Author’s Note
In my role leading Enterprise Architecture initiatives across SAP Global Customers, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the right toolchain can transform EA from a documentation exercise into a strategic business function. Having previously explored “How Enterprise Architects Can Unlock Strategic Value with WalkMe” and “How Enterprise Architects Can Unlock Strategic Value with SAP Signavio,” this blog completes the trilogy by integrating these perspectives with LeanIX capabilities. Together, these three tools create a comprehensive approach that Bridging between Enterprise Architects and Business Stakeholders” – from strategic planning to execution and adoption.
Introduction
Enterprise Architects are expected to be the strategic partners in business transformation. While individual tools provide valuable capabilities, the true power emerges when Enterprise Architects leverage an integrated toolchain approach. This blog demonstrates how combining LeanIX‘s architectural capabilities with Signavio‘s process intelligence and WalkMe‘s digital adoption platform creates a comprehensive ecosystem that connects business strategy to technical execution and user adoption.
By exploring five essential LeanIX capabilities enhanced by complementary Signavio and WalkMe functionalities, this blog provides Enterprise Architects with a roadmap for maximizing strategic value across the full transformation lifecycle – from documenting the current state and designing the target state to implementing changes and ensuring successful adoption. This integrated approach enables data-driven decision-making, clear stakeholder communication, and measurable business outcomes.
1. Business Capability Mapping in LeanIX
What it is:
Business Capability Mapping in (LeanIX) enables Enterprise Architects to create a structured representation of what a business does (or needs to do) to fulfill its mission, independent of how it does it. This capability provides a stable foundation for enterprise architecture that doesn’t change as frequently as processes, organizations, or technologies.
How Enterprise Architects can engage:
– Create a comprehensive business capability model that represents your organization’s core functions
– Establish a hierarchical structure with capability levels (L1, L2, L3) for appropriate granularity
– Map applications and technologies to specific business capabilities to show IT support
– Identify capability gaps where business needs lack adequate technological support
– Discover redundancies where multiple applications support the same capability
– Use capability heat maps to visualize performance and prioritize investments
– Create a common language between IT and business stakeholders
Strategic value:
– Provides a business-centric view of the enterprise that resonates with executives
– Creates stability in enterprise architecture during organizational changes
– Enables portfolio rationalization decisions based on business impact
– Facilitates more effective communication between IT and business units
– Supports investment prioritization based on strategic importance
Practical example:
A global manufacturing company used LeanIX’s Business Capability Mapping to identify that their “Product Innovation” capability was supported by 27 different applications across various business units. This discovery led to a consolidation initiative that reduced application count by 40% and created a unified innovation platform, accelerating time-to-market for new products by 35%.
Enhancing with Signavio: The manufacturing company could further enhance their capability-driven consolidation by employing SAP Signavio Process Insights and SAP Signavio Process Intelligence to analyze the actual performance of processes within the “Product Innovation” capability. This analysis would reveal which of the 27 applications were actually being used effectively and which created bottlenecks in the innovation workflow.
SAP Signavio Process Insights
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence
With this process-level insight, the Enterprise Architecture team could make more informed decisions about which applications to retain and which to phase out.
After consolidation, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help in redesigning the underlying processes to ensure they support the business capability effectively across all business units. The team could also leverage SAP Signavio Process Explorer to access reference architectures and best practices for product innovation processes that align with the consolidated application landscape, further optimizing their approach.
SAP Signavio Process Manager
Enhancing with WalkMe: To ensure successful adoption of the consolidated innovation platform, the manufacturing company could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide users through the new system, ensuring consistent usage patterns across all business units. This would be particularly valuable for users transitioning from their familiar legacy applications to the new platform.
WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus
And ,WalkMe Insights could track user behavior during the transition period, measuring adoption rates and identifying specific areas where users struggle with the new consolidated platform. This data would enable the Enterprise Architecture team to make targeted improvements and provide additional support where needed.
WalkMe Insights
Additionally, WalkMe’s Menu Organizer could structure guidance content around the “Product Innovation” capability, making it easier for users to find relevant support for their specific innovation tasks, whether they’re in product design, testing, or market analysis roles.
WalkMe’s Menu Organizer
2. Process Map in LeanIX
What it is:
Process Mapping in (LeanIX) allows Enterprise Architects to document and visualize the operational processes that execute business capabilities. While capabilities represent what a business does, processes show how the business operates and how workflows through the organization.
Mapping the process primarily involves selecting a sync mode to manage data updates and deletions, followed by configuring the synchronization hierarchy by selecting relevant SAP Signavio directories. This is done in the Basic Configuration tab of the integration configuration page in LeanIX
Process Mapping in (LeanIX)
How Enterprise Architects can engage:
– Document key business processes and their relationships to business capabilities
– Connect processes to the applications that support them
– Identify process gaps and inefficiencies in the current architecture
– Map process owners and stakeholders for better governance
– Analyze process performance based on supporting technology
– Create process hierarchies that align with capability models
– Integrate with process mining tools for deeper insights
Process Mapping in (LeanIX)
Strategic value:
– Bridges the gap between business capabilities and technical implementation
– Provides context for application rationalization decisions
– Identifies opportunities for process automation and optimization
– Supports business process reengineering initiatives
– Enables impact analysis for proposed architectural changes
Practical example:
A financial services organization used LeanIX’s Process Mapping to analyze their customer onboarding process, discovering that it spanned 12 different applications with significant manual handoffs. The Enterprise Architecture team redesigned the process architecture, reducing application touchpoints to 5 and implementing automated workflows, which reduced onboarding time from 7 days to less than 24 hours.
Enhancing with Signavio: The financial services organization could take their process improvement initiative to the next level by implementing SAP Signavio Process Intelligence to perform detailed process mining of the customer onboarding workflow. This would provide granular insights into exactly where delays occurred in the 12-application workflow, highlighting specific bottlenecks, rework loops, and manual handoffs that caused the greatest time delays.
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence
Beyond the technical process view, SAP Signavio Journey Modeler could map the customer experience during onboarding, ensuring that the technical consolidation also improved customer satisfaction and not just internal efficiency. This customer-centric perspective would help the Enterprise Architecture team prioritize improvements that matter most to clients.
SAP Signavio Journey Modeler
After implementation, SAP Signavio Process Governance could establish frameworks to ensure the redesigned process maintains its efficiency over time, preventing process drift and application sprawl from gradually reintroducing complexity into the streamlined workflow.
SAP Signavio Process Governance
Enhancing with WalkMe: To ensure consistent execution of the redesigned onboarding process, the financial services organization could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide employees through the new streamlined 5-application workflow. These step-by-step guides would ensure that staff follow the optimized process path rather than reverting to familiar but inefficient workarounds.
Smart Tips could provide contextual guidance at each step of the onboarding process, reducing errors in data entry and further accelerating the workflow.
WalkMe Smart Tips
For more complex scenarios, WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic could personalize guidance based on customer type or product selection, ensuring that each onboarding journey follows the appropriate compliance and business rules. This adaptive guidance would be particularly valuable in financial services, where regulatory requirements often vary by customer segment and product type.
WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic
3. Application Landscape – Target Application Architecture
What it is:
LeanIX’s Application Landscape in capability enables Enterprise Architects to document, visualize, and analyze the current application portfolio while designing target application architectures that align with business strategy.
LeanIX’s Application Landscape
How Enterprise Architects can engage:
– Document the current application landscape with standardized metadata
– Visualize applications by business capability, technology stack, or lifecycle stage
– Identify redundancies, gaps, and risks in the current landscape
– Design target application architectures that support business goals
– Create transition plans from current to target architectures
– Use time-based views to show landscape evolution
– Implement application rationalization using frameworks like TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate)
Application Landscape – Target Application Architecture
Strategic value:
– Provides transparency into complex application portfolios
– Reduces IT costs through elimination of redundant systems
– Decreases technical debt by identifying modernization opportunities
– Improves security posture by highlighting vulnerable applications
– Increases business agility through simplified landscapes
Practical example:
A healthcare provider used LeanIX to analyze their application landscape of over 800 applications, identifying 30% redundancy and 25% of applications running on end-of-life technologies. The Enterprise Architecture team designed a target architecture that consolidated similar functions and modernized critical systems, resulting in $4.2M annual savings and a 40% reduction in security incidents.
Enhancing with Signavio: The healthcare provider could enhance their application rationalization initiative by using SAP Signavio Process Insights to analyze how clinical and administrative processes performed across the redundant applications.
SAP Signavio Process Insights
This process-level analysis would provide data-driven insights to prioritize which applications to retain based not just on technical criteria, but on how well they support actual work processes. For applications serving similar functions, the team could compare process performance metrics to identify which solutions delivered superior outcomes.
After selecting the target application portfolio, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help redesign processes to work effectively with the consolidated landscape, ensuring that workflows remain efficient despite the reduction in applications.
SAP Signavio Process Manager
For processes spanning multiple retained applications, SAP Build Process Automation could create automated workflows between systems, further improving efficiency in the target architecture and reducing the manual effort previously required to work across application boundaries.
SAP Build Process Automation
Enhancing with WalkMe: To ensure successful adoption of the modernized application landscape, the healthcare provider could deploy WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide clinical and administrative staff through new workflows in the consolidated systems. This contextual guidance would accelerate adoption of the target architecture and reduce resistance to change, particularly important in healthcare settings where staff have limited time for traditional training.
During the transition period, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate application retirement schedules and training opportunities, ensuring all users understand when legacy systems would be decommissioned and how to prepare for the change.
WalkMe’s ShoutOut
After implementation, WalkMe Insights could monitor user adoption of new systems, identifying specific areas where additional training or process improvements might be needed. This data-driven approach to change management would help the Enterprise Architecture team address adoption challenges proactively, maximizing the return on their application rationalization investment.
WalkMe Insights
4. Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmap
What it is:
LeanIX enables Enterprise Architects to create business architecture roadmaps that connect architectural changes directly to business outcomes, ensuring that technology investments deliver measurable value.
Outcome-based Business Architecture
How Enterprise Architects can engage:
– Define clear business outcomes for architectural initiatives
– Link architectural changes to specific business capabilities
– Create measurable KPIs for each roadmap milestone
– Visualize the evolution of business architecture over time
– Align roadmaps with strategic business objectives
– Communicate expected business impacts to stakeholders
– Track and report on outcome realization
Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmap
Strategic value:
– Ensures architecture initiatives deliver tangible business value
– Improves stakeholder buy-in by focusing on outcomes rather than technology
– Provides clear metrics for measuring architecture success
– Aligns technology investments with business strategy
– Facilitates more effective communication with executive leadership
Practical example:
A retail company used LeanIX to create an outcome-based business architecture roadmap for their digital transformation initiative. Each roadmap milestone was tied to specific business outcomes like “Increase online conversion rate by 15%” and “Reduce inventory costs by 20%.” This approach secured executive sponsorship and maintained momentum through a three-year transformation program that delivered $25M in measurable business value.
Enhancing with Signavio: The retail company could strengthen their outcome-based approach by using Signavio’s 4 Strategy Pillar and Value Driver Trees to create a more explicit connection between architectural roadmap milestones and specific value drivers. This would ensure perfect alignment between strategic objectives and architectural initiatives, making it easier to communicate the business rationale for each transformation phase.
Signavio’s 4 Strategy Pillar
During implementation, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence could continuously monitor process performance against the defined KPIs, providing real-time feedback on progress toward business outcomes like the 15% increase in online conversion rate. This continuous monitoring would allow the Enterprise Architecture team to make data-driven adjustments to their approach if certain initiatives weren’t delivering the expected results.
SAP Signavio Process Intelligence
Monitor and define KPI’s
To manage the overall transformation program, SAP Signavio Process Transformation Manager could help coordinate the various workstreams, ensuring that process changes across different business units remained aligned with the roadmap milestones and contributed to the overall business outcomes.
SAP Signavio Process Transformation Manager
Enhancing with WalkMe: To directly measure progress toward user-centric outcomes like “Increase online conversion rate by 15%,” the retail company could leverage WalkMe’s Insights, Funnels, and Heatmaps. These analytics tools would provide real-time data on how customers interact with digital channels, where they abandon purchases, and which features drive conversion. This granular insight would enable the Enterprise Architecture team to identify specific architectural improvements that would have the greatest impact on conversion rates.
WalkMe’s Insights, Funnels, and Heatmaps
Throughout the three-year transformation, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate roadmap progress and success stories to internal stakeholders, maintaining momentum and executive support by highlighting tangible achievements. For customer-facing improvements, Smart Walk-Thrus could guide users through new shopping experiences designed to increase conversion rates, ensuring consistent execution of the optimized customer journey across all digital touchpoints.
5. Application Architecture Roadmap
What it is:
LeanIX’s Application Architecture Roadmap capability allows Enterprise Architects to plan and visualize the evolution of the application portfolio over time, including application retirements, implementations, and modernizations.
Application Architecture Roadmap
How Enterprise Architects can engage:
– Create time-based views of application lifecycle changes
– Plan phase-in and phase-out activities with clear timelines
– Identify dependencies between application changes
– Align application changes with business capability enhancements
– Visualize the impact of changes on the overall landscape
– Track progress against roadmap milestones
– Communicate roadmap changes to stakeholders
Application Architecture Roadmap
Strategic value:
– Provides a clear plan for application portfolio evolution
– Reduces risk by identifying dependencies and conflicts
– Improves resource planning for implementation projects
– Ensures continuity of business capability support during transitions
– Facilitates coordination between multiple transformation initiatives
Practical example: A global logistics company used LeanIX to create a three-year application architecture roadmap for their SAP S/4HANA migration. The roadmap visualized the phase-out of 45 legacy systems, implementation of 12 new modules, and integration with 30 remaining applications. This comprehensive view enabled them to identify critical dependencies, optimize the migration sequence, and complete the transformation six months ahead of schedule.
Enhancing with Signavio: The logistics company could accelerate their S/4HANA migration by leveraging SAP Signavio Process Explorer to access reference content for SAP S/4HANA standard processes. This pre-built content would speed up the design of the target state and help identify opportunities to adopt standard functionality rather than customizing the new system.
SAP Signavio Process Explorer
For processes that would span both S/4HANA and the 30 remaining applications, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help redesign workflows to ensure seamless integration across system boundaries.
SAP Signavio Process Manager
This process-centric approach would prevent the creation of siloed operations despite having an integrated technical architecture.
Throughout the migration, SAP Signavio Process Governance would establish frameworks to ensure process compliance during and after the transition, preventing process drift that could undermine the benefits of the new system. This governance approach would be particularly valuable for maintaining process standardization across the global organization as each region migrated to the new platform.
SAP Signavio Process Governance
Enhancing with WalkMe: To ensure rapid adoption of the new SAP S/4HANA system, the logistics company could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide users through new interfaces and workflows. This in-application guidance would accelerate the learning curve and reduce training costs across the global organization, particularly valuable for a phased rollout where traditional training might be difficult to schedule. During the three-year migration period, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate timelines, training opportunities, and go-live dates for each phase of the roadmap, ensuring all users knew when to expect changes to their systems. For a global organization with different user roles across various regions, WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic could provide personalized guidance based on user role and location, ensuring that each employee received relevant support during the migration. This adaptive approach would be particularly valuable for addressing regional variations in business processes while still driving toward global standardization.
Integrating the Five Key Capabilities for Maximum Impact
While each capability delivers significant value individually, the true power of LeanIX emerges when Enterprise Architects integrate these capabilities into a cohesive approach:
1. Start with Business Capability Mapping to establish a stable foundation and common language
2. Add Process Maps to understand how capabilities are operationalized
3. Document the Application Landscape to see how technology supports processes and capabilities
4. Design Target Application Architectures that better support business needs
5. Create Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmaps to ensure changes deliver value
6. Develop Application Architecture Roadmaps to plan the technical implementation
This integrated approach enables Enterprise Architects to connect business strategy to technical execution, ensuring that architectural decisions drive meaningful business outcomes.
When enhanced with Signavio and WalkMe, this integrated approach becomes even more powerful. Signavio adds process intelligence, governance, and transformation management capabilities that provide deeper insights into how processes actually perform and how they can be optimized. WalkMe adds digital adoption, user analytics, and guided experiences that ensure architectural changes are successfully adopted by end users and deliver the intended business outcomes. Together, these three tools create a comprehensive enterprise architecture toolchain that addresses the full lifecycle from strategic planning to execution and adoption.
Practical Steps for Enterprise Architects to Get Started
1. Establish Your Foundation
– Define your business capability model (start with 10-15 top-level capabilities)
– Document key processes for critical capabilities
– Inventory applications supporting your most important capabilities
– Identify key stakeholders and establish governance
2. Focus on Quick Wins
– Target a specific business pain point (e.g., slow customer onboarding)
– Map the current architecture supporting that process
– Design a target architecture that addresses the pain point
– Create a roadmap with clear business outcomes
– Implement changes and measure results
3. Scale Your Approach
– Expand your capability model to include all business functions
– Document the complete application landscape
– Create comprehensive target architectures
– Develop enterprise-wide roadmaps
– Establish regular review and update processes
4. Enhance with Complementary Tools
– Integrate Signavio for process intelligence and optimization
– Implement WalkMe for digital adoption and user analytics
– Create a feedback loop between all three platforms
– Use insights from each tool to continuously improve your architecture
Conclusion
LeanIX provides Enterprise Architects with powerful capabilities to move beyond documentation to become strategic partners in business transformation. By leveraging Business Capability Mapping, Process Maps, Application Landscape visualization, Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmaps, and Application Architecture Roadmaps, Enterprise Architects can deliver tangible value to their organizations.
When enhanced with Signavio’s process intelligence and transformation management capabilities, Enterprise Architects gain deeper insights into how processes actually perform and how they can be optimized to support business capabilities. When further enhanced with WalkMe’s digital adoption and user analytics capabilities, Enterprise Architects can ensure that architectural changes are successfully adopted by end users and deliver the intended business outcomes.
The most successful Enterprise Architects use these capabilities not just as documentation tools but as platforms for data-driven decision-making and stakeholder engagement. By focusing on business outcomes and creating clear roadmaps for architectural evolution, Enterprise Architects can demonstrate their strategic value and drive meaningful change.
Final Thoughts
The role of Enterprise Architects continues to evolve in our increasingly complex digital landscape. We are no longer just technical specialists but strategic partners who must speak both the language of business and technology. In my experience working with organizations across various industries, I’ve found that the most successful Enterprise Architects are those who can effectively translate business needs into architectural solutions while maintaining a clear line of sight to business outcomes.
LeanIX represents a significant step forward in empowering Enterprise Architects to fulfill this critical bridging function. By providing data-driven insights, collaborative tools, and a common language for business and IT stakeholders, it enables architects to move beyond documentation to become true agents of transformation.
When combined with Signavio’s process intelligence and WalkMe’s digital adoption capabilities, Enterprise Architects have a comprehensive toolchain that addresses the full lifecycle from strategic planning to execution and adoption. This integrated approach ensures that architectural changes not only look good on paper but deliver measurable business value in practice.
I encourage my fellow Enterprise Architects to explore how LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and WalkMe can enhance your ability to drive meaningful change in your organization. The journey toward architectural excellence is continuous, but with the right tools and approach, it becomes both more manageable and more impactful.
Ramy Salem
ANZ Toolchain Ambassador at SAP
PhD Candidate – AI Agents for Enterprise Architecture
Certified in SAP | WalkMe | LeanIX | Signavio
Author’s NoteIn my role leading Enterprise Architecture initiatives across SAP Global Customers, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the right toolchain can transform EA from a documentation exercise into a strategic business function. Having previously explored “How Enterprise Architects Can Unlock Strategic Value with WalkMe” and “How Enterprise Architects Can Unlock Strategic Value with SAP Signavio,” this blog completes the trilogy by integrating these perspectives with LeanIX capabilities. Together, these three tools create a comprehensive approach that Bridging between Enterprise Architects and Business Stakeholders” – from strategic planning to execution and adoption.IntroductionEnterprise Architects are expected to be the strategic partners in business transformation. While individual tools provide valuable capabilities, the true power emerges when Enterprise Architects leverage an integrated toolchain approach. This blog demonstrates how combining LeanIX’s architectural capabilities with Signavio’s process intelligence and WalkMe’s digital adoption platform creates a comprehensive ecosystem that connects business strategy to technical execution and user adoption.By exploring five essential LeanIX capabilities enhanced by complementary Signavio and WalkMe functionalities, this blog provides Enterprise Architects with a roadmap for maximizing strategic value across the full transformation lifecycle – from documenting the current state and designing the target state to implementing changes and ensuring successful adoption. This integrated approach enables data-driven decision-making, clear stakeholder communication, and measurable business outcomes. 1. Business Capability Mapping in LeanIXWhat it is: Business Capability Mapping in (LeanIX) enables Enterprise Architects to create a structured representation of what a business does (or needs to do) to fulfill its mission, independent of how it does it. This capability provides a stable foundation for enterprise architecture that doesn’t change as frequently as processes, organizations, or technologies. How Enterprise Architects can engage:- Create a comprehensive business capability model that represents your organization’s core functions- Establish a hierarchical structure with capability levels (L1, L2, L3) for appropriate granularity- Map applications and technologies to specific business capabilities to show IT support- Identify capability gaps where business needs lack adequate technological support- Discover redundancies where multiple applications support the same capability- Use capability heat maps to visualize performance and prioritize investments- Create a common language between IT and business stakeholders Strategic value:- Provides a business-centric view of the enterprise that resonates with executives- Creates stability in enterprise architecture during organizational changes- Enables portfolio rationalization decisions based on business impact- Facilitates more effective communication between IT and business units- Supports investment prioritization based on strategic importancePractical example: A global manufacturing company used LeanIX’s Business Capability Mapping to identify that their “Product Innovation” capability was supported by 27 different applications across various business units. This discovery led to a consolidation initiative that reduced application count by 40% and created a unified innovation platform, accelerating time-to-market for new products by 35%.Enhancing with Signavio: The manufacturing company could further enhance their capability-driven consolidation by employing SAP Signavio Process Insights and SAP Signavio Process Intelligence to analyze the actual performance of processes within the “Product Innovation” capability. This analysis would reveal which of the 27 applications were actually being used effectively and which created bottlenecks in the innovation workflow.SAP Signavio Process InsightsSAP Signavio Process Intelligence With this process-level insight, the Enterprise Architecture team could make more informed decisions about which applications to retain and which to phase out.After consolidation, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help in redesigning the underlying processes to ensure they support the business capability effectively across all business units. The team could also leverage SAP Signavio Process Explorer to access reference architectures and best practices for product innovation processes that align with the consolidated application landscape, further optimizing their approach.SAP Signavio Process ManagerEnhancing with WalkMe: To ensure successful adoption of the consolidated innovation platform, the manufacturing company could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide users through the new system, ensuring consistent usage patterns across all business units. This would be particularly valuable for users transitioning from their familiar legacy applications to the new platform.WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus And ,WalkMe Insights could track user behavior during the transition period, measuring adoption rates and identifying specific areas where users struggle with the new consolidated platform. This data would enable the Enterprise Architecture team to make targeted improvements and provide additional support where needed. WalkMe InsightsAdditionally, WalkMe’s Menu Organizer could structure guidance content around the “Product Innovation” capability, making it easier for users to find relevant support for their specific innovation tasks, whether they’re in product design, testing, or market analysis roles.WalkMe’s Menu Organizer 2. Process Map in LeanIXWhat it is: Process Mapping in (LeanIX) allows Enterprise Architects to document and visualize the operational processes that execute business capabilities. While capabilities represent what a business does, processes show how the business operates and how workflows through the organization.Mapping the process primarily involves selecting a sync mode to manage data updates and deletions, followed by configuring the synchronization hierarchy by selecting relevant SAP Signavio directories. This is done in the Basic Configuration tab of the integration configuration page in LeanIX Process Mapping in (LeanIX) How Enterprise Architects can engage: – Document key business processes and their relationships to business capabilities- Connect processes to the applications that support them- Identify process gaps and inefficiencies in the current architecture- Map process owners and stakeholders for better governance- Analyze process performance based on supporting technology- Create process hierarchies that align with capability models- Integrate with process mining tools for deeper insightsProcess Mapping in (LeanIX) Strategic value:- Bridges the gap between business capabilities and technical implementation- Provides context for application rationalization decisions- Identifies opportunities for process automation and optimization- Supports business process reengineering initiatives- Enables impact analysis for proposed architectural changesPractical example: A financial services organization used LeanIX’s Process Mapping to analyze their customer onboarding process, discovering that it spanned 12 different applications with significant manual handoffs. The Enterprise Architecture team redesigned the process architecture, reducing application touchpoints to 5 and implementing automated workflows, which reduced onboarding time from 7 days to less than 24 hours.Enhancing with Signavio: The financial services organization could take their process improvement initiative to the next level by implementing SAP Signavio Process Intelligence to perform detailed process mining of the customer onboarding workflow. This would provide granular insights into exactly where delays occurred in the 12-application workflow, highlighting specific bottlenecks, rework loops, and manual handoffs that caused the greatest time delays.SAP Signavio Process IntelligenceBeyond the technical process view, SAP Signavio Journey Modeler could map the customer experience during onboarding, ensuring that the technical consolidation also improved customer satisfaction and not just internal efficiency. This customer-centric perspective would help the Enterprise Architecture team prioritize improvements that matter most to clients.SAP Signavio Journey ModelerAfter implementation, SAP Signavio Process Governance could establish frameworks to ensure the redesigned process maintains its efficiency over time, preventing process drift and application sprawl from gradually reintroducing complexity into the streamlined workflow.SAP Signavio Process GovernanceEnhancing with WalkMe: To ensure consistent execution of the redesigned onboarding process, the financial services organization could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide employees through the new streamlined 5-application workflow. These step-by-step guides would ensure that staff follow the optimized process path rather than reverting to familiar but inefficient workarounds.Smart Tips could provide contextual guidance at each step of the onboarding process, reducing errors in data entry and further accelerating the workflow. WalkMe Smart Tips For more complex scenarios, WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic could personalize guidance based on customer type or product selection, ensuring that each onboarding journey follows the appropriate compliance and business rules. This adaptive guidance would be particularly valuable in financial services, where regulatory requirements often vary by customer segment and product type.WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic 3. Application Landscape – Target Application ArchitectureWhat it is: LeanIX’s Application Landscape in capability enables Enterprise Architects to document, visualize, and analyze the current application portfolio while designing target application architectures that align with business strategy. LeanIX’s Application Landscape How Enterprise Architects can engage:- Document the current application landscape with standardized metadata- Visualize applications by business capability, technology stack, or lifecycle stage- Identify redundancies, gaps, and risks in the current landscape- Design target application architectures that support business goals- Create transition plans from current to target architectures- Use time-based views to show landscape evolution- Implement application rationalization using frameworks like TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate)Application Landscape – Target Application Architecture Strategic value:- Provides transparency into complex application portfolios- Reduces IT costs through elimination of redundant systems- Decreases technical debt by identifying modernization opportunities- Improves security posture by highlighting vulnerable applications- Increases business agility through simplified landscapesPractical example: A healthcare provider used LeanIX to analyze their application landscape of over 800 applications, identifying 30% redundancy and 25% of applications running on end-of-life technologies. The Enterprise Architecture team designed a target architecture that consolidated similar functions and modernized critical systems, resulting in $4.2M annual savings and a 40% reduction in security incidents.Enhancing with Signavio: The healthcare provider could enhance their application rationalization initiative by using SAP Signavio Process Insights to analyze how clinical and administrative processes performed across the redundant applications.SAP Signavio Process InsightsThis process-level analysis would provide data-driven insights to prioritize which applications to retain based not just on technical criteria, but on how well they support actual work processes. For applications serving similar functions, the team could compare process performance metrics to identify which solutions delivered superior outcomes.After selecting the target application portfolio, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help redesign processes to work effectively with the consolidated landscape, ensuring that workflows remain efficient despite the reduction in applications.SAP Signavio Process ManagerFor processes spanning multiple retained applications, SAP Build Process Automation could create automated workflows between systems, further improving efficiency in the target architecture and reducing the manual effort previously required to work across application boundaries.SAP Build Process AutomationEnhancing with WalkMe: To ensure successful adoption of the modernized application landscape, the healthcare provider could deploy WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide clinical and administrative staff through new workflows in the consolidated systems. This contextual guidance would accelerate adoption of the target architecture and reduce resistance to change, particularly important in healthcare settings where staff have limited time for traditional training.During the transition period, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate application retirement schedules and training opportunities, ensuring all users understand when legacy systems would be decommissioned and how to prepare for the change.WalkMe’s ShoutOutAfter implementation, WalkMe Insights could monitor user adoption of new systems, identifying specific areas where additional training or process improvements might be needed. This data-driven approach to change management would help the Enterprise Architecture team address adoption challenges proactively, maximizing the return on their application rationalization investment.WalkMe Insights 4. Outcome-based Business Architecture RoadmapWhat it is: LeanIX enables Enterprise Architects to create business architecture roadmaps that connect architectural changes directly to business outcomes, ensuring that technology investments deliver measurable value.Outcome-based Business Architecture How Enterprise Architects can engage:- Define clear business outcomes for architectural initiatives- Link architectural changes to specific business capabilities- Create measurable KPIs for each roadmap milestone- Visualize the evolution of business architecture over time- Align roadmaps with strategic business objectives- Communicate expected business impacts to stakeholders- Track and report on outcome realizationOutcome-based Business Architecture Roadmap Strategic value:- Ensures architecture initiatives deliver tangible business value- Improves stakeholder buy-in by focusing on outcomes rather than technology- Provides clear metrics for measuring architecture success- Aligns technology investments with business strategy- Facilitates more effective communication with executive leadership Practical example: A retail company used LeanIX to create an outcome-based business architecture roadmap for their digital transformation initiative. Each roadmap milestone was tied to specific business outcomes like “Increase online conversion rate by 15%” and “Reduce inventory costs by 20%.” This approach secured executive sponsorship and maintained momentum through a three-year transformation program that delivered $25M in measurable business value.Enhancing with Signavio: The retail company could strengthen their outcome-based approach by using Signavio’s 4 Strategy Pillar and Value Driver Trees to create a more explicit connection between architectural roadmap milestones and specific value drivers. This would ensure perfect alignment between strategic objectives and architectural initiatives, making it easier to communicate the business rationale for each transformation phase. Signavio’s 4 Strategy PillarDuring implementation, SAP Signavio Process Intelligence could continuously monitor process performance against the defined KPIs, providing real-time feedback on progress toward business outcomes like the 15% increase in online conversion rate. This continuous monitoring would allow the Enterprise Architecture team to make data-driven adjustments to their approach if certain initiatives weren’t delivering the expected results.SAP Signavio Process IntelligenceMonitor and define KPI’s To manage the overall transformation program, SAP Signavio Process Transformation Manager could help coordinate the various workstreams, ensuring that process changes across different business units remained aligned with the roadmap milestones and contributed to the overall business outcomes.SAP Signavio Process Transformation ManagerEnhancing with WalkMe: To directly measure progress toward user-centric outcomes like “Increase online conversion rate by 15%,” the retail company could leverage WalkMe’s Insights, Funnels, and Heatmaps. These analytics tools would provide real-time data on how customers interact with digital channels, where they abandon purchases, and which features drive conversion. This granular insight would enable the Enterprise Architecture team to identify specific architectural improvements that would have the greatest impact on conversion rates.WalkMe’s Insights, Funnels, and HeatmapsThroughout the three-year transformation, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate roadmap progress and success stories to internal stakeholders, maintaining momentum and executive support by highlighting tangible achievements. For customer-facing improvements, Smart Walk-Thrus could guide users through new shopping experiences designed to increase conversion rates, ensuring consistent execution of the optimized customer journey across all digital touchpoints. 5. Application Architecture RoadmapWhat it is: LeanIX’s Application Architecture Roadmap capability allows Enterprise Architects to plan and visualize the evolution of the application portfolio over time, including application retirements, implementations, and modernizations.Application Architecture Roadmap How Enterprise Architects can engage: – Create time-based views of application lifecycle changes- Plan phase-in and phase-out activities with clear timelines- Identify dependencies between application changes- Align application changes with business capability enhancements- Visualize the impact of changes on the overall landscape- Track progress against roadmap milestones- Communicate roadmap changes to stakeholdersApplication Architecture Roadmap Strategic value:- Provides a clear plan for application portfolio evolution- Reduces risk by identifying dependencies and conflicts- Improves resource planning for implementation projects- Ensures continuity of business capability support during transitions- Facilitates coordination between multiple transformation initiativesPractical example: A global logistics company used LeanIX to create a three-year application architecture roadmap for their SAP S/4HANA migration. The roadmap visualized the phase-out of 45 legacy systems, implementation of 12 new modules, and integration with 30 remaining applications. This comprehensive view enabled them to identify critical dependencies, optimize the migration sequence, and complete the transformation six months ahead of schedule.Enhancing with Signavio: The logistics company could accelerate their S/4HANA migration by leveraging SAP Signavio Process Explorer to access reference content for SAP S/4HANA standard processes. This pre-built content would speed up the design of the target state and help identify opportunities to adopt standard functionality rather than customizing the new system.SAP Signavio Process ExplorerFor processes that would span both S/4HANA and the 30 remaining applications, SAP Signavio Process Manager would help redesign workflows to ensure seamless integration across system boundaries.SAP Signavio Process ManagerThis process-centric approach would prevent the creation of siloed operations despite having an integrated technical architecture.Throughout the migration, SAP Signavio Process Governance would establish frameworks to ensure process compliance during and after the transition, preventing process drift that could undermine the benefits of the new system. This governance approach would be particularly valuable for maintaining process standardization across the global organization as each region migrated to the new platform.SAP Signavio Process Governance Enhancing with WalkMe: To ensure rapid adoption of the new SAP S/4HANA system, the logistics company could implement WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus to guide users through new interfaces and workflows. This in-application guidance would accelerate the learning curve and reduce training costs across the global organization, particularly valuable for a phased rollout where traditional training might be difficult to schedule. During the three-year migration period, WalkMe’s ShoutOut feature could communicate timelines, training opportunities, and go-live dates for each phase of the roadmap, ensuring all users knew when to expect changes to their systems. For a global organization with different user roles across various regions, WalkMe’s Global Variables & Conditional Logic could provide personalized guidance based on user role and location, ensuring that each employee received relevant support during the migration. This adaptive approach would be particularly valuable for addressing regional variations in business processes while still driving toward global standardization. Integrating the Five Key Capabilities for Maximum ImpactWhile each capability delivers significant value individually, the true power of LeanIX emerges when Enterprise Architects integrate these capabilities into a cohesive approach:1. Start with Business Capability Mapping to establish a stable foundation and common language2. Add Process Maps to understand how capabilities are operationalized3. Document the Application Landscape to see how technology supports processes and capabilities4. Design Target Application Architectures that better support business needs5. Create Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmaps to ensure changes deliver value6. Develop Application Architecture Roadmaps to plan the technical implementationThis integrated approach enables Enterprise Architects to connect business strategy to technical execution, ensuring that architectural decisions drive meaningful business outcomes.When enhanced with Signavio and WalkMe, this integrated approach becomes even more powerful. Signavio adds process intelligence, governance, and transformation management capabilities that provide deeper insights into how processes actually perform and how they can be optimized. WalkMe adds digital adoption, user analytics, and guided experiences that ensure architectural changes are successfully adopted by end users and deliver the intended business outcomes. Together, these three tools create a comprehensive enterprise architecture toolchain that addresses the full lifecycle from strategic planning to execution and adoption. Practical Steps for Enterprise Architects to Get Started 1. Establish Your Foundation- Define your business capability model (start with 10-15 top-level capabilities)- Document key processes for critical capabilities- Inventory applications supporting your most important capabilities- Identify key stakeholders and establish governance 2. Focus on Quick Wins- Target a specific business pain point (e.g., slow customer onboarding)- Map the current architecture supporting that process- Design a target architecture that addresses the pain point- Create a roadmap with clear business outcomes- Implement changes and measure results 3. Scale Your Approach- Expand your capability model to include all business functions- Document the complete application landscape- Create comprehensive target architectures- Develop enterprise-wide roadmaps- Establish regular review and update processes 4. Enhance with Complementary Tools- Integrate Signavio for process intelligence and optimization- Implement WalkMe for digital adoption and user analytics- Create a feedback loop between all three platforms- Use insights from each tool to continuously improve your architectureConclusionLeanIX provides Enterprise Architects with powerful capabilities to move beyond documentation to become strategic partners in business transformation. By leveraging Business Capability Mapping, Process Maps, Application Landscape visualization, Outcome-based Business Architecture Roadmaps, and Application Architecture Roadmaps, Enterprise Architects can deliver tangible value to their organizations.When enhanced with Signavio’s process intelligence and transformation management capabilities, Enterprise Architects gain deeper insights into how processes actually perform and how they can be optimized to support business capabilities. When further enhanced with WalkMe’s digital adoption and user analytics capabilities, Enterprise Architects can ensure that architectural changes are successfully adopted by end users and deliver the intended business outcomes.The most successful Enterprise Architects use these capabilities not just as documentation tools but as platforms for data-driven decision-making and stakeholder engagement. By focusing on business outcomes and creating clear roadmaps for architectural evolution, Enterprise Architects can demonstrate their strategic value and drive meaningful change.Final ThoughtsThe role of Enterprise Architects continues to evolve in our increasingly complex digital landscape. We are no longer just technical specialists but strategic partners who must speak both the language of business and technology. In my experience working with organizations across various industries, I’ve found that the most successful Enterprise Architects are those who can effectively translate business needs into architectural solutions while maintaining a clear line of sight to business outcomes.LeanIX represents a significant step forward in empowering Enterprise Architects to fulfill this critical bridging function. By providing data-driven insights, collaborative tools, and a common language for business and IT stakeholders, it enables architects to move beyond documentation to become true agents of transformation.When combined with Signavio’s process intelligence and WalkMe’s digital adoption capabilities, Enterprise Architects have a comprehensive toolchain that addresses the full lifecycle from strategic planning to execution and adoption. This integrated approach ensures that architectural changes not only look good on paper but deliver measurable business value in practice.I encourage my fellow Enterprise Architects to explore how LeanIX, SAP Signavio, and WalkMe can enhance your ability to drive meaningful change in your organization. The journey toward architectural excellence is continuous, but with the right tools and approach, it becomes both more manageable and more impactful.Ramy Salem ANZ Toolchain Ambassador at SAP PhD Candidate – AI Agents for Enterprise Architecture Certified in SAP | WalkMe | LeanIX | Signavio Read More Technology Blog Posts by SAP articles
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