In this blog post, you will learn about the key architecture elements of the SAP Signavio suite, including integrations, data flow, and BPMN notations.
Let’s first discuss the key applications included within SAP Signavio. SAP Signavio Suite consists of key applications, including process intelligence, process insights, process manager, collaboration hub, journey modeler, process governance, and one process layer. These applications leverage the same platform and can interact with each other to provide a seamless user experience.
Integration with SAP S/4HANA
As shown in the figure below, the SAP Signavio Process Insights is a cloud-based application that runs on SAP Business Technology Platform. The key characteristic of SAP Signavio Process Insights is to bring in real-time insights from the process performance of the ERP system. Therefore, it becomes essential to orchestrate a live connection with the productive ERP system, which is enabled with the ST-PI plug-in, as demonstrated in the figure. Once the connection is established, raw data can be consumed by the process insights backend, which runs on SAP HANA Cloud. Relevant performance metrics can be visualized by the SAP Signavio Process Insights frontend.
Data Flow
There are several use cases in which data needs to be moved around to extract the key insights from the existing processes and applications.
Data Flow with SAP Signavio Process Insights
SAP Signavio Process Insights can be integrated with SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA systems. Once a connection has been established, real-time PPIs can be viewed within the process insights application. Refer to the previous figure for more details on the connection settings.
Data Flow with SAP Signavio Process Intelligence
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence orchestrates the mining of the key processes executed by software applications such as ERP or line of business applications. To perform the process analysis, process intelligence needs process data, which can be provided by the various methods described next.
First, you need to create a process within SAP Signavio Process Intelligence so that relevant data points can be uploaded. Once the process has been created, the following options are available to upload process data:
- Upload by CSV or XES files manually
- Leverage API to upload data
- Leverage an ETL tool to get data from the source
Data Flow with SAP Signavio Process Manager
SAP Signavio Process Manager can be integrated with the following:
- SAP ERP, via SAP Solution Manager
- The enterprise architecture management tool LeanIX (for process factsheets)
- Your document management service (to import dictionary entities)
- SAP Signavio Process Collaboration Hub
Your ERP system’s integration is leveraged to ensure that the process definition remains in sync. Integration of SAP Signavio Process Manager with SAP Solution Manager can ensure that business users are engaged in the SAP implementation and operations. The figure below shows the key integration scenarios. At a high level, executable transactions and the process step library from SAP Solution Manager can be imported into the process manager as dictionary entities. In addition, BPMN diagrams can be imported into SAP Solution Manager as processes and process steps from the process manager to keep process definitions in sync with the business reality.
The next figure shows the technical details behind the integration of SAP Solution Manager and SAP Signavio Process Manager.
SAP Signavio Process Manager with Business Process Model and Notation
Business process model and notation can be described as the modeling standard to map business processes by representing them in a graphical format. The key characteristic of BPMN is that it makes it easy for the key stakeholders to talk and communicate in the same fashion regarding business processes. The latest version, BPMN 2.0, leverages swim lanes for modeling, which are enabled by events, gateways, and business activities.
SAP Signavio Process Manager supports BPMN 2.0 modeling, which makes it easier to define activities, control flow, organizational elements, and data flow. SAP Signavio Process Manager makes it simpler to model via BPMN thanks to capabilities such as drag and drop, automatic adjustments, and addition of key performance metrics.
The below figure depicts these and other SAP Signavio Process Manager components.
SAP Signavio is committed to adhering to BPMN 2.0 standards and promotes BPMN actively to simplify management of the business processes repository. Now let’s discuss key building blocks of BPMN:
- Swim lanes: Swim lanes leverage the concept of pools and lanes to demonstrate organizational boundaries and participants for the processes.
- Activities: Activities are the actual actions that are taken by process participants.
Subprocesses of BPMN include:
- Events: Events describe signals, such as starting and ending a process.
- Connectors: Connectors are used to connect activities with each other.
- Association: Associations are used to connect text annotations and data objects.
- Gateways: Gateways are used to embed business decisions into processes.
- Artifacts: Artifacts describe the data objects produced by business processes.
- IT systems: The IT system is specific to SAP Signavio and is used to describe IT applications involved in executing a specific activity.
- Additional participants: Sometimes more than one role is required to execute or support an activity. Additional participants are an SAP Signavio-specific extension that show the involvement of participants beyond the main participants.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the E-Bite Introducing Business Process Transformation with SAP Signavio by Gerry McCool and Nitin Singh.
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