Build structured repositories in SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX to connect business processes and IT landscape and create transparency for transformation.
Introduction
Establishing a clear and shared understanding of both business processes and the IT landscape is the foundation for a successful transformation. This step focuses on building structured repositories in SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX to create transparency across business and IT.
Build a Repository of Process Landscape and Process Analytics in SAP Signavio
Use SAP Signavio to document and analyze your business processes, creating a central source of truth that enables data-driven insights.
The SAP Signavio Process Explorer (SPX) provides access to standardized SAP process content, such as end-to-end process models, business capability mappings, and accelerator links, serving as the starting point for designing your to-be processes. To learn more, see Value Accelerators in a Fit-to-Standard Scenario.
Key components:
- SAP Signavio Process Manager: to model and structure your process landscape.
- SAP Signavio Process Insights: to analyze process performance, inefficiencies, and benchmarking data.
- Plug and Gain (if applicable): to accelerate initial setup with out-of-the-box content.
Best practices:
- Focus on importing relevant and prioritized processes - avoid overloading the workspace with too many SAP Best Practice diagrams.
- Establish a clear and consistent process hierarchy to support synchronization with SAP Cloud ALM and enable structured navigation and reporting.
Build a Repository of Business Capabilities and the Application Landscape in SAP LeanIX
High-quality, transparent application data is essential for IT transformation. SAP LeanIX provides the structure and tools to document, assess, and manage your enterprise architecture.
If you are new to SAP LeanIX, begin by exploring available options to import data into your workspace. For a detailed guide, see Getting Data into Your Workspace.
Minimum recommended setup:
Complete business capability model.
Well-documented application landscape.
Application portfolio assessment completed. For a detailed guide, see Application Portfolio Assessment.
Best practices:
- Use the SAP reference architecture to import a predefined, continuously updated business capability model, mapped to the respective solutions that SAP recommends. For a detailed guide, see Business Capabilities in the Reference Catalog.
- Use SAP landscape discovery from SAP LeanIX (integrated with SAP Cloud ALM) to automatically populate your application inventory. For a detailed guide, see SAP Discovery.
Enrich application data with meaningful attributes such as:
- Lifecycle status
- Technical and functional fit
- Assessment scores (for example, 6R, TIME)
This provides a holistic view of your business capabilities, the applications supporting them, and the overall state of your portfolio. For example:
Link Processes to Applications
With your process and application repositories established in SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the next step is to connect them. By this, you align processes, applications, and related objects, clarify change impacts, and support better transformation decisions.
With the integration, SAP Signavio processes synchronize to SAP LeanIX as business context fact sheets, and SAP LeanIX fact sheets synchronize to SAP Signavio as dictionary items.
- For a detailed guide on integration, see SAP Signavio Integration.
- For high-level guidance, along with best practices in the context of RISE with SAP transformation, see SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio Integration.
Best practices:
- Use SAP Signavio as the system of record for processes, and SAP LeanIX as the system of record for IT data, including applications, interfaces, and data objects. This keeps ownership clear and governance consistent.
- Manage processes and all relations from processes to other objects in SAP Signavio.
- As an advanced practice, you can establish relationships between processes and business capabilities, open the respective process diagram in SAP Signavio, and assign the appropriate business capability as an attribute. These linkages are then synchronized and reflected as a relationship in SAP LeanIX, ensuring both tools remain aligned in representing the business context and dependencies.
Assess and Scope Processes and Applications
With the integration, the combined view enables well-informed decisions on what to transform, where to start, and how process and IT dependencies affect each other during your ERP transformation.
Hint
The process-driven approach outlined in these guides is best suited for a new ERP implementation (Greenfield) where scoping starts from the process perspective. For a system conversion (Brownfield), you will mostly focus on applications and interfaces, following an application-driven approach. In a hybrid scenario, you combine elements of both, balancing bottom-up and top-down scoping strategies.
The following best practices and use cases help you identify where to focus your efforts.
Identify Business Processes Based on Performance Indicators
- Use SAP Signavio best-run scores to highlight high- and low-performing processes.
- Drill down into specific process steps to pinpoint performance issues.
- Use process discovery reports and spaghetti diagrams to visualize complexity and inefficiencies. To learn more, see Process-Related Widgets.
Conduct variant analysis to detect frequent deviations from standard processes, indicating opportunities for harmonization or redesign.
Assess Application Dependencies
Once you’ve identified target processes from a top-down perspective, you can assess their application dependencies directly in SAP Signavio with data synchronized from SAP LeanIX:
- Open the process diagrams to view which applications support each process step.
- Identify risks or transformation needs by evaluating whether these applications are phasing out, lack technical or functional fit, or require consolidation.
- Use these insights to guide application rationalization, interface redesign, or migration planning.
- Choose the respective application fact sheet link to open it in SAP LeanIX, where you can find detailed information about the current state of the application and any planned initiatives. This is a valuable input for process owners.
- You can assess whether application modernization may impact the process, or if a process change should trigger a discussion with the application owner.
- Use application landscape reports, clustered by processes (business contexts), to get a clear view of which business processes are supported by which applications.
- Identify potential risks or opportunities for consolidation based on application lifecycle status, functional and technical fit assessments, or modernization plans.
- When you have identified application candidates for transformation or change, you can use the relation explorer on the application fact sheet to understand which dependent processes may be affected.
Report and Communicate
Effective reporting and communication play a pivotal role in driving successful ERP transformation. Create phase-specific dashboards with relevant reports for each stakeholder group. Highlight progress, key insights, and next steps to ensure transparency and foster stronger engagement.
Here are some examples of reports that you can collect on a dashboard:
Process landscape report: Visualize which applications support which processes.
Application landscape report: Highlight redundancies, lifecycle status, and modernization needs.
Business capability map: Show capability coverage and maturity levels.
Initiative roadmap: Outline planned transformation activities and their dependencies.
For more example reports, see Key Reports Supporting Governance
Lesson Summary
- Establish a clear understanding of business processes and IT landscape to lay the foundation for successful transformation.
- Build structured repositories in SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX to create transparency across business and IT.
- Link processes to applications to align processes and applications, clarify change impacts, and support better transformation decisions.
- Assess and scope processes and applications to make well-informed decisions on what to transform, where to start, and how process and IT dependencies affect each other during your ERP transformation.
- Use effective reporting and communication to drive successful ERP transformation by creating phase-specific dashboards with relevant reports for each stakeholder group.