Learn how to plan and execute a RISE with SAP transformation with SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and SAP Cloud ALM, from strategy to roll-out.
Introduction
This guide outlines how to run a RISE with SAP transformation using SAP LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and SAP Cloud ALM, following a process-driven approach.
The guide covers key activities and integration points across the three tools, structured according to the SAP Activate road map. It begins by showing how SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio can support strategic decision-making around the transformation approach. This step is typically considered part of the discover phase. In practice, it should take place even earlier, before the discover phase formally begins.
Pre-Assessment: Choosing the Right Transformation Strategy
When embarking on a transformation journey, organizations face a number of critical early decisions that will shape the strategy and implementation of their ERP transformations. These decisions include, but are not limited to:
- Transition scenario: greenfield, brownfield, or hybrid
- Rollout strategy: big bang, phased/staggered, pilot first, region-by-region, or template-based
- Business drivers: cost reduction, innovation, agility, compliance, customer experience
- Target technology landscape: cloud-native, hybrid cloud, microservices, or monolithic architectures
The most suitable option varies significantly depending on the organization’s maturity, strategic objectives, and operational readiness. These decisions typically require in-depth assessments, feasibility studies, and stakeholder alignment.
SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio offer foundational capabilities to support data-driven, collaborative decision-making during this phase.
Transition Scenarios: Greenfield, Brownfield, or Hybrid
The choice of a transition scenario impacts the scope of change, cost, risk, and innovation potential. SAP’s integrated toolchain supports this evaluation through the following:
- SAP LeanIX: Provides insights into your current application portfolio, identifies redundant or legacy systems, integration complexity, and technical debt. Landscape reports and maturity views help identify areas ready for modernization.
- SAP Signavio: Analyzes current business processes using benchmarking, conformance checks, and performance indicators. This analysis determines whether processes can be migrated as-is (brownfield) or require redesign (greenfield).
- SAP Cloud ALM: The Find Transformation Approach app in SAP Business Transformation Center helps you identify the optimal transition path for your specific situation. It uses information from your source and target products, the usage and data profiling (UDP), and maintenance readiness check (MRC) files from your source system. It also considers your answers to the questionnaire tailored to your source system analysis. You can access the app in the Transformation tab of SAP Cloud ALM. To learn more, see https://help.sap.com/docs/btc/application-help/find-transformation-approach.
A hybrid approach is often optimal when some systems or processes are mature and efficient, while others need reinvention.
Roll-out Strategy
Choosing an appropriate roll-out strategy depends on multiple factors, each weighed differently depending on the organization. A careful evaluation of these factors, along with a clear understanding of trade-offs, is essential to determine whether a big bang, phased/staggered, pilot first, region-by-region, hybrid, or template-based approach is most suitable.
Business process experts and enterprise architects provide data-driven insights to assess organizational readiness, technical landscape, and strategic fit. Their guidance ensures a well-informed decision on the roll-out approach.
Key Criteria for Rollout Strategy Identification
- Organizational size and complexity: Larger, more complex organizations often benefit from phased strategies to manage risk and complexity.
- Risk tolerance: Refers to an organization's willingness to accept and manage risks associated with the rollout. High risk tolerance may favor a big bang approach; lower tolerance suggests phased or pilot-based rollouts.
- Resource availability: Determine the availability of human, financial, and technological resources required for the rollout. Adequate resources can support faster rollouts; limited resources may require staggered implementation.
- Project timeline: Tighter timelines might necessitate more accelerated rollouts; longer timelines allow for phased or regional approaches.
- Business process standardization: Highly standardized processes enable faster, more uniform rollouts; low standardization calls for tailored approaches.
- Integration requirements: Complex system integrations often require hybrid or phased strategies to ensure stability.
- Change management capabilities: Strong capabilities support broader rollouts; weaker capabilities may need gradual deployment with focused change enablement.
- Existing SAP landscape: Mature, integrated SAP environments can support template or phased rollouts; less mature setups may need custom strategies.
- Business priorities: Rollout strategies should align closely with strategic goals, such as speed, cost efficiency, or innovation.
- Vendor and partner expertise: Experienced partners can support more ambitious rollouts; limited expertise may require more cautious approaches.
- Scalability and flexibility: The ability to scale allows the roll-out strategy to grow with the organization, while flexibility allows for making necessary adjustments during implementation.
- Cost considerations: The financial impact must be assessed. Cost-effective rollout strategies balance cost with benefits, while high-cost strategies should provide additional value.
Process Insights from SAP Signavio in Pre-Assessment
SAP Signavio Process Insights and Process Intelligence provide powerful tools to assess the current state of business processes, benchmark performance, and uncover transformation opportunities. These insights help shape a transformation strategy grounded in real operational data and aligned with business objectives.
The following analysis features can support decision-making throughout the transformation lifecycle:
- Predefined process flows with contextual filtering: Access standard process flows enriched with contextual information, and filter by business unit, region, document type, or other criteria to focus your analysis.
- Internal benchmarking:Compare performance across internal dimensions, such as company codes, sales organization, document type, or material, to identify variability and areas for improvement.
- External benchmarking: Evaluate performance metrics (for example, automation rates, lead times, inefficiencies) against industry peers to identify competitive gaps and improvement opportunities.
- Process conformance checks: Analyze deviations between the current (as-is) and target (to-be) processes to uncover inefficiencies, compliance risks, and deviations from standard.
- Prebuilt analysis dashboards:Use out-of-the-box dashboards tailored for key use cases such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and record-to-report.
- Transaction code analysis:Gain visibility into transaction code usage, including custom transactions, and assess system usage patterns and performance implications.
- Transformation planning: Focus on prioritized processes with direct links to SAP Best Practice process models. Identify immediate improvement actions, supported by performance metrics and improvement recommendations. Architecture Insights from SAP LeanIX in Pre-Assessment
Architecture Insights from SAP LeanIX in Pre-Assessment
SAP LeanIX provides a rich set of reporting and visualization capabilities to support enterprise architecture-driven transformation planning. For some examples, see Key Reports Supporting Governance
The following report types are commonly used to guide transformation initiatives from an enterprise architecture perspective:
- Application landscape reports
- Clustered by organization: Identify application redundancies and opportunities for harmonization across business units or entities.
- Clustered by business capabilities (Hosting Type view): Visualize the current hosting distribution (on-premise, cloud, hybrid) to align with the target technology landscape.
- Process landscape report: Clustered by organization: Evaluate the degree of process standardization across different regions or business units, supporting decisions on rollout sequence and process harmonization.
- Business capability maps: Clustered by capability maturity (Maturity view): Assess organizational readiness for transformation by evaluating maturity levels in areas such as change management and transformation enablement.
- Application matrix reports: Clustered by business capabilities or organization: Understand which capabilities are supported in each entity to identify potential pilot candidates or gaps in coverage.
- World map reports: Application usage by entity (Location view) or region (Country/Region view): Analyze geographic distribution and complexity of the application landscape to inform rollout planning by region.
- Initiative roadmap reports: Clustered by organization: Gain visibility into transformation initiatives, including responsible stakeholders, dependencies, and alignment needs across the organization.
When used in combination, these reports help enterprise architects and transformation leads to derive actionable insights, align with business and IT stakeholders, and reduce risk through early visibility and planning.
Lesson Summary
- SAP LeanIX and SAP Signavio play a crucial role in the pre-assessment phase of a RISE with SAP transformation by providing data-driven insights for strategic decision-making.
- SAP LeanIX helps organizations understand their current application portfolio, identify redundancies, and assess technical debt to determine the best transition scenario (greenfield, brownfield, or hybrid).
- SAP Signavio analyzes existing business processes, benchmarks performance, and identifies areas for improvement, aiding in the selection of an appropriate roll-out strategy.
- Both tools offer a range of reports and dashboards that provide visibility into the organization's architecture, processes, and capabilities, enabling informed decisions and reducing transformation risks.
In the upcoming lessons, we will discuss the Step-by-Step Guide for ERP Transformation with an Integrated Toolchain.