Lean IX enterprise architecture tooling software SAP

LeanIX: Regain control over your Enterprise Architecture

October 18, 2024

3 minutes

Integration services Business transformation

Today’s IT landscapes are complex, consisting of hundreds – if not thousands – of loosely connected applications. As these systems evolve organically, across departments, IT teams often lose sight of the bigger picture and struggle to align the IT infrastructure with business strategy and goals. Enter SAP’s LeanIX: an intuitive SaaS platform built to help organisations regain control over their enterprise architecture and bring order to the chaos.

Enterprise architecture management has been around for decades, but it’s traditionally been handled by IT experts who use complex tools to map applications and connections. Business users are hardly ever involved, while they play an ever bigger role in digitization. As a result, every department keeps building, adding, and connecting tools, turning the enterprise architecture into a tangled web of systems.

Lowering the threshold to enterprise architecture

SAP LeanIX was designed to untangle this complexity. It offers an intuitive toolkit that guides users through key steps to manage and optimize enterprise architectures:

Enlist and visualize the IT landscape
Map and then align the applications to the business objectives
Design the ideal IT architecture
Create roadmaps for IT transformation
Share the insights and updates throughout the organisation, so that also business users can gain insight into the landscape and its components

"Think big, start small" with you enterprise architecture tool

The very first step in every enterprise architecture journey, is assessing the existing IT stack.
After completing the assessment, you can:

spot and clean up obsolete systems and realign them to business objectives (Application realization)
identify technical obsolescence and end-of-life risks
analyse existing applications for gaps and much-needed improvements
start or support your Cloud ERP transformation journey

Tip: note that EA is not an exact science and there’s no need to perfect everything from the beginning. We recommend starting small, with a set of pilot case applications, and sharing the initial results with business users to gain their buy-in. Once they see the value LeanIX brings, they will be more inclined to help map system and application data and keep it up to date.

Curious how you can start? Take the Health Check.

A vital step in your Cloud ERP transformation journey

Assessing and visualizing your current enterprise architecture is a crucial first step in any ERP transformation journey. By understanding your IT landscape and its interdependencies, you can effectively plan and manage both the technical and business aspects of the transformation – ultimately accelerating the initial phase of your application and system inventory.

LeanIX is fully equipped to this process, helping you to automatically map SAP SaaS products, on-premise ERP systems and soon also Business Technology Platform landscapes.

4 reasons to invest in LeanIX

By mapping the IT landscape, you will understand how all your organisation’s software applications are interconnected, revealing ways to consolidate, standardize, and optimize the landscape. In this way, you will

Reduce costs: Spot redundant technologies, optimize infrastructure and lower IT maintenance and project costs.
Improve efficiency and performance: visualize systems, evaluate system performance and monitor usage to pinpoint areas for better overall efficiency.
Manage risks proactively: gain multi-dimensional visibility into the software to quickly uncover and address security vulnerabilities before they become a threat.
Remain agile and stay fit: ensure that the technology infrastructure is flexible enough to adapt to new business needs.

Kickstart your LeanIX project with Flexso

Not sure where to start your transformation or enterprise architecture journey? To lower the threshold to LeanIX and ensure short time to value, Flexso created the LeanIX HealthCheck Package: a practical, hands-on approach to identify your way of working and needs, tailor the tool, implement it and train your users to assess your processes. Read more on our dedicated approach.

Get started with LeanIX.

85%

of time saved as LeanIX helps streamline IT reporting, building a comprehensive EA repository, enhancing collaboration, and automating data synchronization. Discover LeanIX.

85%

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