GEA: Understanding the IT landscape, streamlining application portfolio management, and giving users intuitive self-services
Enhancing governance and visibility
With SAP LeanIX solutions as a single source of truth, manufacturer GEA gained a clear overview of its application landscape. Data flows smoothly to and from third-party software, and nontechnical users can onboard applications, letting enterprise architects focus on higher-value activities such as planning, governance, and architecture strategy.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Düsseldorf, Germany | 18,000 employees |
integrated process for registering applications
source of truth on 4,000 applications, improving scalability
incident resolution due to clear application ownership.
Lead Architect, GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Düsseldorf, Germany | 18,000 employees |
integrated process for registering applications
source of truth on 4,000 applications, improving scalability
incident resolution due to clear application ownership.
Lead Architect, GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
Improving transparency and helping enterprise architects add value
Just one enterprise is responsible for making the equipment used to produce one in three chicken nuggets, one in four milk products, and one in two beers globally—GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft. The company is one of the world’s largest systems suppliers for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical sectors, spanning machinery and plants, advanced process technology, components, and services.
With operations in 62 countries and around 280 legal entities across the group, GEA had a fragmented IT landscape comprising more than 60 ERP systems and about 4,000 applications, with unclear ownership and insufficient documentation. Data quality was poor due to inconsistent and unreliable application inventories, while spreadsheet-based tracking meant only around 20% of data was usable.
In addition, baseline visibility was low for GEA’s enterprise architects, who couldn’t provide reliable insights for rollout clustering or platform prioritization and found it difficult to identify high-risk platforms and application dependencies. Architects were acting as librarians and manually maintaining data, and they spent significant amounts of time onboarding applications in the first place.
GEA had already engaged in initial spreadsheet imports and consultant-led harmonization, but these efforts had limited success due to poor data quality. With an ongoing project to migrate to a global instance of SAP S/4HANA, the company knew it was time for a new approach to enterprise architecture and application inventory.
Lead Architect, GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
Creating a common language and single source of truth for applications
Against the backdrop of its migration to SAP S/4HANA, GEA decided the best way forward was to consolidate data on its fragmented application landscape using SAP LeanIX solutions.
One key advantage was smooth integration with both the ServiceNow AI platform for IT operations and portfolio management and the OneTrust platform to support legal and IT security compliance. GEA also connected these with SAP Signavio solutions, which it uses for business process transformation.
This integration enables automated data propagation across systems, saving users from having to enter the same data multiple times. It also supports workflow-driven onboarding triggered by IT service management events such as procurement, incidents, and upgrades.
Self-service onboarding was another advantage. SAP LeanIX solutions let employees of different abilities initiate application onboarding with minimal intervention from architects, while clear ownership and accountability are built into the process.
Lead Architect, GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
Improving efficiency while lessening the burden on architects
Having adopted SAP LeanIX solutions, GEA has made significant efficiency gains across its enterprise architecture, including through streamlined self-service onboarding with minimal touch points. In a one-stop shop, requesters need to make their initial request just once and can then use this record for tasks in different tools.
The solutions have reduced manual effort for architects while helping them plan strategically thanks to improved baseline visibility. With ownership now assigned to every application fact sheet and inventories aligned across SAP LeanIX solutions, ServiceNow, and OneTrust, data quality has improved too.
On the operational side, clear application ownership has led to faster incident resolution, reducing the workload for application champions. Architects better understand the relationships between configuration items and business applications, letting them populate the configuration management database more easily. And improved application visibility means service owners can better manage risk, allocate costs, and harmonize the group’s service portfolios.
Scalability is enhanced too, with SAP LeanIX solutions able to handle thousands of applications while architects can access agile, sprint-based metrics on onboarding processes.
Lead Architect, GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft
Building a new enterprise architecture culture
GEA now plans to link SAP LeanIX solutions more tightly with procurement processes and to adopt universal application ID across different IT systems. Another initiative involves simplifying application fact sheets to encourage broad participation.
Meanwhile, the introduction of SAP LeanIX solutions has sparked a cultural shift. GEA is now building trust in its applications thanks to transparency and ease of use, while employees of a variety of different skill levels are empowered to contribute to IT architecture and the group’s success.
Want to know more about GEA?
GEA: Making Self-Service Simple and Available to Everyone with SAP LeanIX Solutions (SAP Video)