Empowering Process Transformation: Variant Management for Managing Complex Process Landscapes

[Peyman]

It is with great excitement that we announce a transformative enhancement to SAP Signavio, solidifying its position as a frontrunner in Business Process Transformation. Variant Management is a capability designed to ease your process transformation efforts and enhance the management of complex process landscapes. 

The Power of Variant Management 

In the ever-evolving and complex process landscapes, having transparency in process repositories is critical, and managing the multitude of process variants is a key to better process management. SAP Signavio's Variant Management is a game-changer, offering an array of positive impacts on your process transformation journey brought to you via SAP Signavio Process Manager and SAP Signavio Process Governance. 

Understanding Variant Management 

A process variant is a distinct version of how a specific process is executed in diverse setups. These variations may emerge due to factors like geographical locations, customer channels, business units, or any unique characteristic that prompts the need for process customization. These variants differ in elements such as process sequence, roles and responsibilities, IT systems, documents, and other process attributes.

Variant Management is managing the multitude of variants in processes by both identification and modeling of variants, controlling their relationships & reducing redundancy, tracking & propagating changes from a process to its variants, and supporting users with consuming the right variant.   

With the February 2024 release, SAP Signavio provides Variant Management to make process transformation even easier. The added value encompasses the following capabilities: 

• Identification & modeling of variants: clearly defining and representing each process variant in the process repository. 
• Controlling relationships & reducing redundancy: managing how variants relate to each other and minimizing duplication to enhance efficiency. 
• Tracking & propagating changes: enabling the seamless tracking of changes within a process and propagating these changes to associated variants. 

How does Variant Management support process transformation? 

The ability to manage these variants efficiently translates to: 

1. Adaptable processes for a diverse landscape: Users can now create, identify, and manage process variants to meet the unique needs and requirements arising from different geographical locations, customer channels, and business units. This adaptability ensures that processes remain finely tuned to specific contextual requirements, fostering a responsive approach to changes. 
2. Compliance management without compromise: Variant Management assists in adhering to diverse compliance requirements and to local regulations. 
3. Seamless scalability without disruption: Track and propagate changes across processes and variants, maintaining control over global and local operations without disrupting existing workflows, ensuring a harmonized approach to operations. 
4. Transparent and multitude management of variants: Manage multiple variants for a particular process within a transparent repository by connecting and streamlining interconnected process variants, reducing redundancy, and ensuring consistency across your documentation. 

Unlocking possibilities: Variant Management use cases 

The versatility of Variant Management extends across various business scenarios, delivering significant value to industries and organizations facing unique challenges. These are a few example applications of variant management that you may consider: 

1. Managing geographical and regional variants: different countries and regions bring distinct compliance requirements, demanding a tailored approach. For multinational companies, navigating processes across diverse global locations is simplified with Variant Management. It ensures adherence to local regulations while minimizing unnecessary variations, providing a standardized framework that eases compliance complexities. 
2. Harmonizing products and brands: organizations with diverse product portfolios (e.g., manufacturing companies) face the challenge of managing processes for different products and brands. Variant Management in SAP Signavio allows organizations to streamline these processes, ensuring harmonization across various sites with unique capabilities and procedures. 
3. Managing Variants at different organizational levels: within a single region, different units often operate with specific process variants. In large corporate structures, like holdings, central best practices are defined. Variant Management facilitates a seamless adaptation of these templates, allowing different units to enroll and adapt the processes to their specific regional needs (e.g., in HR processes). 
4. Managing Variants of different served industries: corporate entities catering to diverse industries encounter varied process requirements. Variant Management becomes instrumental in efficiently managing these process variants, ensuring that each variant aligns with the unique demands and standards of the industries served, fostering adaptability and efficiency. 
5. Managing Customer Type Variants: businesses dealing with diverse customer types require the introduction of variants based on different channels used by customers. Variant Management facilitates the efficient handling of these customer type variants, ensuring processes are tailored to meet the unique needs and preferences of each customer segment.  

Embrace the Future with SAP Signavio 

With Variant Management, SAP Signavio is not just making process transformation easier; it is opening doors to innovation, efficiency, and adaptability. In essence, Variant Management in SAP Signavio is not just a feature—it’s a strategic capability designed to simplify and elevate your process transformation experience with a range of features across the SAP Signavio Transformation Suite.  

Here is what Variant Management encompasses - high-level: 

In the Variant Management Center, Global and Local Process Owners collaborate seamlessly to manage Templates and Variants, forming the backbone of Variant Groups. "Variant Groups" are established by the Global Process Owner, who sets the global version as a template, attaching diagrams as variants and defining applicable dimensions and values. Both Global and Local Process Owners can attach or detach variants, offering flexibility and control. 

3-1 Creating Template & Variants and forming the process landscape structure 

Variants can be cloned from templates or other variants, inheriting default dimensions and values. Cloning from a regular diagram transforms it into a template, creating a new Variant Group. This feature streamlines the process and ensures consistency across diagrams.

Figure1. identify a process as a template

3-2 Managing Dimensions and Values 

In the conceptual phase, Transformation Managers list possible dimensions and allocate values to variants. The Variant Management Center enables bulk management of dimensions and values for the entire Variant Group. Global and privileged Local Process Owners control and modify dimension values, fostering consistency and adaptability. 

Figure2. set dimensions & values to process templates and variants

Figure3. manage dimensions & values of selected models in the Variant Management Center

3-3 Managing Change Among Variants via Propagation 

Propagating changes across variants ensures a harmonized approach to process modifications. The Variant Management center facilitates global and local process owners in tracking and propagating alterations, maintaining control over global and local operations without disrupting workflows. This feature ensures a synchronized and adaptable operational landscape, contributing to efficient change management across diverse process variants.  

Figure4. monitor changes, evaluate, and decide on accepting/rejecting changes

Do you want to learn more about Variant Management? here are some useful links:

• Variant Management Overview
• SAP help: Variant Management
• Video: Introduction to Variant Management by SAP Signavio
• Video: Variant Management use cases and benefits