Understanding Variant Management

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Understand process variants.
Use SAP Signavio Variant Management Center and create Variant Groups.

Introduction to Process Variants

Bring structure and transparency to your process landscape.

In this lesson, we’ll explore what process variants are and how to manage them in SAP Signavio Collaboration Hub. You will be able to understand why is Variant Management useful and what specific advantages it has.

What is a Variant?

In SAP Signavio Process Manager, a process variant is a variation of a business process that captures the differences in the way it is executed and documented. Such variants cater to different requirements or scenarios within an organization. They allow for flexibility and customization, while maintaining a standardized core process framework.

There are many situations in which having process variants might prove useful or even necessary. Just think about the distinctions between business units, customer journeys, and geographical locations. Let’s take the latter as our example.

Say you’re a multinational company with a standardized employee onboarding process. Still, some process tasks or business objects used – for example, those related to regulatory requirements – will differ depending on the location. Although there’s one main initiative with the same goal, there are various perspectives on it, represented by the process variants.

Process Variant Management

Variant Management can be accessed from the left side panel of the Collaboration Hub.

The control of such differing perspectives on business processes is referred to as process variant management. It allows organizations to optimize their processes, while also contributing towards compliance and consistency. Across the SAP Signavio Transformation Suite, there is a wide range of Variant Management features, strategically designed to simplify and elevate your process transformation. These enable you to effectively manage the relationships between global processes and their variants, facilitating adaptability to an ever-changing business environment. Some of the most common use cases are listed below:

Regional Differences

Ensure adherence to local regulations while minimizing unnecessary variations, providing a standardized framework that eases compliance complexities.

Product and Brand Harmonization

Streamline processes across diverse portfolios to ensure harmonization across various sites with unique capabilities and procedures.

Organizational Levels

Seamlessly adapt templates, allowing different units to enroll and adjust the processes to their specific needs.

Transformation Journey

Manage process variants, providing a holistic view of the transformation journey and ensuring a smooth transition from existing processes to the desired future state.

Customer Types

Facilitate the efficient handling of customer type variants, making sure processes are tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of each customer segment.

SAP Signavio Variant Management

With SAP Signavio’s Variant Management, you can:

Automatically detect process variants through integration with process data.
Control the relationship between template and variant.
Track and propagate changes from the main process to its variants.
Support users with consuming the right variant depending on their context and role.

We’ll explore some of these functionalities in depth in the following sections. Before we get to Variant Management in practice, take a look at the video below. It will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the feature.

Creating Templates and Variant Groups

Throughout this lesson, some of the key terms related to variants have already been mentioned. Let’s first turn our attention to the process template, the main model to which you can attach variants. After establishing it, the dimensions need to be set. These are the characteristics that differentiate the template from its variants, represented by dictionary categories. Once chosen, it’s time to select the dictionary entries that will act as dimension values. All that’s then left to do is to add the variants. By creating a new template, you automatically create a new variant group which contains the main process and all of its variations. Apart from keeping your workspace organized, variant groups are used when managing dimensions. The following exercise will show you how these features work.

Hint

The Dictionary categories to be used as dimensions need to previously be defined as such in the Process Manager.

Create templates, attach variants, manage dimensions and values

Click on the simulation to view the steps on how to create a template.

ExerciseStart Exercise

To delete a variant group, you need to revert the template. You can do this by clicking on the ellipsis next to it. The processes attached to it won’t be deleted, they will simply no longer be variants.

To delete a variant group, you need to revert the template. You can do this by clicking on the ellipsis next to it.

Practical Use Case

A retail company operates in the US, EU, and APAC regions, selling both to businesses (B2B) and direct consumers (B2C). They create the following templates and variants:

Core O2C Template: Standardized steps for all regions and customer types.
US B2B Variant: Includes steps for credit checks and state tax calculations.
EU B2C Variant: Ensures VAT processing and GDPR compliance.
APAC B2B Variant: Adapts to local shipping regulations and extended payment terms.

By using the defined template and attached variants, the company ensures that:

Processes are consistent across the organization
Regional and customer-specific requirements are met efficiently
Compliance with local regulations is maintained
Process design and implementation are accelerated

This approach allows the retail company to manage a complex, global O2C process effectively, providing flexibility and ensuring best practices are followed across all variants.

Cloning and Detaching Variants

In addition to attaching already existing processes as variants, you can clone the process template and use the copy to create a new variant. This allows you to modify an identical, cloned process without altering the original model. Cloning rapidly speeds up the creation of tailored process variants while maintaining a consistent core structure.

Detaching a variant from a template means breaking the link between the variant and the original template. Once detached, the variant becomes an independent process model that can be modified without affecting the template or the variants attached to it. This allows you to extensively customize individual processes to meet specific needs without risking changes to other ones.

Clone processes to create variants and detach variants from templates

To learn more about these features, click the simulation below.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Practical Use Case

Let's think back to our previous example of the retail company and the Order to Fulfillment process. The original template is the core Order to Fulfillment process that includes steps like order receipt, processing, fulfillment, and invoicing.

Cloning to Create Variants

US Variant: Clone the core process and adjust it to include US-specific tax calculations and electronic invoicing.
EU Variant: Clone the core process and modify it to handle VAT processing and GDPR compliance.

Detaching Variants

Detached US Variant: The US variant is detached from the template to incorporate significant changes, such as new state regulations or a unique customer service process, without affecting the core template or other variants.
Detached EU Variant: The EU variant is detached to allow for extensive customizations, such as integration with new regional compliance systems or localized customer support workflows.

Change Propagation

As you open the diagram page of a variant in the Collaboration Hub, you’ll be able to see if any changes have been made to its template. The unresolved updates need to be reviewed in the Editor, where you can either apply or ignore them. Some might be simple automatic changes, such as renaming, that do not influence the structure of the diagram. These will be implemented by the system. In the case of more complex manual changes, you need to make the adjustments yourself.

You'll have to chance to either apply or ignore the changes that have been made to the process template. More complicated adjustments need to me modeled manually.

Note

Remember, the notifications about updates to the template will only be visible if it has been published in its newest revision.

In addition to guaranteeing compliance with organizational standards, this feature ensures that local nuances are considered, contributing to an agile and responsive process environment. To see it in practice, start the following exercise. It includes a scenario in which manual changes need to be made.

Propagation of manual changes

Hint

If you want to be immediately notified of any updates, subscribe to change propagation notifications. Consult the Help Portal for detailed instructions.

Example

Automatically propagate added or deleted process elements in variant management

Click the simulation to review the steps.

ExerciseStart Exercise

Log in to track your progress & complete quizzes

Continue to quiz