LeanIX undisputedly is a leading Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) Tool. The definition of EAM implies considering the whole enterprise. The core purpose of any enterprise is the creation of value for its customers and stakeholders which is based on business strategy, operating models, and business processes. Traditionally however, EAM is used more by IT departments for IT related use cases (such as application lifecycle planning) and as a result the business side of the architecture, the Business Architecture (BA), is mostly only rudimentarily considered in many EAM initiatives.
It is easy to name reasons why this is the case. The main is that defining and managing the BA is often the responsibility of a different department, following their own domain’s methodology (BPM) and especially focusing on other use cases than the IT (Compliance, Lean, OpEx, ...). To achieve this the BPM related use cases require an overarching End-to-End view on Business Processes as well as a very deep analysis of process interactions (BPMN).
Now, especially when a company engages in a large scale (digital) Business Transformation, these worlds belong together and need to work hand in hand.
There are numerous technical approaches for integrating LeanIX with BPM tools such as ARIS and Signavio. However, looking deeper into the topic, only rudimentary integration, misaligned methodology and no 'real' representation of the relevant business aspects in the LeanIX environment can be found.
In my demo I will show how these 'worlds', EAM and BPM, can be brought together and discuss the main points of this aligned methodology.
Introduce End-to-End (E2E) Business Scenarios
One key point is creating an E2E view of the Business Scenarios based on a library of actual business processes within LeanIX. I will show how this can be achieved via a dynamic interface to an external BPM system but also how LeanIX can be used in a 'stand-alone' mode by leveraging our E2E process reference library (Business Flows) in LeanIX. One of the most obvious benefits of having E2E scenarios in LeanIX is the possibility to identify possible business disruptions across functional borders. For example a typical Order-to-Cash business scenario is requires sales, logistics and financial business capabilities and can therefore be dependent on several applications.
Align Business Capabilities and Functional Process library
In an IT Architecture context Business Capabilities are used to structure and standardize the business demand and compare them with existing application portfolios. On the other hand the functional process library is used to structure the functional requirements from a process perspective and manage and standardize existing process variants. We think it makes sense to align these to structures. That means having identically named structures for Business Capabilities and Process Groups and or Clusters (depending on how many levels your hierarchy has). This automatically results in the possibility to compare existing applications and business processes on the level of Business Capabilities and identify gaps or inconsistencies when analyzing the applications being directly assigned to processes.
Business Flows reference content and SAP One Process Acceleration Layer content
The above mentioned methodology allows us to import our business reference process library and if you are specifically involved in an SAP related Business Transformation we can map and include relevant SAP One Process Acceleration Layer content. According to this SAP Blog the SAP OPAL content will be made available for LeanIX customers. The reference content includes
Business Capabilities
E2E Business Scenarios
Functional Process Library
SAP Industry Specific E2E Scenarios
SAP Scope Items
SAP Solution Capabilities
This move of SAP clearly indicates how important it is to have a more tightly aligned methodology for Business Transformations. A more detailed blog on how we include SAP OPAL content into our reference model will be available soon on our website.
Demo on Demand
If you are interested in seeing the above mentioned aspects in a live demo please register via the button below. We will schedule a 1-on-1 demo and we will demonstrate the above shown methodology and content as well how some of LeanIX's special features such as surveys, reports and especially how projects/milestones can be used to the benefit of your business transformation initiative.