m lead­ing the Cen­ter of Excel­lence, so I don’t say unfin­ished, but there’s much more we can do in terms of enable­ment. I would love to be faster. In prod­uct devel­op­ment, like in any inte­gra­tion, it took some time until the teams came togeth­er. It took time for an agile start­up like Sig­navio, which grew very fast, to become part of an enter­prise play­er like SAP. We are learn­ing how to be fast and agile from the [Sig­navio] guys. How­ev­er, fast and agile do not always scale. So they are learn­ing from us how to scale. In this respect, we are in a much bet­ter posi­tion than a year ago. I see much bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion. I find this incred­i­bly pos­i­tive; it gives me opti­mism for the future.

Q: What are you most proud of regard­ing SAP Sig­navio this year?

A: When our cus­tomers were on stage at the Busi­ness Process Trans­for­ma­tion Forum events in Mona­co, Orlan­do, and Berlin, and when they told how they are dri­ving their trans­for­ma­tions, how they are uni­fy­ing their orga­ni­za­tion with the help of SAP Sig­navio, this made me proud. I could see that what we are doing is valu­able and ben­e­fi­cial for them. That was very reward­ing and energizing.

Q: Let’s switch to look­ing for­ward to next year. What can the com­mu­ni­ty, specif­i­cal­ly ASUG mem­bers, expect from the SAP Sig­navio team in 2023?

A: Num­ber one, in Q1 2023, we will go into gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty with the Stan­dard­ized Best Prac­tice Process Library and Sys­tem Con­nec­tors. This is where cus­tomers will find process con­tent (such as solu­tion best prac­tices, ref­er­ence process archi­tec­tures, and ser­vices con­tent), process per­for­mance indi­ca­tors, indus­try bench­marks, as well as thought lead­er­ship, and process guide­lines. All in one spot and inte­grat­ed with the SAP Sig­navio suite. 

Sec­ond, I see an even deep­er inte­gra­tion of SAP Sig­navio with the SAP port­fo­lio, SAP S/4HANA and ECC, and SAP Ari­ba. This will allow for greater under­stand­ing and analy­sis of process­es that run through Ari­ba and more indus­try-spe­cif­ic process­es. We start­ed with util­i­ties, and there will be auto­mo­tive, oil, gas, and oth­ers. All this is in the spir­it of much faster time-to-insight, so I can under­stand much faster where I stand, for much faster to adapt to the new world and the new processes. 

Also, I expect many new prod­ucts, capa­bil­i­ties, and method­olo­gies around expe­ri­ence-dri­ven process man­age­ment to come to our cus­tomers and part­ners in 2023.

Q: Are there spe­cif­ic indus­tries you expect to tar­get for SAP Sig­navio growth in 2023? 

A: You can use SAP Sig­navio in every indus­try because it’s about accel­er­at­ing and facil­i­tat­ing change. How­ev­er, there are indus­tries where the analy­sis is faster because we have the con­nec­tors already. These con­nec­tors are cur­rent­ly in a beta phase and will go to gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty ear­ly next year. And there are indus­tries where SAP has tra­di­tion­al­ly been more present, and where more indus­try-spe­cif­ic con­tent is avail­able: look, for exam­ple, at retail, con­sumer prod­ucts, man­u­fac­tur­ing, auto­mo­tive, oil, and gas. But again, SAP Sig­navio is for every indus­try, phase, size, and region because we’re talk­ing about change, trans­for­ma­tion, agili­ty, and resilience.

Q: What would be your key pieces of advice to the ASAC mem­ber­ship com­mu­ni­ty regard­ing Sig­navio on a go-for­ward basis?

A: I advise think­ing of every SAP S/4HANA project as a busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. Many ASUG mem­bers come more from the SAP IT side. With SAP Sig­navio, you can build the bridge between busi­ness and IT and become a rel­e­vant busi­ness. Think of the fol­low­ing: every busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion is a process-dri­ven trans­for­ma­tion and will then become the basis for con­tin­u­ous improvement. 

My sec­ond piece of advice is for North Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions to become more mature in busi­ness process man­age­ment and start think­ing about busi­ness process man­age­ment and busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion as an art for your company.

The need is clear­ly there: we’ve seen in the last three years with COVID, with sup­ply chain prob­lems, etc., the need for agile and resilient process­es: when some­thing very unex­pect­ed hits you, you need to know exact­ly where it’ll hit you; what the impli­ca­tions are; the impact on your oper­a­tions and your busi­ness; who and how to respond; what the alter­na­tives are, etc. You need vis­i­bil­i­ty into your oper­a­tions to become resilient and agile.

With the remark­ably high infla­tion that we have around the globe and the con­tin­ued sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and short­ages of prod­ucts and com­modi­ties, you bet­ter be pre­pared by hav­ing trans­paren­cy and being a process-dri­ven orga­ni­za­tion. I am glad that ASUG focus­es on SAP Sig­navio as a strate­gic top­ic. I very much look for­ward to deep­en­ing and widen­ing our collaboration.