End-to-end process insights with BPA Process Progress KPIs

In a previous insight we introduced you to Business Process Analytics and Improvement (BPAI) in SAP Solution Manager 7.2, and focused on how the standard out-of-the-box KPIs and associated visualisation and dashboarding tools could aid your business in improving the execution of its OTC and P2P processes.

A new type of KPI has now been launched with the recent release of Solution Manager 7.2 SP10, known as Process Progress KPIs, which aim to provide an overview of process performance in the context of key milestones within an end-to-end process flow. Each process progress KPI automatically presents data across a number of associated throughput, backlog, lead time, and exception based key figures, with the ability to aggregate the data at multiple levels using dynamic filtering. What’s more, the data is displayed both in absolute (document or item count) and ratio (percentage) terms. Complimentary to traditional BPAI key figures, process progress KPIs make it easier to benchmark overall process performance across organisational units and indicate where process bottlenecks and/or leakages exist.

Process Progress KPIs

Process progress key figures are visualised in a milestone-based process flow. Here are the main KPI categories represented:

• Throughput – How many documents were processed in a certain time frame.
• Average Lead Time – How many of those documents (absolute & relative) made it to the respective process milestone and their average lead time.
• Backlog and Exceptions – How many documents disrupted the process flow due to exceptions. Eg blocked, incomplete or delayed.

Dynamic Filtering allows results to be viewed at different aggregation levels, per organisational unit such as plant, sales org. or company code, or per document type.

The following image describes a few of the key KPIs per process area:

Lets see how these might be realised using the new Process Progress KPI dashboards (expand the toggles):

The Process Progress KPIs allow you to very quickly understand where bottlenecks are occurring in your core processes or how different parts of your organisation are performing when compared to others. This is a brand new level of visualisation that process owners will find incredibly useful in understanding their level of performance and where improvement potential exists.

If you are considering or are about to embark on a business process improvement initiative in your SAP ECC or S/4HANA systems, there’s no better way to hit the ground running with SAP Solution Manager’s Business Process Analytics and Improvement applications. And now with the addition of process progress KPIs, you can gain that all important process performance overview in even less time. Click here for a hassle-free demo and see for yourself.

Interested in knowing more about how to kick-start an SAP business process initiative using BPAI? Download our Whitepaper here