SAP Process Intelligence

Process Mining and Process Intelligence as Strategic Tools in the SAP Ecosystem

Tools like Six Sigma and Lean have for decades illustrated how eliminating inefficiencies in business processes help reduce operating cost and improve return on investment (ROI). The advent of process mining, which sits at the intersection of business process management (BPM) and data mining, and the resulting process intelligence, are powerful tools leveraged by companies to find process inefficiencies bottlenecks and optimize their processes.

Process Mining and Process Intelligence as Strategic Tools in the SAP Ecosystem

Tools like Six Sigma and Lean have for decades illustrated how eliminating inefficiencies in business processes help reduce operating cost and improve return on investment (ROI). The advent of process mining, which sits at the intersection of business process management (BPM) and data mining, and the resulting process intelligence, are powerful tools leveraged by companies to find process inefficiencies bottlenecks and optimize their processes.

What are Process Mining and Process Intelligence?

At a high level, process mining combines data mining and advanced analytics to discover, validate, and improve business process workflows. Combining these two, 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 question that technology executives consistently have at the top of their mind, irrespective of where they are in their S/4HANA journey, is how to maximize the value from 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 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 S/4HANA migration.

How Tools like Process Mining and Process Intelligence Can Help in an 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 generated 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:

• Generating an accurate business value assessment for SAP S/4HANA migration through 360-degree process visibility and artificial intelligence-enabled fit-gap analysis.
• Mitigating 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.