Gold Mining

Two weeks ago, I wrote a commentary on SAP's acquisition of Berlin-based startup Signavio (https://e3zine.com/sap-and-signavio-not-everything-that-glitters-is-gold/). I called the text "fool's gold" - also known as fool's gold. In a commentary way, I was suggesting that the SAP purchase decision may not have been the most considered. Because there are obviously many Signavio friends and fans in the SAP community, I didn't have to wait long for the shitstorm.

SAP CFO Luka Mucic is also a proven fan of Signavio and delivered a very instructive presentation on this two weeks ago, which ended in the fact that process analysis and process mining with Signavio ultimately increased SAP's liquid assets.

Quod erat demonstrandum - which was to be proven by the acquisition of Signavio. Now, process mining plus complementary IT tools from the same house may be worth the purchase price and the benefits are beyond doubt - but anyone who has been around the SAP community for any length of time also knows that process analysis is not a new hype, see Aris from Professor Scheer, Jedox, which received 100 million euros in venture capital earlier this year, Kern, which has been working on the topic for 30 years, or Celonis from Munich, a start-up with a valuation well over one billion euros.

How should the existing SAP customer decide here? In the past, he found Celonis on the SAP price list (PKL) and he will soon see Signavio there. The Aris wallpaper on the walls of many conference rooms may be getting a little dusty. All process mining tools have one thing in common: a very strong visual component.

My tip: Place the vendors' charts side by side (without company logos) and then decide which chart is the most clearly structured and easy to understand - don't make your decision based on dramatic 3D pictograms in all kinds of colors, arrows and dashes in spectacular twists and turns, and technical vocabulary that is hardly compatible with your acquired and long-standing SAP knowledge. Let's go to the competition! In E-3 April 2021 we will present the "visual winner".