The SAP BPM Framework was used by the VNSG BPM focus group to perform a BPM check at several SAP customers in order to determine the relevant topics for the future SAP BPM focus group meetings and the SAP BPM theme days.
Several SAP customers in the Netherlands were invited to participate in a workshop of 2 hours with 16 questions. Every question represented a BPM topic of the SAP BPM Framework.
Every question created awareness of the use of the BPM within the business departments and the use of BPM within the SAP Competence Centre. The results of every workshop was captured in a 4*4 SAP BPM matrix in which the issues were detailed why this customer was not completely utilizing BPM or SAP BPM.
The results of SAP BPM check at SAP customers
The main results of the SAP BPM check were the following:
- Business improvement initiatives are initiated from the business units with limited use of SAP BPM tooling and support of the SAP CC.
- The communication and understanding of strategic business objectives within the SAP CC and the SAP functional process experts should be improved.
- The autonomy of the SAP competence center is changing and the influence of the business on the priorities within the SAP CC is growing.
- The need for business agility is clear within the SAP CC but the solution is found in outsourcing and optimizing current way of working and not in applying BPM.
- The understanding of holistic BPM is low within the SAP management team and there is a limited need to develop a SAP BPM strategy.
- The sense of BPM urgency within the SAP CC is relatively low, while the SAP products, SAP methodologies and services (e.g. SAAS) are changing rapidly.
- The SAP CC has its own set of business processes and is not ready to integrate the validated standard E2E business processes within their SAP regression tests.
- The SAP consultants and SAP experts are used to the traditional way of doing SAP projects and have difficulties to adapt to the new way of thinking & working.
- The BPM(S) developments and the new ASAP 7.0 implementation methodology are not adapted by the SAP CC and are limited applied within SAP projects.
- There is no general accepted SAP BPM roadmap with an associated ROI that is used by the SAP managers to improve the support of the business units.
The main conclusions of the SAP BPM check
The most important observation was the limited alignment between the business units and the SAP Competence Centre. The operational excellence projects (e.g. GRC and Business Process Performance Optimalization) are mostly executed independently from the ERP / ICT projects.
The awareness of the SAP CC manager that the benefits of BPM increases when the BPM deliverables are reapplied within more projects is growing, but the sense of urgency is still not big enough to reproritise the projects within their current project portfolio.
Topics to be discussed during the BPM focus group meetings in 2011
Based on the results of the BPM check the following topics will have the more attention within the SAP BPM focus group meetings:
- How to align business objectives and the ERP/ICT Competence Centre
- Alignment of Business Information Management (BIM) and SAP ERP CC
- Development of the SAP BPM Roadmap and the SAP BPM Framework
- Use of SAP / BPM tooling within all 16 topics of the BPM framework
More information can be found at:http://www.lulu.com/shop/frank-luyckx/sap-bpm-framework-customer-cases/paperback/product-20252579.html
