MS Visio vs SAP Signavio: Understanding the differences

My recent meme on MS Visio generated quite some buzz and I received plenty of messages and requests to dive deeper into how MS Visio and SAP Signavio differ from each other. First, it’s like comparing apples to pears. Both serve a totally different purpose. Second, even though you can create process models with MS Visio, it doesn’t mean you generate a solid base for effective business process management. Hence today, let’s emphasize the delta between MS Visio and SAP Signavio a bit more in detail.

Comparing apples to pears

MS Visio and SAP Signavio are both diagramming tools, but they serve different purposes. MS Visio is part of the Microsoft 365 suite and is a versatile diagramming as well as vector graphics application widely used for creating flowcharts, diagrams, organizational charts, and more. It's a standalone software often used for visualizing general-purpose processes and structures.

On the other hand, SAP Signavio is more focused on business process modeling and management. It's designed to help organizations analyze, optimize, and collaborate on their business processes. SAP Signavio includes features for process documentation, simulation, and analysis, making it particularly suited for continuous business process improvement.

The delta between MS Visio and SAP Signavio

Let’s have a deeper look on below characteristics and illustrate how SAP Signavio can tick every single one of them. Speaking of SAP Signavio, we obviously cover the modeling component of the business process transformation suite, SAP Signavio Process Manager.

First, process modeling is supported by both tools. When it comes to intuitive usability, there is only one winner and you see it in the screenshot below. The question is what do I want to do with these process models. Do I want to never touch them again, archive them somewhere in a box or draw them just to have them drawn? Or do I want to bring my processes to the next level, continuously evolve them, sync them with my process analysis, leverage best practices, transform them, live them?

Teaser: Feel free to reach out to me and I will show you in just 30 minutes how you can effectively model and transform your business processes with SAP Signavio Process Manager.

Second, if you are running your ERP on SAP, you might want to synch your business processes with tools like SAP Solution Manager, SAP Cloud ALM or SAP Enable Now – among others. For the latter for instance, SAP Signavio provides a smooth integration for enhanced process documentation, training materials, and seamless knowledge transfer, improving efficiency and user adoption.

In case you are on your way towards SAP S/4HANA or you are already, in both cases you might aim to consider SAP’s best practice process flows for your industry. With SAP Signavio, you can upload an entire library with process flows for each scope item, from finance to procurement to sales. Your LOB managers finally have the process inspiration they were always looking for.

You don’t have much time to model a process? You want to make process modeling accessible also to those who don’t have massive BPM background? SAP Signavio comes with a game changing feature: QuickModel. With this feature, you can drastically accelerate your process model creation simply by defining the “What”, “Who” and “How” for each activity. The QuickModeler automatically creates the corresponding model in BPMN 2.0 notation.

SAP Signavio comes with an entire dictionary to structure your entries regarding your organizational units, documents, risks, controls, IT-systems etc. Imagine you want to illustrate an IT-interface for a specific task. This can become highly error-prone thus promote high redundancy (just think of the various ways you can type SAP S/4HANA, S/4, S-4-HANA etc.). In this context, you can even leverage the out-of-the-box integration to LeanIX, which acts as a single source of data truth for all your IT applications – among others of course. You know I can go on for hours. Simply reach out if you want to learn more.

Another huge advantage of SAP Signavio is the reporting capability for generating holistic process documentations, governance reports, process model metrics, risks & controls reports etc. All available within a few clicks.

Effective process management is ultimately about the human aspect, even if we are talking processes and tech. It’s about collaborating, sharing feedback, and exchanging ideas in a to-go environment. SAP Signavio brings it all together and enables your team members to jointly work on your business processes.

You might want to consider a process management tool not only to continuously improve your business processes, but also support end-to-end business transformation lifecycles. Reflecting the modeling component of SAP Signavio, SAP Signavio Process Manager covers for instance the various SAP Activate project phases as follows:

And as SAP Signavio does not only cover the modeling part, but also the analysis and mining as well as governance and automation parts, you can support your SAP Activate Project Phases even more by leveraging the entire SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite:

Wrap-up

In my eyes, comparing MS Visio to SAP Signavio is like comparing apples to pears. Both serve different purposes. While MS Visio is a general-purpose diagramming tool, SAP Signavio is specifically tailored for business process modeling and management as well as continuous business process transformation and improvement. Please reach out in case you want to discuss which solution fits best to you considering the nature of your ambitions and requirements – I am happy to assist!!