Process intelligence
Booking.com and Sanofi: how AdaPro turns process knowledge into measurable results with SAP Signavio
Booking.com needed a reliable process repository with clear governance, and quickly. Sanofi needed process governance that would hold across more than 25 SAP S/4HANA go-lives and many countries. Two very different starting points, both supported by AdaPro on the basis of SAP Signavio.
Two clients, two starting points, one principle
What connects the two projects is the way of working: AdaPro builds exactly the capability the client needs for its next measurable business outcome, and closes every step with a usable result. The ten-strong core team brings years of experience in SAP transformations, process governance and process intelligence, and is directly involved in delivery. For projects through Vicoland, AdaPro operates as a Vico and extends the core team with further process, industry or SAP specialists from the Vicoland network as needed. Responsibilities, scope and collaboration stay clear for the client throughout.
Booking.com: 300 processes and governance as a completed value step
At Booking.com the engagement was deliberately limited to process modelling and governance. AdaPro supported the build-up of a repository with around 300 processes and established the accompanying governance in a short time.
With that result the agreed package was complete and had created its own standalone value. That value did not depend on a further process intelligence or process mining project following immediately. Booking.com has since had a shared target understanding of its processes, which makes further steps possible without forcing them.
“The client should hold a usable result in their hands after every package. The next step does not begin because a consulting project has to keep running, but because a further business outcome justifies it.”
Sanofi: process governance across more than 25 SAP S/4HANA go-lives
How such a capability can develop in a large organisation is shown by the long-standing collaboration with Sanofi. There, AdaPro supported more than 25 SAP S/4HANA go-lives with around 1,100 processes and integrated risk and compliance.
In an international transformation programme it is not enough to document processes once. Process models, responsibilities, governance, rollout and compliance have to work together across countries and go-lives. The capability needed for that is considerably larger and more strongly institutionalised than at Booking.com. It grew over years, go-live by go-live, without Sanofi having to build a complete transformation organisation at the outset.
The shared principle: the smallest viable capability
The same principle sits behind both projects: the minimal viable capability. It means the smallest workable combination of people, decision rights, processes, data and SAP technology that can reliably produce a defined business outcome. It starts in a small, focused team. Only once the approach works and the scope of application grows are governance, technology and organisation extended in a targeted way.
The structure of the collaboration follows from this: AdaPro works in clearly bounded packages. Each package has a clear core of work, defined prerequisites and a usable result. A further package follows only when an additional business outcome justifies it. At Booking.com it stayed at one package, at Sanofi package followed package. Both are right in the spirit of the principle.
From the closed loop to process intelligence: the possible next step
Documented processes, SAP systems, process data and improvement initiatives exist in many companies, but are rarely connected into a continuous improvement loop. AdaPro therefore thinks in a closed loop:
- Narrow down business goals and the relevant processes.
- Build process models and governance as a shared target understanding.
- Make execution data visible and analyse deviations along with their root causes.
- Prioritise improvements, implement them and measure their effect against the business outcomes.
- Feed the findings back into process models, governance and the next improvement.
With repository and governance, Booking.com and Sanofi have laid the first two steps. The possible next step is process intelligence: process mining reveals variants, bottlenecks and manual interventions that are visible in no documentation, for example in order-to-cash, purchase-to-pay or intercompany processes, where order, delivery, invoice and settlement have to fit together across several entities. On its own, however, the analysis changes no process. AdaPro therefore combines it with process knowledge, root cause analysis and concrete measures whose effect is measured against the agreed business outcomes. SAP Signavio provides the technical basis for this. What matters, though, is not introducing as many features as possible, but which capability a company actually needs for its next measurable outcome.
Which starting point fits your situation?
Not every company has to begin with process mining. Some clients, like Booking.com, first need a reliable process model. Others, like Sanofi, need governance that carries an upcoming or running SAP transformation. Where SAP systems are already productive, the next task can be to analyse process deviations and generate continuous, measurable improvements.
AdaPro therefore starts not from a given technology component but from the current situation and the client's next decisive question:
- Should we invest?
- How do we deliver the transformation successfully?
- How do we generate continuous, measurable value after go-live?
The fitting minimal viable capability emerges from that question, and from it the first completed package.