AI FOR S/4HANA Transformation - Part 2: A Quantum Leap for BPT

The exponential growth and sophistication of AI technology is revolutionising how organisations explore, analyse and optimise their business processes. GenAI is helping users not only overcome the manual time and effort to identify and locate existing process information, but also assists in the actual creation of new process material. While through the smart interrogation of AI, operational inefficiencies which once lay hidden and undetected can suddenly be probed and unearthed, providing invaluable insights at lightening speed.

Figure 1:  Process AI for SAP Signavio solutions

SAP Signavio is leading the charge with a number of upcoming AI driven innovations alongside some which are already available to the public to support its solutions for business process transformations. The key to these AI innovations is not to take over the process transformation journey, but to provide a boost to the human interaction, to support and guide people to optimise their efforts and output effectively. These innovations have been termed 'Process AI', which is designed to act as a transformation advisor, focused on delivering value in a number of key areas. In an age where regulatory requirements are making process governance and compliance an imperative for most organisations, Process AI will play a key role in strengthening their ability to adapt and transform quickly and confidently. Let's explore some of these areas in more detail:

Process Recommendations

Whether you are looking to design processes from scratch or optimise existing processes, the Process Recommender can interrogate over 5,000 SAP best practice processes and industry standards in an instant and provide pre-configured process models and designs to match an organisation's specific business needs. For process owners and experts, this becomes a great starting point, as it can be used as a base or even an 'as-is' scenario to kick-start their process transformation journey. By enabling users to apply natural language questions, it simply eliminates much of the hard graft of process design and redesign by providing tailored recommendations on specific processes. Users can also see previews of process models before making decisions on whether to introduce as dictionary elements to be worked on. A global process owner (GPO) could initiate a task by asking, for example, 'How do I start remodelling our accounts payable process?'

Figure 2:  Process Recommender supports the Business Process Management (BPM) discipline

Performance Indicator (PPI) Recommendations

Like the Process Recommender, the PPI Recommender leverages on SAP best practices, but this time in the form of hundreds of process performance indicators (PPIs) from SAP Signavio Process Insights. As an organisation embarks on process transformation, it is only logical that process owners will want to understand not only how the existing process is performing, but how the 'to-be' process performs too, after transformation. The PPI recommender instantly provides a list of performance indicators associated with a particular process so that process owners can gain immediate insights and identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement, saving time and effort in the investigation and decision making process. Each PPI recommendation also comes with a link to the KPI Catalog, which provides additional definition and technical information to explain how the PPI works and the benefits it brings. Process stakeholders can then add widgets of their top PPIs to custom dashboards for added visibility. In the context of process performance, an example of an AI question for the PPI recommender could be: 'What metrics are there for the accounts payable process?'

Figure 3: PPI Recommender supports the Business Process Optimisation (BPO) discipline

Text-to-Insights Process Analysis

The soon to be released Process Analyser will build on the benefits of the 'Recommender' AI features to enable different types of users, both business and technically minded, to use natural language to retrieve granular insights into processes. It will essentially do the process 'mining' for them, providing key information that will help teams accelerate the decision making process. Process Analyser will democratise process mining across the organisation, enabling users to boost their understanding and knowledge, and so open up opportunities to provide value input which otherwise may have remained untapped. They will not inherently need to be business or technical experts to contribute and collaborate on process transformation. So the type of questions users can prompt using Process Analyser would typically be more expansive. For eg 'How do we improve the accounts payable process?'

Figure 4: PPI Recommender supports both BPM and BPO disciplines

Other AI innovations in the pipeline

• Root Cause Analysis: The ability to interrogate insights for more granular analysis by different attributes.
• Joule Integration: As with many other SAP solutions, Joule is being integrated into SAP Signavio. Customers can sign up to the Early Adopter Care (EAC) program to test and experience the Agentic AI capabilities of SAP's AI co-pilot.
• Text & Diagram Conversion to BPMN Models: Generate process models directly from drawn diagrams or descriptions (eg from fit to standard workshops).
• Transformation Advisor: Upload documents or input text to get improvement recommendations based on, for example, financial results or annual reports.

Conclusion

SAP Signavio solutions are all about unlocking the potential within organisations to optimise their processes. Sometimes, however, this can difficult to achieve, while process transformation as whole can be a daunting prospect, even just to get initiatives off the ground. Artificial Intelligence removes many of these barriers by making process transformation more accessible, removing much of the time and effort that was once traditionally required to gain insights, attain knowledge and make decisions. With SAP Signavio and AI, all types of users can get qualitative and quantitative insights into processes, becoming the catalyst to inspire process transformation initiatives. As sustainability, ESG and other regulatory directives come into force, process governance and compliance will be crucial in organisations meeting their goals, and so agility and the ability to react quickly will become paramount. AI will revolutionise the way processes are managed and analysed. Those organisations that leverage it are poised to gain that competitive edge. They will harness transformation, not just endure it.

If you would like to know more about how SAP Signavio solutions leverage AI to help accelerate your business transformation journey, get in touch with us today.