Process Automation as a Strategic Tool in the SAP S/4HANA Environment

Business processes form the backbone of how enterprises run and their level of efficiency. Efficiently managing these processes has many different aspects, and these aspects include improving process efficiency, quality, and design. The advent of process automation tools, which often encompass all three key aspects mentioned above, are increasingly popular and becoming an integral part of the portfolio of digital transformation tools that organizations leverage.

Process Automation as a Strategic Tool in the SAP S/4HANA Environment

Business processes form the backbone of how enterprises run and their level of efficiency. Efficiently managing these processes has many different aspects, and these aspects include improving process efficiency, quality, and design. The advent of process automation tools, which often encompass all three key aspects mentioned above, are increasingly popular and becoming an integral part of the portfolio of digital transformation tools that organizations leverage.

What Is Process Automation?

At a high level, process automation combines data mining, process intelligence, workflow automation, and advanced analytics to discover, validate, and improve business process workflows and tasks. Combining these into a process automation platform, companies mine log data from their systems and leverage analytics on this data to understand their processes, identify process bottlenecks, and generate additional insights. This latter part is process intelligence. Business applications, like ERP, generate an audit log of processes within their various modules. Process mining leverages these logs to build a model or flow of the process. This model can then be analyzed further for insights. Best-of-breed tools have algorithms and visualizations that not only allow users to see what happened, but also provide the tools to optimize these processes.

Criticality of SAP S/4HANA Investment

One top of mind question of technology executives, irrespective of where they are in their SAP S/4HANA journey, is how to maximize the value from their SAP S/4HANA investment? This value aspect has several components, ranging from seamless migration to post-implementation adoption and optimal usage. A key aspect of all of these components, however, is the underlying business processes. SAPinsider S/4HANA Migration Benchmark Report 2021 highlights that 48% of respondents believe that adopting best-practice business process models is the most important strategy to address drivers for SAP S/4HANA migration.

How Tools Like Process Mining and Intelligence Can Help in SAP S/4HANA Migration

The key to any successful transformation always starts with understanding the current state. And process mining solutions start playing their role at this stage, allowing you to gain a detailed understanding of the current state of your IT systems.

These insights can help organizations not only decrease their SAP S/4HANA implementation cycle, but also help manage their processes in a more optimal way post-implementation. Overall, they help minimize implementation risks as well. Benefits that these solutions generate within the SAP S/4HANA migration context include:

• Generate an accurate business value assessment for SAP S/4HANA migration through 360-degree process visibility and often artificial intelligence-enabled fit-gap analysis.
• Mitigate project risk and cost by supporting the SAP S/4HANA migration journey across all phases. This includes safeguarding the transformation post-migration through continuous process improvement.