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Bizagi + SAP: Why integrate?Adding value to your ERP through Business Process Management

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Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?

Contents

We already have SAP. Why do I need a BPMS? 3

How does BPMS add value to SAP? 4

SAP + BPM: The Bizagi Way 5

Bizagi SAP Connector 6

Customer Stories & Testimonials 7

Can SAP do it all?

As a SAP user, you rely on this common corporate database to carry out your critical daily work. As a central ‘system of record’, its capabilities and power are beyond doubt.

But let us ask you this: does SAP manage all your end-to-end processes the way you want? Are you able to make process changes quickly and easily and at acceptable cost? If not, then read on: Bizagi could make things a lot easier for you.

Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?3

We already have SAP. Why do I need a BPMS?

In terms of supplying all the tools and data to manage core business transactions, SAP’s capabilities are beyond doubt. SAP was also built on process best practices. However, SAP customers tell us that it is probably easier, and less expensive, to change your processes to adapt to SAP, rather than the other way around.

Doesn’t it sound absurd? The real-world need for flexibility and quick adaptation to change may not be reflected in your current SAP investment.

Not convinced? Think what happens when you want to change, expand or fix your processes. This may require information from external systems for further processing, or need deep and complex integration with your SAP environment. More than likely, it’s a complex, code-intensive job involving your IT department. And the worst part? You can do all this, only to lose your customization efforts the next time you upgrade.

The fact is: if you need to innovate fast, SAP simply isn’t designed for the job.

Your IT department is overburdened with SAP modification requests,

leading to bottlenecks and delays on business-critical projects

Projects need to be deployed fast and e�iciently, to manage

regulatory changes or new business goals to improve

e�iciency or customer service

You need to connect with mobile devices and/or cloud-based apps

Extending, integrating, customizing plus upgrading

customized SAP versions is costly

Lack of visibility into SAP’s data structures and sequences makes it

hard to see what’s connected to what - and how to make productive changes

5 signs when you need to complement your SAP with BPMS

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Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?

Greater adaptability In our busy corporate world, events happen on a daily basis that need to be reflected in our processes. NFor example, growing businesses may need to change the authorization procedures but this can’t be easily reflected in the rigid SAP system. This can lead to workarounds, duplication and silos with all the undesirable bottom-line impacts. The joy of a BPMS is that business stakeholders can implement these changes themselves through a flexible integration layer; the change is embedded within the process, and procedures continue to flow – all while maintaining the integrity of the core SAP system.

Cost & time savingsWhether updating a process or creating a new one, SAP users will most often require information from external systems to be processed further in the ERP. The problem is, involving several systems, puts the onus on users to update each one separately which is very inefficient and error prone – with all the detrimental knock-on effects. A BPMS can act as a ‘process glue’, pointing the process to be changed towards all its different data points without replicating the data itself. The result of this is seamless and very fast integration without the need to rekey information, enabling the business to adapt quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.

How does BPMS add value to SAP?Your ERP manages all your core business transactions and if the process you are concerned about is stable, managed end-to-end by ERP there is no need for BPMS. However, if this process is broken, then adding BPMS can deliver value.

Lower IT burdenRelated to the above point: all necessary changes in SAP are traditionally done come by the IT department or are outsourced to a consultant since they are the only people with the required programming skills. This can work out very expensive and prevent IT from focusing on other tasks. By taking a no-code approach, the BPM provider enables business users to take the lead on process change and spreads the load across the departments where change needs to be made. A graphical interface makes it easy to set up the required touch-points with the SAP system, enabling flexible changes to take place quickly and avoiding bottlenecks.

Improved mobilityToday’s users want to reach out to mobile from their ERP systems, whether accessing expenses information, updating customer records or viewing reports. Typically SAP screens are very complex, slow and cumbersome, displaying loads of information not relevant to the task. BPM systems on the other hand are designed to make the user journey as simple and clean as possible, not only displaying optimally on any device of the users’ choice, but displaying only the necessary information to complete the task - essential for time-pressed business users.

Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?5

Key benefits of adding a BPMS to SAP infrastructure

• Save time and money through better process orchestration• Develop custom process applications based on visual models• Exchange data across SAP and non-SAP applications• Automate decisions and ensure compliance with policies

To conclude: Combining your SAP investment with a BPM solution can help improve the visibility, flexibility, agility and control of your SAP processes.

The result: the ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience, reduce costs, and optimize business performance. So how do we do it?

SAP + BPM: The Bizagi WayAs businesses grow, their systems expand exponentially – from legacy systems to SAP, SharePoint to apps, there are more systems to connect with than ever before. What Bizagi BPMS does is provide the ‘process glue’ that brings all your systems together.

Not only that, it delivers the easy to use interface that allows business users to visualize all their processes and implement the process changes with minimal coding, so this can be often done by business people.

Bizagi’s SAP integration follows the exact same principle. Through a Connector, business users can query, create or update SAP records directly, from any part of their BPM system, and interact with any SAP module, from ERP and CRM through to Financials, Accounting, Sales or Distribution. Using our graphical mapping tools, all this can be easily installed and managed without any coding skills.

SAP alone cannot drive business change, but you can ‘supercharge’ it through BPM. Our short video explains more about how it works.

Bizagi operates a “freemium” business model, our SAP Connector with our free Suite allows you to build business processes that take full advantage of the SAP assets many companies already have. This is asset re-use for delivering greater business efficiency providing good governance, in any organisation.

This is where Bizagi BPMS can add value. We can connect SAP business transactions with other applications or processes in a matter of weeks. We’re not trying to replace your investments, but to leverage them. With the agile ‘process wrapper’ placed around the standard SAP application, you gain easy and cost effective connectivity, delivering real-time access to information direct from the process, or vice versa.

Think of Bizagi as a very flexible process glue to fix broken processes.

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Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?

Bizagi SAP ConnectorAs part of Release 10.6 of Bizagi Studio, Bizagi have introduced an out-of-the-box SAP connector. Through Bizagi Modeler, business users can configure all the touch points between their processes and the SAP system, and create customizable processes to handle any exceptions that occur during the invocation of SAP BAPIs.

The connector creates a standard interface to the applications and data on the SAP server, so that Bizagi does not have to understand the lower-level details on the SAP server; i.e how the application or the data structures are implemented. Through the SAP connector, users configures their processes to invoke BAPI wrappers to either query, create or update records directly in SAP.

Bizagi SAP

Bizagi - SAP Connector

RFC

(SAP .NET / SAP JCO)

BAPI SAP / R3

Benefits of using Bizagi’s SAP Connector:

★★ Low-code - SAP integration is configured by using graphical mapping features for SAP inputs and outputs, avoiding the need of programming

★★ Robust - The SAP connector features a powerful capability to configure error handling. Through this option a user may configure special routing and treatment for functional errors (SAP exceptions predefined at the BAPI).

★★ Secure - the SAP connector authenticates directly with an authorized SAP user, instead of delegating security to an organization’s web service setup. Often, creating the correct configuration for the web service setup requires more time to achieve, as achieving the right balance of security, (which is not too restrictive to cause issues nor too permissive to be prone to vulnerabilities) can take time, and such configuration does not provide the same maintainability advantages.

★★ Performance - the SAP connector offers enhanced performance due to the RFC connection it uses, instead of going over HTTP/HTTPS.

How adidas group eliminated 1m emails through SAP integration

Discover Seamless SAP integration – the Bizagi Way

Watch Benefits of SAP + Bizagi video

Discover

Copyright © 2002-2015 Bizagi. All rights reserved.

Bizagi + SAP: Why Integrate?7

Customer Stories & Testimonials

“I am very satisfied with Bizagi as a process glue solution. The tool is fast and gives us opportunity to integrate with other systems within our company,

creating a very good network for business plus reducing workload for countries.

Manager of Finance Consumer DirectSenior Manager Performance Improvement, adidas

Case study: adidas Group

By connecting to SAP, the global sportswear brand has improved efficiencies in many areas of its business, including:

• Accounts payable - staff can execute multiple real-time transactions, quickly.

• PO Change Management - here, people register a purchase order (PO) in SAP. This “calls” Bizagi and hands over the approval process of the said PO, while updating the status of the PO in SAP. Once this process is finished, Bizagi returns the PO to SAP and continues its flow there. This simple step has eliminated around 1m emails per year for the PO team.

Want to learn more?