Business Flows 2.0 Release Overview: From Generic Foundations to Industry-Specific Execution

bpExperts is proud to announce the latest Business Flows 2.0 (BF 2.0) release—a structured, SAP-aligned repository of business processes designed to support real-world SAP transformation initiatives.

This release delivers value in two distinct ways. It enhances the Generic Industry version with improved structures and updated content, and it introduces a new Process Industry repository tailored specifically to the operational realities of process-driven organizations.

With Business Flows 2.0, organizations gain greater transparency across their process landscape, faster and more reliable process scoping, and actionable insights that accelerate SAP-driven transformations from the earliest phases. The BF 2.0 release is guided by a consistent set of principles applied across both the Generic and Process Industry content, ensuring that improvements are not isolated changes but part of a coherent overall design.

What Makes This Release Special

A defining element of this release is the enhanced Business Flows metamodel, which introduces industry-specific transformational drivers and business capabilities that are explicitly modeled and visible:

• Carefully selected, industry-relevant end-to-end scenarios were defined for the Process Industry, focusing on real operational business cases rather than generic functional flows.

• Industry-specific transformational drivers and business capabilities are explicitly represented, making the link between strategic objectives, processes, and execution transparent and actionable.

• For the first time, SAP scope items, business capabilities, and SAP solutions are officially introduced and implemented together, ensuring that process content is directly aligned with what SAP solutions support in practice.

👉 Request a demo session to explore Business Flows 2.0 and see how industry-specific process content can accelerate your SAP transformation.

Process Industry Development Approach

As part of the BF 2.0 release, a dedicated Process Industry (PI) version has been introduced. It complements the Generic Business Flows by providing tailored structure and content for process-driven organizations and serves as a blueprint for future industry-specific releases.

SAP-Aligned Domain Coverage

The Process Industry repository spans eight SAP-aligned end-to-end domains:

• Idea to Market

• Plan to Fulfill

• Lead to Cash

• Source to Pay

• Finance

• Acquire to Decommission

• Governance

• Recruit to Retire

Objectives of the Process Industry Release

The objective of this release is to enable effective scoping, design, and implementation of SAP-aligned business flows by:

• Establishing a comprehensive, industry-specific process repository

• Deploying the content on SAP Signavio for immediate use in modeling and analysis

• Supporting efficient mapping of real business cases to SAP solution capabilities

• Highlighting process-industry-specific transformational drivers and business capabilities to support targeted business outcomes

Development Methodology

The Process Industry content was developed using a structured and reusable approach:

• The Generic Business Flows served as a baseline to ensure architectural consistency

• Industry-specific business cases (such as Sell-from-Stock, Third-Party Procurement, and Manufacturing Site operations) defined the primary scope

• Industry-centric scoping focused on operational realities rather than functional decomposition

• Validation against SAP solution capabilities ensured feasibility and alignment

• Dedicated libraries of transformational drivers and business capabilities support measurable value realization

Repository Structure and Benefits

The Process Industry repository provides multiple perspectives to support navigation and analysis:

• Industry View for selecting relevant content

• Domain View aligned to SAP end-to-end domains

• Industry-specific E2E scenarios and transformational drivers

• Detailed E2E flows linked to business capabilities and SAP scope items

This enables organizations to:

• Accelerate process scoping and design using predefined industry standards

• Align business processes directly with SAP solution capabilities

• Identify key transformational drivers and required business capabilities

• Maintain a consistent, structured, and reusable process repository

Generic Industry Highlights

The Generic Industry version has also been significantly enhanced in this release, with improved domain structures, refined end-to-end scenarios, and stronger alignment with SAP solutions.

Key improvements include:

• Introduction of Acquire to Decommission and Asset Management, completing the full asset lifecycle view

• Structural realignment based on Integrated Business Planning principles

• Streamlined end-to-end scenarios, removal of obsolete content, and introduction of new scenarios addressing regulatory, sustainability, workforce management, and subscription-based business models

This release incorporates SAP scope items version 2508, with extended coverage across logistics, procurement, asset management, finance, quality management, and human capital management. SAP Integrated Business Planning, SAP Ariba, and SAP SuccessFactors scope items are aligned where applicable.

Several domains remain under active review and will be further enhanced as part of planned redesigns scheduled for Q1 2026.

Overall Impact

Overall, this release strengthens the foundation of Business Flows 2.0 by improving structural consistency, expanding functional coverage, and ensuring closer alignment with current SAP solutions and best-practice operating models.

Business Flows Release 3 available

- Rachael Föcker

When we created our Business Flows reference model and set of best practice methodology over three years ago, our objective was to provide a simple process repository for everybody. The challenge we saw, was finding the right balance of being specific as well as being relevant for a wide range of customers.

The use cases and feedback from customers show that we accomplished this job well, but also let us think about what we can do developing it further.
Since the beginning of the year we have been working on upgrading model contents, conventions and methodologies and are now happy to announce the new release. version 3, of Business Flows.

The main points we have changed or added for the current release are

Additional Content (Domains, Scenarios)

We now cover several additional domains:

• Lead to Opportunity (L2O)

• After Sales and Services (ASS),

• Forecast to Plan (F2Pl) and

• Master Data Management (MDM)

Especially ASS and MDM are hot topics as many industrial companies strategically want to transform their business model more towards offering services and solutions rather than just products. This in combination with ever shorter product-innovation-cycle-times and growing markets has a massive impact on master data processes.
They need to become better integrated, faster and more reliable in order to facilitate the core processes.

Simplified role model

We have decided to discontinue the roles on BPMN level and just provide the department role on process level.

The feedback on the value of roles associated with individual processes and process steps was ambivalent as most customers have very individual organizations and corresponding role definition and naming. The added value of having an example was diminished by the discussions on how best to adapt to the actual situation.
Also, frequently - depending on size of departments and organization the role model has to be more differentiated or sometimes less differentiated.

Use case related content in detailed process charters in BPMN

We encounter two main types of use cases for the most detailed process level modeled in BPMN:

• Act as a modeling template to be copy/adjusted rather than starting on a white modeling canvas.

• Provide content on the main activities, the degrees of automation, inputs/outputs etc in order to facilitate process workshops and business requirements sessions.

We think the latter use case is of greater value to Business Flows users for which we provide the BPMN processes and have decided to focus on accumulating relevant information into dedicated sections. We call this the process charter. 

The models still comply with the BPMN notation but are now structured according to the fixed scheme shown below.

Each process charter contains two core lanes representing the Happy Flow and the Exception Handling.

Where the Happy Flow indicates the best practice processing, the Exception Handling supports process workshops as they indicate the essential questions to be clarified prior to a detail design.

Additionally where available, stewardship documents covering essential business requirements such as policies, guidelines, risks and controls are included.

Value Flows

The accounting impacts of business operations are often unknown or unclear to business professionals from purchasing, production planning, and sales & distribution. By the same token, experience has shown that Finance & Controlling departments are repeatedly left in the dark during process design phases of major business transformation initiatives.

Value Flows represent the impact of business activities and events in Finance and Controlling to trigger the discussion between Operations and Financial and Managerial Accounting. 

Value Flows enrich process documentation by establishing cross references between Key Value Flow topics within a business such as ‘Cost Of Goods Sold’ (COGS), inventory postings, and related E2E scenarios.

Value Management Framework

Business transformation is all about operationalising strategies. With our Value Management Framework we offer a structured approach on how to derive and prioritize your business drivers from your companies strategy and identify the appropriate scope and value drivers in order to achieve your objectives.

Our framework is inspired by SCOR performance attributes (strategic pillars) and metrics. Business Drivers represent trending industry hot topics for each strategic pillar. Whereby Value Drivers represent industry best practices required to achieve transformation objectives. Last but not least, System Capabilities (S/4HANA) provide the foundation for your solution design.

Although the content of the above mentioned features are all prepared not everything is already available in the customer portal yet. We shall be publishing it step-wise over the next weeks in order to have finalized the publishing by mid September. Just in time for our customer event.