Continuous Process Improvement Using SAP Signavio Insights

For a company to be successful, they need to evaluate their processes regularly for compliance, customer service and effectiveness. Implementing Continuous Improvement (CI) processes will create the ability for a business to adjust quickly and effortlessly to changing marketplace conditions, internal business issues and continually evolving customer requirements.

SAP Signavio provides organisations with the analysis, tools and methods to support a CI mindset. By offering an integrated platform that enables organisations to create process models, perform event-level analysis (Digital Twin), assess digital performance (KPIs), organisations can monitor their processes in almost real-time and take action based on what they are learning from it. Using SAP Signavio to implement CI will allow an organisation to move from reactive problem solving toward proactive optimisation. Continuous Improvement allows organisations to create sustained operational excellence (OE) and long-term Business Value (BV).

Understanding Continuous Process Improvement

The process of continuous process improvement allows organizations to improve their current processes by continually working to eliminate waste or duplication of effort while increasing the efficiency and quality of the process output. Unlike transformational projects, which often result in a complete overhaul of an organization’s processes, continuous improvement is based upon incremental change.

The four principles associated with continuous improvement are:

• A regular method of measuring and assessing the performance of processes.
• Identifying the causes of waste and inefficient processes.
• Using an iterative process for optimizing and refining processes.
• Involving multiple functions in the design and implementation of processes.

SAP Signavio enables organizations to monitor how their processes perform over time, allowing them to create baseline measurements to track their improvement over time. Continuous improvement creates an environment of responsibility and learning, which results in organizations maintaining alignment with their own needs and evolving their processes continuously to meet their organization’s and business needs.

Gaining Insights Through Process Mining

The foundation for Continuous Improvement is Process Mining. Through the use of System Data, Process Mining will provide objective insight into how things are actually being performed. Through Mining, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence enables organizations to find the inefficiencies in their business processes that are undetectable by older types of analytical methodologies.

Process Mining provides the following types of insights:

1. identification of hidden bottlenecks and delays
2. identification of process deviations and rework
3. ability to identify process variants
4. measurement of performance generally across cases

By identifying the process inefficiencies, organizations can prioritize their investments in Improvement initiatives based on their assessed impact. In other words, SAP Signavio will connect the findings of process Mining in a manner that allows organizations to easily move from what it Looks Like to what It Is. As a result of the data-driven approach of Process Mining, organizations can make improvement decisions based on actual Operating Conditions rather than perceived issues related to Operating Conditions. Thus, through the use of Process Mining, an organization can optimize its processes faster and more accurately.

Monitoring Process Performance with KPIs

Measuring performance is essential to the continuous improvement process. SAP Signavio provides organizations with a means of establishing their KPIs in relation to process activities and monitoring them for effectiveness and alignment with business goals and priorities.

Common Process KPIs may include but are not limited to:

• Cycle Time and Throughput;
• Exception and Rework Rates;
• Compliance/Conformance levels; and
• Cost and Resource Utilization

With SAP Signavio, organizations can monitor their KPIs (real-time versus historical), follow trends and detect issues early on. By correlating KPIs to specific process activities, organizations are better able to identify opportunities for improvement. Performance monitoring enables organizations to effectively transform their improvement initiatives into measurable achievements. By consistently tracking their KPIs, organizations can ensure they remain accountable and are equipped to make sound decisions.

Identifying Root Causes and Improvement Opportunities

Sustainable improvement is only possible when the root cause of a problem is identified. Without knowing what caused a problem, a company may wind up treating the symptoms repeatedly, rather than the true causes. The analytical tools available in SAP Signavio assist you in completing root cause analyses.

The information gained from a root cause analysis will help you to:

1. Understand why certain deviations occur,
2. Identify the inefficiencies of your system on a continuous basis,
3. Assess the overall impact of your processes on the business,
4. Prioritize the high-value improvements that will benefit multiple stakeholders.

By investigating process variants and bottlenecks, as well as correlation analysis, you can identify not just where a problem exists, but also why that problem exists. Drill-down capabilities within SAP Signavio provide the ability to perform detailed analysis on direct contributors to the problem including: system behaviour, resource constraints, compliance gaps, etc. As a result, you will have better insight into root causes, allowing you to focus on creating targeted and effective corrective actions. Targeted action reduces waste in your processes, while increasing the potential for continued process improvement stability over time.

Designing and Implementing Targeted Improvements

The identification of improvement opportunities is the first critical step to be taken within your organization before any changes can be made; the second step is to guide you through the process of evaluating the identified improvement opportunities and determining what changes are appropriate based on their relative importance.

There are many different types of improvement designs that can be created, including:

• Improving workflow efficiency through redesign;
• Removing duplicate work;
• Utilizing standard best practices for consistency;
• Utilizing automation where feasible.

By utilizing SAP Signavio’s capability to simulate future states, organizations are able to assess potential impacts before making changes, which allows organizations to reduce risks and become more confident in their decisions. Involving stakeholders in the improvement design process will increase both the likelihood of adoption and alignment. Focused improvements will ensure that your organization delivers tangible benefits from changes made without negatively impacting operations.

Embedding Continuous Improvement into Daily Operations

Integrating sustainable improvement within your daily operations, rather than through isolated efforts, is essential for true sustainability. SAP Signavio allows organizations to achieve this through the provision of ongoing visibility and actionable insights into their operations.

By becoming part of regular operations, businesses can conduct performance reviews on a periodic basis and continuously monitor critical operational processes. Furthermore, businesses are able to develop feedback loops to record ideas they receive regarding process improvement opportunities and how to align with overall business goals.

SAP Signavio allows teams to more quickly identify issues and respond prior to them becoming disruptive events, thereby increasing their agility. Integrating the principle of continuous improvement into your routine workflows develops an overall culture of responsibility among all levels of the company, creating a long-term environment that will produce ongoing productive and resilient operations throughout the company.

Supporting Compliance and Risk Management

Improving continuously must also take into consideration both risk and compliance when trying to optimize opportunities without introducing new vulnerabilities into their operations. SAP Signavio incorporates both risk and compliance into all of their continuous improvement projects.

Compliance supports include:

1. Monitoring to assure that controls are being complied with;
2. Identifying non-compliance variants;
3. Supporting a company’s audit-ready status;
4. Proactively managing risk.

By embedding compliance monitoring within process monitoring, companies can maintain control over the compliance of their processes while simultaneously enhancing efficiency. By using (SAP Signavio), companies can ensure that process improvements are in accordance with both local and national compliance requirements and, therefore, will be able to balance agility with governance. Furthermore, through the continual monitoring of compliance, companies will mitigate risk and enhance the level of operational trust.

Conclusion

To achieve sustainable business success, organizations must implement processes for Continuous Process Improvements (CPI). Organizations can leverage the tools, insights and transparency provided by SAP Signavio to integrate CI into their day-to-day operations.

With the ability to utilize process mining, performance monitoring and collaborative modeling, organizations can continuously evolve process optimization in a confident manner. SAP Signavio helps an organization transition from a reactive approach to problem solving into an active approach towards achieving operational excellence. Organizations position themselves to be resilient, agile and able to generate value long-term.