aaff: Turning challenges into opportunities by combining application architectures with SAP LeanIX
How application management smooths a merger
Consultancy firm aaff Groep B.V. was formed through a merger that would empower the new business to better meet customer needs across the Netherlands, but combining two application architectures posed problems. SAP LeanIX solutions helped aaff reduce redundancy while retaining the applications and processes needed to innovate and collaborate for its customers.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Professional services | Wageningen, the Netherlands | 2,000 co-owners |
Enterprise Architect, aaff Groep B.V.
Merging business processes, applications, and cultures
aaff Groep B.V. is a Dutch accountancy and advisory firm serving national and international businesses operating in the Netherlands. The firm is built around one clear belief: entrepreneurs thrive when someone stands beside them during the moments that matter. With over 50 offices and 2,000 co-owners, aaff provides high-quality accountancy, tax, legal, and strategic advisory services. As a certified B Corp, aaff is committed to long-term value creation and to supporting organizations in building resilient and future-focused operations.
This merger, which brought together many of the brightest and most skilled advisors in the market, also combined the companies’ different processes, applications, and cultures. This combination posed a number of challenges: while one company relied on a formal enterprise architecture function, the other didn’t. They also had different ways of documenting their application landscapes and processes, from taking notes in Microsoft OneNote to using custom process mining tools.
For the entire business to come together and create a unified front for customers, it would need an equally unified solution for architecture management.
Enterprise Architect, aaff Groep B.V.
Reducing redundancy across a sprawling application landscape
To get a clear picture of the software architecture that spans the two newly merged companies, aaff chose SAP LeanIX solutions.
SAP LeanIX solutions are a suite of enterprise architecture management offerings that fuel business transformation based on architecture planning. aaff implemented SAP LeanIX solutions to provide IT and senior leadership with the tools they needed to synergize how teams across the business work. They used road maps, reports, and criticality assessments to identify and dive deep into more than 300 applications.
Using the solutions, aaff successfully uncovered systems’ dependencies with other IT objects, the first step to untangling complicated webs of applications and processes that prevent efficiency. The solutions also revealed redundancies between applications across the two merged companies, offering an opportunity to retire legacy solutions that were slowing down the business.
Enterprise Architect, aaff Groep B.V.
Unifying employees across a synergized application architecture strategy
With LeanIX solutions, aaff is turning a complicated business merger into a single unified company with a harmonized process strategy prepared for the future.
aaff is still using SAP LeanIX solutions to identify applications and optimize its architecture during the merger, but the business has already realized major wins with the solutions. So far, they’ve helped aaff reduce time to market for new applications as well as reduce the time to make critical decisions about software and processes.
Those critical decisions include retiring redundant applications identified through SAP LeanIX solutions, which has already secured significant cost savings for the business. This same approach has also helped prevent teams across aaff from making unnecessary software investments now and in the future. For example, if a team is about to kick-start a business project and needs a specific technology functionality, SAP LeanIX can show them that the business already uses an application that meets the team’s needs. This prevents the team from buying a license for a redundant application that then winds up in its own silo.
Moving from merger to full-scale digital transformation
For aaff, SAP LeanIX solutions provide the foundation for a digital transformation beyond the immediate task of merging two companies and their software architectures.
Over the next five years, aaff plans to continue its architecture initiative and transform not only how the business operates, but also how its employees think about technology. The company’s leaders hope that successes in reducing application redundancy will show employees how they can take advantage of existing software investments.
With a clean and consolidated architecture, aaff is also better prepared to take advantage of AI. By reducing the strain on the company’s technology budget and IT resources, aaff can more quickly integrate AI in response to industry and customer trends as well as employee demands for time-saving innovations in automation.