SEFE: Recalibrating IT strategy and decision-making for the energy transition through enterprise architecture management
How SEFE optimized business decisions with SAP LeanIX
In a strategic move, SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH adopted the SAP LeanIX portfolio to refine enterprise architecture management practices. With a holistic overview of its application portfolio, a rationalized application architecture, and new insights into technology obsolescence risk, SEFE can accelerate the transition to greener products.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Utilities | Berlin, Germany | 2,000 employees |
Vice President of IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Data Governance, SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH
Shoring up energy supplies in a decarbonized future
SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH is an international energy company with activities spanning the energy value chain, from origination and trading to sales, transport, and storage. Owned by the Federal Government of Germany, its decades-long expertise in trading, as well as the development of its liquefied natural gas business, positions SEFE as one of the most important suppliers to industrial customers in Europe. With an annual sales volume of 200 TWh of gas and power, its 50,000 customers range from small businesses to municipalities and multinational organizations. By investing in clean energy, especially in the hydrogen ecosystem, SEFE is contributing to the energy transition.
To better position the organization for growth and future innovation, SEFE embarked on an initiative to integrate and harmonize its various IT teams across the company. It also wanted to standardize processes while introducing tools to manage those standards throughout the organization. With each business unit within SEFE managing separate architecture teams, most of which were operating in isolation, SEFE needed to revamp its enterprise architecture practices to fit its new organizational model.
Dr. Stefan Christmann, vice president of IT strategy, enterprise architecture, and data governance at SEFE, explains, “Previously, each individual unit had its own separate architecture teams operating mostly in isolation. We gathered all the architects across all organizations and examined our tool stacks. We discovered that we had an aging central enterprise architecture repository that was not maintained, and the data within it was siloed. We needed to recreate this entire dataset, and we decided that the SAP LeanIX portfolio provided the best tools for our purposes.”
Realizing full visibility of its IT estate and a comprehensive inventory
Having made the decision to adopt new enterprise architecture management practices with SAP LeanIX, SEFE began the journey with a four-month onboarding process.
Christmann recalls, “When we first partnered with SAP LeanIX, I assumed we would tell the professional services team our requirements, and then they would customize the system for us to use the tool. But that’s not the way it worked. Instead, the team educated us on how to do it ourselves. Now, all our architects know how to use the system, what it can do, the opportunities it presents, and how to customize it. There’s a lot of flexibility, which gives us the confidence that we can build out any use case we need inside the tool.”
As a first initiative, SEFE created a holistic overview of its application portfolio across its business units with SAP LeanIX and performed an application rationalization process to eliminate duplicate apps and reduce operational complexity. As well as seeing all of its applications and interfaces in one space, SEFE uncovered many duplicates and redundancies by mapping these applications to business capabilities.
Not only did SEFE gain visibility of its IT estate and create a comprehensive inventory of its applications, but the company also made that information available through SAP LeanIX. This allows architects, business analysts, C-suite executives, and designated people in the operations teams in other areas to access the data they need, when they need it. The new approach is in stark contrast to previously, when it would take two or three days to get all the necessary approvals for a new employee to access the enterprise architecture repository. This also required installing two different applications on a device and the user undergoing training on how to use them.
Vice President of IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Data Governance, SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH
Redefining its overall IT strategy and optimizing decision-making
SAP LeanIX is quickly becoming the core of all SEFE’s enterprise architecture processes, and the company is now working with the data in SAP LeanIX to define its overall IT strategy and optimize decision-making. Christmann notes that SAP LeanIX enables the company to answer important questions based on data, with the dashboarding feature being especially helpful as the basis for developing compelling strategies. The fact sheets in SAP LeanIX provide everyone in SEFE’s team with a common understanding of the context, and there’s also a self-service model for architecture data queries and requests.
SEFE also uses SAP LeanIX to proactively manage technology obsolescence risk. Previously, getting lifecycle information for applications and technologies required using Google to find out when certain versions of software and operating systems no longer had vendor support. There were no regularly scheduled intervals for this research, and it was often performed reactively when something went wrong. Now vendor lifecycle information in the reference catalog is proving particularly helpful in tracking end-of-life software dates and planning accordingly.
Christmann adds, “I really like the reference catalog feature because we can easily see when support for a certain technology expires, helping us proactively plan a replacement. When we created the inventory of our applications and started to gather this type of data in SAP LeanIX, we received notifications to update certain components. There were things the tool told us that we never thought of. So we were able to uncover many issues just by inputting the data.”
Vice President of IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, and Data Governance, SEFE Securing Energy for Europe GmbH
Looking to a greener future with SAP LeanIX
With ambitious plans for the future, SEFE understands that to stay ahead of changing technologies, markets, and customer expectations, a strategy based on continuous IT and business transformation is central to success.
Among its most important long-term goals, being a driving force in the transition from fossil fuels to green energy is paramount. Here, the use of SAP LeanIX as a key pillar of SEFE’s continuous transformation can provide the visibility, road-mapping, and change management necessary for the transition to greener products.