I am happy to announce that today we have published the 5th release of our Business Flows. With 11 Domains, 170 End-to-End Scenarios and 475 BPMN processes as well as many other features I am convinced that Business Flows now has matured to a comprehensive Business Transformation Framework. Since our last release in April 2019, the core topics we have worked on are:
SAP Scope items
Forecast to plan
Hire to retire
ARIBA scenarios
We are curious to receive your feedback. Why not discuss the new concept and content live at our customer event on the 26th of September in Darmstadt - so save the date and come to exchange on how business transformation is a capability, not a project!
SAP Best Practices / Scope items
In Business Flows Release 5 we have now tackled this highly relevant topic.
SAP Activate - the implementation methodology recommended by SAP for HANA - it is strongly recommended to use the best practice content (provided online or in the SAP Solution Manager) for the discovery and explore phases.
Main element of these best practices are the scope items: Scope items are self-contained and bring their own list of building blocks that need to be activated in order to implement the scope item.
Fig. 1 examples how scope items are mapped to end-to-end scenarios and processes in Business Flows
The process character of scope items provided by SAP vary. Some represent an end-to-end scenario (i.e. J45 - Procurement of direct materials), some a functional collection of processes (i.e. BDQ - Invoice Correction Process with Debit Memo) some a mix of both (i.e. J60 - Accounts payable). This can make sense for their purpose of scoping the SAP solution but doesn't make it easy in mapping them into our process framework. In Business Flows we have therefore created an own object type for the SAP Scope items and have mapped them to the relevant end-to-end scenarios and processes. See examples in Fig. 1.
Each scope item has a link to further details documented on the SAP site.
We see the main use cases of this mapping:
Business context - Scope items are not always simple to understand for business, the map provides a better context
Identify fit/gaps - Business Flows covers a much wider business scope whereas the scope items are limited to a specific best practice scope (i.e. scope of SAP HANA Cloud)
The above means, that a ‘gap’ is only to be interpreted as a gap in ‘best practice’ coverage. It is highly possible, that SAP provides a standard functionality for the processes. This is then something to specify (and document) in further system design steps.
Forecast to plan (F2Pl)
Fig 2. New Forecast-to-plan (F2Pl) scenario clusters
Our Business Flows reference model is now enhanced with content for the Forecast to Plan domain (F2Pl). The underlying structure of F2Pl domain is a reference planning landscape for manufacturing industry. This landscape connects planning of production, procurement and distribution with demand planning via the bridging master planning cluster.
To better understand this new domain, please visit our website and watch the short intro video.
Hire to retire (H2R)
Fig 3. New Hire-to-retire (H2R) scenario clusters
Hire to Retire (H2R) encompasses core processes for Human Resource Management (HRM) including employee recruiting, employee on-boarding, payroll, and benefits administration. H2R domain also covers human resource strategy topics such as employer branding and alumni management.
H2R scenario clusters
This new domain H2R enriches Business Flows with reference processes that help customers scope their operating models for HRM. Moreover, organisations looking to set-up HRM systems will benefit from the reference processes in H2R, since they accelerate requirements collection and test case definition during implementation projects.
ARIBA scenarios
Fig 4. New portal supported procurement scenarios (ARIBA)
The expectation of fast reaction times and access to real time inventory, pricing and distribution data is rapidly growing and becoming a burden for stakeholders who have traditionally relied on manual processes to manage their procurement processes and transactions with suppliers.
To meet the rising demand for e-procurement solutions, we included two portal supported procurement scenarios in context with indirect as well as direct purchasing:
P2P Procurement of indirect materials via catalogue/vendor portal (self-invoicing)
An internal catalogue system/external vendor portal is set up including pre-negotiated product portfolio, prices and conditions. The requester selects the required products and initiates an approval workflow.
P2P Procurement of direct materials via SAP Ariba
This scenario describes procurement activities where the SAP Ariba network is used to outsource the integration with the vendor's system and to facilitate all transactions and document exchanges.
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