Academic and Research Alliances

Transformation Academia with SAP Signavio

SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite,
Academic Edition

Model business processes, build Petri nets, run simulations, and more with our free academic offering! Sign up with your academic e-mail address for instant access (six months with autoextension possibility).

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Quickly create, model, and simulate your processes

The academic edition of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite offers numerous capabilities for process model creation, modeling, version control, and simulation.

The graphical editor is a visual process modeling tool that supports common process modeling techniques and conventions. In addition to business process model and notation (BPMN) models, you can create value chain diagrams, use UML, ArchiMate, or DMN, create Petri nets, and much more.

Quickly create, model, and simulate your processes

Use the QuickModel feature to sketch a new process automatically by simply inserting the tasks in a table. Especially for process modeling newbies, this is a great way to get started and learn how to model according to BPMN conventions!

Create process models

Create your processes more simply, add new activities, edit, and review your models in the graphical editor.

Whether you are a student, lecturer, or research affiliate of an accredited university, start process modeling, simulation, and more with the SAP Signavio suite!

Registration will grant you access to SAP Signavio solutions for an initial six months, which may be extended as long as you are part of an academic institution (with a valid institutional e-mail address).

For Students

Collaborative workspaces
Ideal for student projects and theses
Process modeling platform

For Lecturers

Ability to invite students by e-mail

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

Build your own BPMN diagram to visualize your processes and specify who's responsible for certain tasks by including swim lanes.

Simulate processes for alternative business scenarios

Kick-start process simulation by setting and monitoring case scenarios, and dive into tasks most relevant to you. Uncover hidden opportunities and find the best alternatives.

Petri nets

Use SAP Signavio solutions to visualize your workflow as a Petri net. A Petri net is a powerful formal model for describing the behavior of concurrent systems and is often used as a formal foundation for verifying the control flow of process models.

Dictionary

Use the dictionary to help ensure a central and consistent management of recurring process information. Save modeling elements in the dictionary to reuse them in future processes.

License Details

By signing up for the academic edition of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite, you certify that you are currently a member of an accredited academic institution. This offer is restricted to noncommercial use cases for educational and research purposes only.

Research at SAP Signavio

As a former spin-off from Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam, SAP Signavio has its roots in academia. We are committed to honoring these origins and are engaging in a continuous research-oriented dialogue with academic communities around business process management, computer science, and artificial intelligence in order to jointly ideate and innovate.

How we work with academia

Student projects and theses.

We love to be involved in student projects that combine theory and practice in collaborations between universities and industry and regularly jointly supervise Bachelor and Master theses with our academic partners. In the latter case, students will be formally employed by SAP.

Open data and data access.

We are committed to facilitate the empirical evaluation of academic research and hence drive open data initiatives in a cautious and responsible manner. In addition, we invite students and researchers to visit us to complement empirical research on open data with evaluations that are conducted using proprietary, but typically more realistic datasets.

Visiting Researcher Program.

We regularly invite early career researchers (PhD Candidates and Postdocs, but senior academics are also welcome) to visit SAP Signavio for three to six months to advance their research topics in a practice-oriented manner, utilizing dedicated infrastructure for developing and deploying prototypes in ‘production’-like environments. For the time of their visit, the researchers are on SAP payroll.

Are you an academic researcher interested in working with us?

Please reach out to us at signavio.research@sap.com.

Note: in case you are instead looking for using our academic process management software offering, please read more here.

News and Activities

SAP Signavio is actively participating in academic community events such as workshops and conferences, contributing both informally and formally to the academic discourse. Below we provide a selection of the latest news and activities.

March 27, 2023: SAP Signavio and TU Munich Collaboration on Process Analysis Recommender Systems

We started collaborating with the chair of Prof. Rinderle-Ma at TU Munich on process analysis recommender systems. Read more about the collaboration in our new blog post.

February 1, 2023: Visiting Researcher Program Kick-Off.

We kicked-off the SAP Signavio Visiting Researcher Program. The first academic colleagues joining us for researcher stints this February will work on formal verification for decision management and model-less conformance checking.

October 28, 2022: Signavio at ICPM ‘22.

We gave a keynote talk at ICPM’s process querying workshop. Also, we presented papers about explainable AI for business process monitoring (with Henrik Leopold, Kühne Logistics University and HPI), as well as about our recently published open process model dataset (with Jana Rehse, University of Mannheim).

September 20, 2022: Signavio at BPM ‘22.

SAP Signavio’s Gero Decker gave a keynote talk at this year’s Business Process Management academic conference; our product and innovation teams presented the Navigation Maps product feature, as well as a prototype for human-in-the-loop business process reinforcement learning, co-developed with Luise Pufahl, Ingo Weber, and their students at TU Berlin.

August 26, 2022: Signavio releases the SAP Signavio Academic Model dataset.

Today, SAP Signavio released the world’s largest open data process model collection with hundreds of thousands of process models, including analysis code and detailed instructions on how to work with it. You can find out more on the SAP community blog.

International Conference on Business Process Management

The International Conference on Business Process Management is the premier conference for researchers and practitioners in the field of BPM. Over the past decade, the conference has built its reputation by showcasing leading-edge research of the highest quality together with talks, tutorials, and discussions featuring some of the most renowned thought leaders and innovators in the field.

Dr. Gero Decker, Signavio founder and co-managing director at SAP Signavio, is this year's BPM conference keynote speaker.

International Conference on Process Mining

The International Conference on Process Mining is a platform for researchers to meet and discuss the current state of the art of process mining as well as its future. The main purpose of the conference is to allow researchers in this area to come together and share new ideas or new applications.

Women in Data Science Conference

To foster more diversity in the IT profession, we proudly support Stanford University's Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference. The WiDS initiative aims to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and to support women in the field. In 2022, SAP hosted its first-ever global Women in Data Science Conference. Over 700 participants dialed in for over 16 hours of sessions covering data science, machine learning, and analytics. If you missed it, check out the recordings of our event from Tokyo to Palo Alto for access to on-demand presentations, interviews, and panel discussions on topics such as the impact of gender bias in data science, data science in process intelligence, and AI ethics.

SAP Academic Community Conference Events

Every year, the SAP University Alliances program organizes multiple regional conferences for SAP-focused education and research activities. In 2022, we offer BPM and process mining demos, presentations, and workshops at the SAP Academic Community Conference events for North America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, and Latin America.

Who can register?

Any member of an academic institution can register for free for our comprehensive process transformation offering. Whether you are a student, lecturer, or research affiliate of an accredited university, start process modeling and simulation with SAP Signavio solutions today!

For how long can I use the tool?

Can I (as a lecturer) evaluate my students’ progress with the help of the tool?

Yes, it is possible to invite students to your work space in order to check their progress and evaluate their models. You can find out more about user management in the official SAP Signavio documentation.

I can't access my work space anymore. What happened?

After six months of inactivity, your student license expires temporarily until you reactivate it. To regain access to your work space, please contact support@signavio.com.

What capabilities within SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite can I use with my academic work space?

The academic edition of the suite currently includes the graphical editor, QuickModel, comparison, and simulation capabilities. In addition, dictionary items and roles can be created and integrated into the diagrams (limited collaboration hub functionality).

What is part of the academic edition of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite?

The academic edition offers numerous capabilities for process model creation, modeling, version control, and simulation. Check out our overview page (LINK) to learn more.

Are there additional functionalities planned for the future?

The short answer is yes! Stay tuned for new features that we plan to add to make analyzing and optimizing your processes even easier. For all other inquiries, you may reach us at signavio.academics@sap.com.