Data is the New Oil
“Data is the new Oil”, is a phrase that might resonate with many people. The products which play in this field have seen a significant upside if they prove their value. Most of us have seen how Snowflake’s stock doubled during the IPO in the last year.
SAP has embraced a similar approach in its position on Cloud, whether it is Infrastructure, Platform, or Saas (Software as a Service).
In this blog, I would like to shed some light on another upcoming Product – “Celonis”. Celonis plays in the area of Process Mining. It collects the data related to the events that occur in the Business and then creates a Process Map for that Business. Once the insights are gathered, one can leverage the Celonis Execution Management System (EMS) tool to identify if the inefficiencies are a limitation of the process or the underlying IT system. EMS also provides the ability to automate steps and actions using AI capabilities.
Perception vs Reality
The Process Mapping is intriguing, as the outcome helps in identifying the reality in comparison to the perception and also what percentage of the process deviates from the ideal state.
A quick descrition of an outcome from Process Mapping
After installing the tool in SAP Landscape one can quickly gather the results and slice/dice the steps to view the deviations. The best part is one doesn’t have to be a technology expert to identify the business anomalies in the Technology Landscape. If you are a CIO or Business Relationship Manager focused on empowering your Business Users to analyze the process inefficiencies, this could be a good starting point.
Operationalize the tool
As a part of Operationalization, one builds dashboards and creates alerts in the action engine. The biggest benefit is the ability to experiment with a process change idea in weeks/months vs yearly (in the Traditional IT world).
The data can be analyzed by multi-functional teams including Business / IT and the team could agree on an outcome, measure KPI’s ( few which were intangible before), and set alerts using the Action Engine.
Well, it seems simple and easy, right? The question around challenging the teams (both Business & IT) to discover the problem statement and ideate toward reaching the future desired state is still a process related challenge. For a CIO, maximizing the value out of the tool still needs a process for adoption and scale.
Design Thinking – As Process to Aid
This process, originating and popularized by d.school at Stanford,
is a quick and effective method for clearly defining both an important business problem, and a tested prototype.
In this context, it would be testing a Process Change using the Celonis tool.
Design Thinking provides the opportunity to observe the end-users, visualize the change process discovered via Celonis. Further interviewing the end-users would uncover any systemic issues in the process.
It also creates an open dialog between your business’ end-users, process owners, and IT counterparts. Most importantly, all the participants acknowledge the problem statement collectively and can share their point of view. It creates a future state which is the best of both Business and IT worlds.
With a little process around Operationalization, one would unlock great value using the tool. SAP Ecosystem is at a point where it can change to the need of the business, at the speed needed by the business.
Whether one uses a manual approach or a Celonis tool, or a tool like Mindset App Analyzer, or all of the above, the important piece of the process is the feedback mechanism to iterate and improve the process to achieve the desired end results.
Getting into action
Here is a quick cheat sheet to get into action using Celonis.
Steps:
- Discover
- Analyze the business process data
- Articulate the desired business KPI’s
- Identify process deviations
- Identify systematic issues that need a holistic approach
- Discuss and ideate the future state KPI’s and process maps
- Operationalize
- Build skills in action engine to trigger rules, update teams, etc.
- Set up automation to trigger actions to enhance a process.
- Measure
- Observe the KPI’s in the transformation center and iterate on the feedback loop.
Participants:
- End users Impacted by the business process
- Business process owners
- IT Governance Specialist
- Program sponsor
- Mindset Design Thinking coach
Outcomes:
- Identify key KPI’s
- Define the desired future state of the process
- Measure the process changes and pivot early if needed – increasing business responsiveness
To summarize I will use a photography-based analogy. One may have the world’s best DSLR camera with 40MP, Burst Speed at 7ps, higher ISO, and all the other great features. However, to capture a perfect photograph one needs to adopt a technique to balance the color, the lighting, framing centering, view-point balance. But more importantly, you should check the result after you set up your shot, rather than just setting all the settings and hoping for the best. Not everyone can be Jim Brandenburg (not even Jim Brandenburg) – Chased by the Light – A 90 Day Journey
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