What’s the relation between ARIS and SAP Netweaver BPM?
Posted by Sven Roeleven on Jul 10, 2008
At ARIS UserDay and ARIS ProcessWorld I got at the Process-driven SAP booth some questions about the role of ARIS related to SAP Netweaver BPM. In presentations on ProcessWorld and the blog of Eric Brabaender was already mentioned that ARIS can be positioned best as “Business to Model” and SAP Netweaver as “Model to execution”, so complementary products…
A Question that I got at the booth was: “Do you think we can do this in future without ARIS, because models can also be created in future in the SAP Process Composer”. The nice thing is actually that in customer presentations like BMW and Océ Technologies, the answers were given that ARIS is necessary upfront. Océ Technologies presented that in their Globalization program they started with enterprise modelling with ARIS before implementing SAP.
First step was to harmonize their existing end-to-end processes using ARIS Process Selection Diagrams in workshops that led to a reduction of 30% of process variants. The effect was less complexity and more involvement and approval by business owners. Within the ARIS design also the supporting applications (SAP and non-SAP), data and infrastructure were modelled. Based on the relation between these enterprise architectures the impact of to-be decisions and changes could be analyzed easily in ARIS.
This brought business and IT people together in decision making during the project. VP and Program director Jo Bleser of Océ also mentioned in the presentation that BPM Governance was supported by assigning global owners to processes and architectures and defining methods & standards for releasing models. After approval by global owners on all the harmonized process models, the models were synchronized to SAP Solution Manager for further configuration and realization in the program.
Actually this approach of analysis, process harmonization and BPM Governance is the same for setting up an enterprise Service Oriented Architecture using SAP Process Composer. Models that are optimized and approved by the business before implementing in SAP, perform better and more aligned with business needs. The nice thing about ProcessWorld is that people that have these questions can be contacted very easy with other customers that are font of sharing their experiences. No matter if it is at the Exhibition hall, diner table, party or during an exciting Football game. Actually Ann Rosenberg, BC Global Practice Owner for Business Process Management and Senior Strategic Business Process Management Consultant at SAP, has a very clear view on the value of enterprise modelling and tells about it on ARIS TV. So take a look!
On the IDS Scheer website you find more information on BPM and SAP: www.aris.com/sap
Although ARIS and Netweaver BPM handle different parts of the process lifecycle, as you state, there isn’t yet a way to move a process model created in ARIS into Netweaver BPM, is there? My understanding from the Sapphire presentations is that that piece is still missing, which would require that a process be modelled (probably as part of a much larger model) in ARIS, then re-modelled in the Netweaver BPM process designer.
Hi Sandy,
first of all thanks for your positive remark regarding ARIS TV in your blog. This encourages us to produce more episodes where we try to provide people with BPM-related topics in an entertaining way.
Regarding your comment: You understood it right. Currently process exchanges do not take please, like you mentioned. The SAP Process Composer is not yet released. With a BPMN Exchange this is planned to realize in the future and support by this the “Business to model and Model to Execution” concept. We hope that BPMN 2.0 will offer the capabilities for an optimal exchange.
Best regards, Eric
The above comment is about the exchange of models (using BPMN 2.0) from ARIS to the SAP Process composer. This is typically a case where the client has modeled businesses in ARIS when the SAP Process composer did not exist. My question is, In future, will the SAP process composer and ARIS Business designer co exists? if so, why? or is the SAP’s Process composer going to replace ARIS?
Hi Naveen,
The Process Composer is basically not going to replace ARIS for process modeling. On this point It is important to differentiate between different kind of processes.
ARIS is the leading modeling BPA tool for all not automated processes.
As Ann Rosenberg stated in ARIS TV Episode 7 they represent around 80 % of overall company processes which definitly have te be modeled in a BPA tool. Doing this, you also get advantage of further BPA functionalities from ARIS (e.g. the reporting functionalities or process intelligence and performance management).
On the other hand for automated processes which must be executed on the short-term and often change, one could decide to model them either in the Process Composer or in ARIS. Those processes represent around 5 to 10 % of company processes and depending on the
use case could be modeled in one or both tools.
Keeping in mind that the Process Composer and SAP NW BPM is a BPM tool and ARIS is a BPA tool.