SAP Solution Manager 7.2 offers a new capability beyond Solution Documentation border, which is called Process Management. In order to establish a central Solution Documentation repository, SAP defined a new concept of Solution and branches.

Currently, the following options are available to start modelling and building business processes and libraries: manual design, automatic generation, import SAP Best Practices and integration with an SAP-certified third-party modelling tool.

Furthermore, It is integrated with other ALM processes such as Project Management, Test Management, and Business Process and Interface Monitoring.

Long Story

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 offers a new capability beyond Solution Documentation border, which is called Process Management. From now on, SAP customers can model their mission critical business processes based on BMPN 2.0 notation, and enhance them with business and IT artefacts such as descriptive documentation (e.g. requirements, design specifications, business process descriptions, …) and technical objects (e.g. Fiori apps, transactions, reports, programs, IMG configurations, …) to support Implementation Projects as well as Operations.

The new release provides a single process landscape for business and IT departments. Business Process Owners can design/update business processes and their respective diagrams/documents while IT enhances them with relevant information such as configuration and development entities and/or transaction types (e.g. Request for Changes, Change Documents, …).

To establish a central Solution Documentation repository, SAP defined a new concept of Solution and branches.

“The Solution is the sum of a company’s systems, applications and processes. It acts as a container for versions of solution documentation, one of which is the production version”

The branches refer to a Solution Documentation version, and different branches are used through the entire Solution Documentation lifecycle such as Production, Maintenance and Development. Other branches may be created depending of customer requirements: Design and Import branch, for instance.

Currently, there are 4 options available to start modelling and building business processes and libraries on SAP Solution Manager 7.2 as listed below:

  • Manual design

  • Automatic generation based on statistical data from an ABAP-based system

  • Import SAP Best Practices package from SAP One Content Cloud

  • Integration with an SAP-certified third-party modelling tool

Manual design: customer-specific business processes are modelled and built based on business process owners’ knowledge. If business processes are detailed described in e.g. business process description documents (BPDs), they can be used by customer’s Solution Documentation team instead.

Automatic generation based on statistical data from an ABAP-based system: the process step library (PSL) can automatically be generated based on statistical data (i.e. ST03N) collected from any ABAP-based system such as SAP ERP or SAP CRM. If Usage and Procedure Logging (UPL) data is also available, the development library can be generated as well.

End-to-end or modular business processes can be manually designed at the earliest convenience by reusing the nodes from PSL.

Import SAP Best Practices package from SAP One Content Cloud: standard business processes and process step library are imported from SAP One Content Cloud. The following SAP solutions are currently supported:

  • SAP S/4HANA On-Premise

  • SAP S/4HANA Marketing Cloud

  • SAP S/4HANA Professional Services Cloud

  • SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management Cloud

  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud Enterprise Edition

  • SAP Solution Manager 7.2

Integration with an SAP-certified third-party modelling tool: a generic API is embedded on SAP Solution Manager 7.2, thus it can be integrated with SAP-certified third-party modelling tools such as Software AG Aris. To fulfil SAP quality standards, third-party adapters must be validated by SAP via a Premium Qualification process.

Once they are integrated, business processes modelled in the third-party tool (master) can be synchronized into SAP Solution Manager 7.2, and enhanced by customer’s Solution Manager team with relevant business and IT entities such as Fiori apps, transactions, reports, programs, IMG objects, among others.

The figure below shows the outcome after importing SAP S/4HANA On-Premise edition content. Process diagrams, best practices documents, configuration building blocks, process links, Fiori applications and SAP transactions are included in the SAP Best Practices package.

 The figure below shows the process diagram “Automatic payment with other bank connectivity” for a variant of business process J60-Accounts Payable.

 

As any other BPMN-supported modelling tool, BPMN elements such as starting/end points or gateways can be easily added in the diagram via drag-and-drop.

Last but not least, it is worth to mention SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Process Management is integrated with other ALM processes such as Project Management, Test Management, and Business Process and Interface Monitoring.

Project Management: Solution Documentation entities can be assigned to a project to enrich project data

Test Management: Solution Documentation entities can be reused by Test Managers to generate Test Plans / Packages during Test Planning phase

Business Process and Interface Monitoring: Solution Documentation entities can be reused to monitor specific mission critical business processes and interfaces. Alerts can automatically be created based on defined KPIs.