The Innovative Tech Behind Valvoline Global's ‘Return To Greenfield'
Gone are the days of customizing tech landscapes for individual customer requirements, at least for Valvoline Global. The Lexington, Kentucky-based automotive services company has created a single point of entry that helps internal and external stakeholders meet their business requirements.
'It's no longer just good enough to sell products; you have to sell products with IT services,' Valvoline Global director of Enterprise Architecture David Beach said. 'We're now creating a standardized framework of how to do that.'
Valvoline Global chose a 'back to standard' (a.k.a. greenfield) approach – removing custom codes and add-ons – for agility, Beach said. Instead of reacting to a business demand, which often requires lengthy development times that result in cumbersome point-to-point integrations, an experience layer can now connect vendors, customers, suppliers, distributors, and internal users within Valvoline Global's SAP S/4HANA environment.
'We're really kind of trying to flip the equation to stay standard and also be able to offer those services,' he said. 'We have to anticipate in advance to have standardized ways that we can connect or communicate with SAP S/4HANA.'
But that meant modernizing a bespoke environment without losing functionality.
'Our main objective to going to SAP S/4HANA was to return to greenfield,' Beach said. 'And we needed a tool set to manage that; this is where SAP Signavio came in.'
SAP Signavio provides a vendor-agnostic approach, according to Beach. This enables Valvoline Global to manage business processes across all its enterprise systems, whether they're SAP or not.
'That's the big thing with Signavio,' Beach said. 'It's going to allow us to consolidate all the data from SAP systems, from Salesforce systems, from manufacturing systems, EH&S systems – are all coming together into a single business process and a single business process repository.'
And individual business units no longer try solving problems only with solutions available within silos, according to Beach. Now the company aligns each business process with the appropriate technology – and within standards.
'We wanted to make sure we hit the 90% mark on matches of our business processes to standard SAP,' Beach said. 'Signavio was a key piece to be able to govern that process.'
But what about the other 10%? And how do you get buy-in from users?
According to Beach, when there is a justification to deviate from a standard process, such as an upgrade that changes a business process, the company relies on SAP Signavio Process Manager, a modeling platform for business process management (BPM).
'At the end of the day, the most important deliverable is that – even though we might have custom processes – we have a tie-in back to the SAP best practice,' Beach said. And Valvoline Global's newfound agility also helped drive adoption. 'So, there was synergy to return to standard … it was very important from an organizational perspective.'
Agility was also 'number-one business case' for Valvoline Global's return to standard, according to Beach. And he expects that to serve the company well as it continues to embrace artificial intelligence.
'SAP is coming up with AI strategies, but that's going to change more and more as time goes on,' Beach said. 'You need to be able to adopt rapidly.'
'We realize that to adopt AI, we have a good handle on data,' Beach said. 'We've identified the innovators in the company … and we have enabled them as sort of like the pilot.'
That means Valvoline Global's early adopters get full access to its AI tools. And, to ensure this remains a business-led effort, these trusted users report back about how they're adopting AI, helping Valvoline Global chart its path forward.
'It all comes down to the data … not just from SAP systems; it's coming from all the systems across our business,' Beach said. 'Signavio is going to be that conduit as the feeder to AI solutions in the future.'
And, in addition to methodically managing business processes with SAP Signavio, Valvoline Global's SAP S/4HANA journey includes SAP LeanIX, which helps map the company's digital transformation, according to Beach.
'LeanIX has all the business capabilities, down to the system architectures, so that is a big piece,' Beach said. 'We're just preparing for the future … there's an aggressive growth strategy; so, we have to prepare for things like M&As.'
'And with toolsets like LeanIX in place, we'll be able to accomplish that,' Beach said.
'Where I see the biggest value with AI,' Beach said, '[is if] a customer comes in and has a requirement, AI eventually can take that customer requirement, and it will write the integrations itself.'
That's only possible with a predefined standardized framework, according to Beach. And, in a low-code, no-code environment, it can also lead to greater ROI and faster development times – down from months to about a week.
'The big recommendation is to use tools like Signavio and LeanIX as vehicles to … accomplish your business requirement,' Beach said. 'It's one thing to be able to influence change … but have systematic processes in place.'
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