Transformation at Scale: Lessons from North American CIOs Using Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe Together

Scaling transformation with Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe means maximizing mega transformation plans to deliver tangible outcomes at an enterprise scale. North American CIOs deploying these tools at scale align processes, map complex architecture, and prepare users to utilize new digital workflows. As we deploy all three tools at scale we are learning some simple lessons.

What Each Tool Brings to the Table

Signavio Enterprise Scaling

Signavio is more than a process modeling tool; at scale in an enterprise, it becomes the nervous system for how a company perceives and governs its business operations. Signavio enterprise scale means deploying the process modeling, process mining, and process management capabilities Signavio has to offer across hundreds of departments, geographies, and systems. Instead of the Mosaic framework of Visio charts or discrete SOP documents, the CIO gets a single, living map of how work really flows through the enterprise.

When coupled with its process mining capabilities, Signavio utilizes live system-level data to illustrate where bottlenecks and redundancies occur in real-time. This is significant for North American CIOs wrestling with regulatory compliance issues, mergers, or SAP S/4HANA migrations, as CIO’s can assess the as-is to the to-be process at scale and track conformance throughout the lifecycle. Signavio also affords an opportunity for benchmarking against a comparable plant, branch, or business unit so leadership knows in what area to intervene. It is this foundation that was underscored when SAP integrated Signavio with LeanIX: process transparency is a prerequisite to scaling transformation.

There is no successful modernization, cloud move, or enterprise-wide standardization in the absence of process transparency. Transformation lacks substance and becomes hopscotch.

LeanIX CIO Insights

LeanIX provides CIO insights by converting a challenging IT into a straightforward, decisive, actionable map. Within large North American enterprises, there can be over 1,000 applications, and many are either duplicated or have poor integration. LeanIX produces an enterprise architecture repository linking applications to business capabilities, processes, and costs. This repository is not a generic listing, it is a live dashboard for CI decision making.

CIOs can assess what systems are critical, risky, expensive, and little-used. Modeling what-if scenarios: what happens if we turn off this app? Consolidate these databases? Move this workload to the cloud? This type of visibility is crucial for ERP migrations, corporate mergers, or to cut back on costs.

All of this research process, projects, at the same time LeanIX was feeding directly into Signavio. Processes documented in Signavio could connect back to systems documented in LeanIX, so leaders can see end-to-end decisions, process mapping, and architectural decisions simultaneously.

This is in part, the rationale for SAP acquiring LeanIX: to help their customers to a system and process transformation simultaneously and not in a separate project stream. For CIO’s, this is a way to convert architecture knowledge to a business advantage.

WalkMe Enterprise Adoption

The use of WalkMe to enable enterprise adoption ultimately hinges on successfully translating architectural clarity and process redesign into ongoing employee behaviors and actions on a day-to-day basis. In many organizations across North America, once new systems or workflows are rolled out, we have observed that adoption tends to lag: employees stick to old habits and/or get lost in a complex system of interfaces, wasting time and degrading the ROI.

WalkMe provides a solution in a digital adoption technology. WalkMe delivers these adoption capabilities by overlaying guidance directly inside of applications, as well as walking users through the steps necessary to accomplish tasks and showing tooltips or automating the series of repetitive steps.

Along with the overlay for employee guidance, WalkMe tracks user behavior at scale so that CIOs can understand what processes or features are underused or not used at all, and why. This data can help inform more efficiency back into Signavio and LeanIX. For example, was the process poorly designed or maybe the interface is too complex?

In addition to giving visibility into employee usage, WalkMe also can enable CIOs to compress training costs – no more multi-day, in-classroom training of employees every time a new system gets rolled out. Instead, what will happen is employees will learn in the flow of work.

For CIOs who are under pressure to demonstrate results, WalkMe is the insurance policy. WalkMe will provide employees with an overlay to new systems to help them actually use and get value from the new digital environment individually and across the organization.

Why CIOs Use Them Together for Enterprise Scaling

CIOs in North America face the burden of delivering major transformations, ERP upgrades, mergers, regulatory changes, cloud migrations. Collectively leveraging Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe supports CIOs in many ways:

Business-IT alignment: Process models (via Signavio) link to system inventories and application maps (via LeanIX). CIOs and business leaders begin seeing how processes relate to the workplace reality.

Better decisions in migrations / modernization: For example, when migrating to SAP S/4HANA, understanding what applications are used, what processes underpin them, and what to retire phase out or rearchitect significantly cuts risk and cost. SAP’s acquisition of LeanIX just goes to reinforce the importance of this.

Maximizing ROI via adoption: Even when processes are mapped and improved and s are rationalized, if staff are not using/adopting the new systems and workflows, value is lost. WalkMe’s digital adoption solution closes that gap. The WalkMe State of Digital Adoption reports indicate that enterprises are losing tens of millions (e.g., ~$104M in 2024) because tools are not fully adopted.

Continuous improvement: Once processes are established in Signavio and the architecture is in LeanIX, WalkMe provides feedback to the CIO about where users are experiencing obstacles. This continues the process of identifying inefficiencies in the process and weaknesses in the training process, then iterate.

Challenges and Best Practices

Scaling transformation with Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe has its challenges. Those CIOs who are successful typically follow some practices; those who do not often miss these practices.

Challenges:

• Data quality: Organizations often have outdated or inaccurate mappings of applications, processes, or systems. If the underlying data is bad, there is no value in relying on Signavio or LeanIX outputs.
• Resistance of organization: People in the organization want to maintain the status quo; process owners or system owners often view tools as new overhead.
• Tool silos or overlapping functionality: The tools may not map onto each other well, resulting in duplications with the functional owners not clear on what tool owns the data (process vs system vs UI guidance).
• Competing costs and resources: Licensing, staffing, change management, and more can bring obstacles; this implementation can potentially be costly.

Best Practices:

• Start small: Start with a couple of clear processes or domains that are critical for mapping and improving; get some easy wins, then grow from those.
• Executives must participate: CIO plus business leaders must provide sponsorship to the improvement efforts.
• Define governance: Strong governance should be in place so that clear ownership over process maps, data inventory of subject matter can be articulated, and metrics for adoption can be defined.
• Integrate tools/feedback loops: WalkMe data can inform process redesign in Signavio, and LeanIX can show system rationalization.
• Focus on the user experience: Organizations need to move the needle past the fact the organization’s process/system has changed, and ensure users know this, and find informational value in the process.