AI for SAP S/4HANA Transformation - Part 1: Warp speed EAM

Hello and welcome to this new exciting chapter as we delve into the world of digital transformation and artificiaI intelligence (AI).

Something remarkable has been taking place over the last couple of years which is transforming the way businesses.....transform. AI is revolutionising the way organisations operate, driving unprecedented levels of efficiency, quick decision-making, and strategic agility. For SAP-centric organisations embarking on their SAP S/4HANA transformation, and with regards to today's topic of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) and AI, this is a game-changer.

AI will become increasingly pivotal in ensuring EAM provides the optimal framework for maximising business capabilities and optimising the processes which support them. It brings powerful capabilities for organisations to analyse complex, interconnected systems, predict future needs, and plot the optimisation of their architecture at speeds which one could have only dreamt of a few years ago.

By leveraging AI, organisations can better align their IT landscape with business goals, automate routine tasks, and gain deep insights into dependencies, both architectural and process related, whilst continuously analysing and scrutinising their performance. Additionally, AI supports EAM in terms of application rationalisation by intelligently scanning the entire application portfolio, identifying redundancies, inefficiencies, and underutilised resources, and providing data-driven recommendations for consolidation, optimisation, or even decommissioning. This revolution not only accelerates digital transformation but also empowers organisations to make decisions quickly, to be more proactive, adaptive, and innovative in an increasingly dynamic market environment.

This first blog in a series of three focuses on the use of AI in EAM and specifically SAP LeanIX, a core component of the SAP Transformation Suite which combines all 3 disciplines of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM), Business Process Transformation (BPT) and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) into a powerful platform for businesses seeking to strengthen the capabilities of their systems and applications, optimise the processes which run on them, and efficiently manage lifecycles. BPT & ALM will be explored in the other two blogs in the series.

Fig 1: AI use in SAP Transformation Suite components

EAM is hard. Without AI, even harder.

Even with benefits and advantages of a dedicated EAM platform such as SAP LeanIX brings, organisations still face challenges in managing their application landscape efficiently, primarily because evaluating asset value and leveraging data is often a manual and time-consuming endeavour. This can often lead to oversights and suboptimal decision making, not necessarily because the data is incomplete, unavailable or even incorrect, but simply because it can be a complicated and protracted process to scan and scrutinise, what can often be, a complex inventory. Without the assistance of AI, organisations may be prone to missing out on optimisation opportunities, and ultimately face higher costs and risks associated with application management. 

How AI helps organisations to maximise SAP LeanIX capabilities:

Before organisations start to lick their lips at the prospect of AI for EAM, they must fundamentally ensure that it is ethically deployed, that it's fit-for-purpose and delivers trustworthy and reliable data. It is not the purpose of this blog to delve into AI governance, but it is reassuring nevertheless to know that SAP LeanIX is subject to SAP's strict governance around AI deployment and usage. With that said, the platform boasts the aptly named AI-Assistant, which is designed to accelerate an organisation's ability to overcome the problems we've previously highlighted, of getting landscape transparency, gathering data, and building an accurate inventory of its, often complex, application portfolio. By leveraging this AI technology, businesses can get a head start with streamlining their application portfolio, accelerate and improve task handling and decision-making, so that they can optimise their IT landscapes at speed.

Later on, we'll look at some specific examples of the SAP LeanIX AI assistant in action, but let's first see how AI integrates with SAP LeanIX core capabilities and associated benefits:

• Automated Application Discovery and Categorisation:

  AI helps SAP LeanIX automatically discover and categorise applications based on usage patterns, cost, and business value using the Application Portfolio Management (APM) tool. This reduces manual effort and identifies redundant, outdated, or low-value applications for potential decommissioning.

• Predictive Insights for Application Lifecycle Management:

  By leveraging AI, SAP LeanIX can provide predictive insights into an application’s lifecycle via application landscape management, such as forecasting technical debt, obsolescence risks, and future maintenance costs. This helps in planning proactive retirements or upgrades, ensuring a future-ready IT environment.

• Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment:

  Dependency mapping assisted by AI allows SAP LeanIX to assess the impact of application changes or removals on other systems and processes. This helps in understanding interdependencies and minimising risks associated with application rationalisation.

• Data-Driven Recommendations for Application Rationalisation:

  Using AI, SAP LeanIX can generate recommendations for consolidating, upgrading, or retiring applications by analysing business capability models. This aids in aligning the IT landscape more closely with business goals and reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary applications.

• Enhanced Decision-Making through Visualisation and Insights:

  Through inventory prompts, out-of-the-box requests and custom requests, AI provides actionable insights that help stakeholders make informed decisions about the IT landscape, application portfolios, and technology roadmaps, ultimately supporting digital transformation initiatives.

• Accelerating Application Rationalisation Projects:

  AI can help initiate an application rationalisation project in SAP LeanIX by rapidly identifying high-impact opportunities and generating a prioritised roadmap, which enables organisations to kickstart rationalisation with a clear, data-backed strategy.

Time is of the essence with the SAP LeanIX AI-Assistant:

The SAP LeanIX AI-Assistant harnesses the power of generative AI to revolutionise enterprise architecture (EA) management by automating time-consuming documentation generation, enhancing data utilisation, and accelerating research and data interrogation tasks. By leveraging a large language model, the LeanIX AI-Assistant enables organisations to interact with their EA data more efficiently, driving meaningful insights, faster decision making and fostering a competitive advantage over those organisations which still use static tools such as MS Excel to house their application portfolio . Equipped with a range of predefined requests for analysing categories from the meta model in the EA inventory, such as Applications, Business Capabilities or Data Objects, it also offers the flexibility for businesses to create custom requests, allowing for organisations to tailor the exploration and optimisation of their architectural landscape.

 

Fig 2: SAP LeanIX AI-Assistant

Furthermore, as it uses specialised GPT models hosted on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, data security and confidentiality are ensured under Azure’s enterprise-grade protection. 

Knowing that an organisations EAM data is in safe hands, let's explore some of the key uses cases of the AI-Assistant:

  

Inventory AI-Prompt

The Inventory AI prompt leverages generative AI to make enterprise architecture information more accessible and actionable. It offers a natural language interface so that organisations can interact with their architecture repository, allowing them to ask questions, query data, both active and historical, and receive information, for example, of alternative applications to existing ones which do not provide the best technical or functional fit. The prompt can also be used for predefined requests or custom prompts for various tasks, such as generating descriptions, getting optimisation recommendations, querying changes to application portfolios, and obtaining details about data objects and content on potential risks, regulations, and standards. 

 

AI-Assisted Text

The AI-assisted text features allows organisations to effortlessly create or enhance various types of text content by analysing the context and providing options to improve it through rewriting or summarising existing text. In the example below, the user has prompted the AI assistant to write a description for the AC Management Application fact sheet, of precisely 2 sentences and with a link to the corresponding website. Once the AI response has been generated and the user is happy with it, it is a simple case of transferring it at a touch of a button to the Description field. It is also possible to run a request for multiple fact sheets at a time, which not only saves considerable time but ensures greater consistency and standardisation.

 

 Fig 3: SAP LeanIX AI-Assisted Text

 

AI-Generated Context

AI-generated context analyses existing data to provide insights, helping users understand tasks better and make informed decisions. It also suggests configuration parameters to streamline integration setup.

For example, it adds details to 'to-dos', clarifying tasks for more efficient completion by considering descriptions and related information. The AI Help icon allows users to regenerate or delete the context as needed.

 

Fig 4: SAP LeanIX AI-Generated Context

 

AI-Supported Translation

For organisations with an international presence, AI-supported translation lets administrators add and translate labels and help texts for new and existing attributes in the meta model. This ensures fact sheet attributes are available in multiple languages, enhancing user experience. Bulk translation, as with the other features we've discussed today, saves time and maintains consistency.

 

C-Suite Architecture Recommendations

One of the standout features of AI-Assistant is undoubtedly its executive level recommendations reporting feature, which upon executing an AI-prompt, generates a concise list of low hanging fruit recommendations based on pre-selected applications, which can then be presented back to decision makers for review.

Conclusion

AI integration in SAP LeanIX presents a transformative opportunity for organisations managing their enterprise architecture. By leveraging AI capabilities within SAP LeanIX tools, enterprise architects and transformation managers can significantly reduce the time spent on low-value tasks, enhancing collaboration between themselves and other IT and Business teams. AI streamlines the governance of architecture and technology, improves the quality of analysis with real-time data, ensures compliance and improves consistency and standardisation.

AI also allows organisations to automate routine tasks, where users can direct their energy and enthusiasm on strategic activities that drive true value. With the SAP LeanIX AI-Assistant, organisations gain a powerful co-pilot that enhances efficiency, accuracy, and proactive decision-making in application rationalisation. While there is some scope to further integrate full AI-driven capabilities, the current benefits already significantly empower organisations to accelerate their EAM and S/4HANA transformation projects.

If you would like to know more about SAP LeanIX and AI can help kick-start your EAM or S/4HANA transformation journey, get in touch with us today.