LeanIX Reviews

It's for what it's intended for, which is Enterprise Architecture.

I've mapped our business capabilities inside of LeanIX platform. When I do that, I'm actually integrating it to see what technologies, what data objects, and what interfaces are being used to support not just the business capability but also our business processes. So that's the example.

What it does is it creates a register in the documentation of all your applications and technologies. When you align or map it to your business capabilities, this is how you identify duplication of technologies in your business and how you can potentially rationalize and standardize on them.

In conjunction with my business policies, LeanIX is quite effective because using it as a tool to determine what is an endorsed technology can prevent other technologies from being used. I would call it effective in preventing technology sprawl in my environment if it is used alongside my business policies.

It does assist in aligning IT with business goals.

From a pricing perspective, it is not a cheap tool. It is relatively expensive compared to some of its competitors.

I can't really think off the top of my head at the moment about any features that are lacking or capabilities I would to see added in the future.

I've been using LeanIX probably for the last two years.

There are no glitches or latency issues; it works very well.

It is scalable enough without any limitations for scalability.

I have been in touch with technical support from SAP regarding LeanIX.

My experience was good, but there's room for improvement as there have been some challenges too.

The main challenge was the response time of the support.

Positive

I have worked with similar tools to LeanIX from other vendors.

BiZZdesign is one of the tools I worked with.

There are differences. Each of the tools has different licensing styles or structures. I picked LeanIX because it was easy to deploy without a lot of configuration work. LeanIX also natively integrates with a process mapping tool, which is important for us in mapping out our business.

There is no installation for LeanIX. It is a cloud product.

I do see some return on investment, time saving, and money saving.

The ROI is more than 30%. The work that I do in using this tool will pay for itself.

The ROI in 12 months is not quick, but in 24 months, after deploying the tool and gathering good validated data, I'm probably looking at being able to consolidate and save my organization ongoing savings that equal how much the tool would cost on a yearly basis.

I'm currently managing Enterprise Architecture.

Enterprise Architecture isn't just about vendors in that space. It actually covers business capabilities, business processes, data, applications, and technologies.

A lot of my work is around talking to the business and setting roadmaps, talking strategy, and being part of business initiatives. My focus is more on strategic roadmaps, and sometimes teams might come to me to ask which technology to use, or if they can use a new technology, and I would direct them on a long-term strategy.

I work with some tools from SAP and from Microsoft as well. I use Enterprise Architecture tools LeanIX and Signavio when I speak about SAP.

LeanIX helps optimize my IT portfolio and has a positive impact on technology risk management.

For support, I would give them a seven out of ten. The product itself deserves a nine out of ten.

My current email is sydney.wong@metcash.com. My title now is General Manager of Enterprise Architecture.

Public Cloud

Other

I have experience using LeanIX and have generated a report on our platform. I have 2 years of experience with LeanIX. I've worked with clients such as Kendrill, and in my former years with IBM, we used spreadsheets and other applications for enterprise architecture to look at the entire process and architecture infrastructure for all systems. We moved to SAP LeanIX in the past 2 years because one of my clients, Subway, started to use SAP LeanIX as part of their transformational journey.

The most valuable features with LeanIX include the ability to define all of the various processes from an enterprise architecture perspective, looking at your infrastructure, looking at your processes, and being able to do the lineage all the way through so that each one of those you can pull them out into their component parts to determine exactly which areas you need to resolve, fix, plan, or build a strategy around.

For SAP LeanIX, we only use it for building the strategy for our enterprise architecture, processes, and the infrastructure for the organization. It was mostly for building a finance system because they were moving to SAP in the first place. We decided to use SAP LeanIX to look at all of their processes, rebuild their processes from the legacy application that they were utilizing, doing the mapping from the old to the new, and then determining where the gaps were, and then building up their various different levels of where the process changes would need to happen.

They will continue to improve LeanIX. I'm actually supposed to be at the SAP Sapphire this year. There are a couple of recommendations I know some of my colleagues have made. For me, I have not looked into additional recommendations for LeanIX because I've been held in really just utilizing it for the purposes it has.

One of the things that I know I've had is being able to build it into decent process flows for changes. While LeanIX does have the capability, one of the challenges that I've found, even with working with Subway, was that being able to build that out into a detailed solution for a developer or for new process design was one of the challenges, just making that leap. But there's enough information that comes out of LeanIX to be utilized, and that would be one of the areas I would suggest.

I have 2 years of experience with LeanIX.

The stability of LeanIX, because it's a relatively new product from SAP, even though it was purchased from SAP and then embedded in their suite, if I was to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say it's about an eight. We've had issues where we've had to go back to SAP and ask for help with issues that we've had with core capabilities that were supposed to be there but weren't working. We recognized there were things that we needed to tweak or turn on, but that was just because of knowledge base because it was very new to the team. I would never give a 10 out of 10 for any application. It was eight out of 10 because we didn't experience significant issues, but we did have those challenges where we needed to go back to SAP and enter some requests for fixes.

The scalability of LeanIX is really based on the infrastructure that you have behind it. I've never seen any issues with being able to scale up or scale down the capabilities of the solution at all. The parameters of what we've done, especially for Subway and for Kendrill's clients, we've never seen any issues with the scalability of it. I haven't experienced any scalability issues.

SAP support with LeanIX overall rates around a seven out of 10. That's because of their multiple layers; you have to go to level three, level two, level one. It really is a little bit of a challenge. Sometimes the challenges with the first level that you actually speak to, they don't understand the problem. So, it does take some time to get a resolution. Because I've worked as an SAP liaison in the past when I worked with them on some of their rating technologies for electricity billing, I can navigate that process.

Neutral

The main differences between LeanIX and Sparks are the integrations and capabilities between the ERP platform and the enterprise solution. The challenge that we had with Sparks was that it was quite labor-intensive to be able to get the details into Sparks. The ability to actually integrate that with your ERP solution was not there with Sparks. It's a very powerful tool, it's a really good tool, and I enjoyed using Sparks. With LeanIX, you can use this not only for SAP, but you can use it for integration with APIs with SAP, or back into SAP with LeanIX, that's why LeanIX is the better solution than Sparks.

I was not involved with the initial setup. I was involved with going in once they've already utilized it or installed it.

I help with implementation and that sort of thing.

I would recommend SAP LeanIX to others because, looking at where I've been coming from, I came from a background where we started to use Visio. From Visio, we went ahead to use spreadsheets. From spreadsheets and Visio, we moved into Sparks. From Sparks, we moved into SAP LeanIX. From that perspective, my career evolved to LeanIX. I'm sure there will be better solutions eventually, but as it stands now, I'm very comfortable with SAP LeanIX.

When I talk about the infrastructure piece, one of the things that we looked at moving from the old technologies, for example, from their old database technologies to the new, we recognized they had a lot of tech debt. Old systems needed to be retired because old database technologies would not work with the new SAP backend database.

Looking at their cloud infrastructure that they were building to recognize that they had AWS and Azure, which didn't make sense. We actually recommended looking at all of these licensing, looking at the performance, scaling of the environment, and then making recommendations, basically using SAP LeanIX to decide which path they should take.

I was not involved with the pricing because I was not involved with deciding for the implementation of SAP LeanIX. I went in to use LeanIX as an enterprise architect to help them out. I do know SAP licensing from an ERP standpoint, but I cannot speak to SAP LeanIX pricing.

I have individuals at SAP that I can reach out to directly and have them push our tickets to get them resolved. I'm not a designated partner of SAP. Because of my relationship with SAP, I have quite a few contacts there. Whenever SAP has contracts that are smaller in nature, they provide it to my group. My group has a consortium of consultants, some of those who have worked in some of the big five, who work alongside me through my company, and we provide solutions to our clients.

I would rate LeanIX at an 8.5, trending towards nine.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

We are using LeanIX to enable all the solutions that are available in a consolidated view of the entire architecture portfolio and the application portfolio mapping. This is done with respect to the business capabilities. We use these capabilities to develop dashboards related to business functions, allowing our leadership to take immediate actions based on various factors such as IT and business consumption, future upgrades, and capacity improvements.

One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool. This tool helps us in enabling links between applications and respective business components. It ensures cost optimization by identifying duplicate applications and stopping unnecessary application onboarding, thus optimizing costs ahead of time. Additionally, it tracks the mapping of business functions, helping in the planning of future upgrades and capacity improvements. LeanIX allows us to generate detailed fact sheets for applications, enhancing the accuracy and integration of automated platforms. It aids in the optimization and restructuring of organizational needs based on real-time feedback, offering flexibility and experience as we use the product.

LeanIX should improve its offering by providing standard frameworks applicable to different industries like retail and banking. A default framework would provide a base that organizations can quickly adopt and customize, reducing the time and effort spent on adoption. By analyzing common structures among various customers, LeanIX could offer predefined frameworks that would simplify the adoption process.

I have been working with LeanIX for three years.

I did not experience any significant deployment issues. The deployment part varies as per the number of applications, and using automation can save time. The integration into our infrastructure was easy.

I have not faced any stability issues with LeanIX. The stability has been all good.

LeanIX is easy to scale. I didn't see any challenges with respect to scalability.

We receive continuous support from LeanIX, especially after SAP's involvement. The support includes engagement from Technical Advisable Management, who helps us understand and utilize new product features effectively.

Neutral

Setting up LeanIX is easy and not complex at all. However, adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex.

In the first year, we worked on a test platform, and by mid-2023, we started deploying into production, bringing benefits in terms of optimization and visualization. The ROI is seen more on the optimization side and the ability to map applications comprehensively rather than direct cost savings.

LeanIX pricing ranges from moderate to high. Our usage and costs depend on the number of applications, and as the number of applications grows, so does the cost. We have aligned our usage with application optimization to manage costs effectively.

I recommend LeanIX highly at a level of eight out of ten. Based on organizational complexity, preferences can vary, but LeanIX excels in its domain for those considering it. I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

On-premises

I use LeanIX for enterprise architect purposes.

My favorite feature of LeanIX is its ability to induct attribute-driven surveys. This is the aspect I like the most about it because it excels in this function.

LeanIX should improve its support services. They should implement their ticketing system natively within the application instead of relying on email. Additionally, if they are going to support the United States, they should provide US-based support rather than overseas, like Germany support.

I have been using LeanIX for six months.

LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues.

When it comes to customer service and support, I would rate them a three out of ten.

Negative

The initial setup was easy, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Only one person was required for the deployment.

LeanIX is associated with high costs. It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications. The first pricing tier, which includes 300 applications, is considered a joke given its cost.

I consider LeanIX to be a very expensive tool for what it offers. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a five out of ten.

Public Cloud

Other

I use LeanIX primarily as an enterprise architecture tool. It allows me to load applications, IT components, and map them to business capabilities. The objective is to identify gaps between existing and missing resources and to check for obsolescence in hardware and software that need upgrading. It also facilitates the identification of integration options, like using CPI for SAP, especially for risk management and delivering IT value to businesses.

LeanIX is quite mature, enabling me to load applications, IT components, and map them to business capabilities to identify gaps and manage risk. It includes functionality for tracking obsolescence in hardware and software. Its integration capabilities with third parties, such as SAS discovery, automate data population via web services.

At this stage, I do not see any need for improvement. It is important to demonstrate quick wins by showing duplicated applications or unnecessary licensing costs. The tool provides flexibility but requires cooperation from business users to input comprehensive data.

I have used LeanIX in past projects and continue to evaluate it alongside other tools, such as Biz Design.

Once I set up the system, it remains stable. The cloud-based nature facilitates updates and integration with third-party tools.

I find LeanIX to be scalable as it evolved as a cloud solution, which features extensive third-party integrations.

I am quite impressed with customer service. A dedicated SAP representative was available to assist me with issues, involving subject-matter experts as needed.

Positive

I used Biz Design previously but eventually switched to LeanIX due to its integration capabilities and cloud-native solutions.

The initial setup of LeanIX involved importing flat files and configuring the system to match specific business capabilities and components.

By using LeanIX, I help to reduce unnecessary licensing and streamline applications, providing cost savings in the long term.

My experience with pricing is not directly known, as it was handled by others, but it is subscription-based. The tool was part of the RISE license in a previous project.

I evaluated Biz Design alongside LeanIX. Biz Design was initially on-prem but later moved to a cloud solution.

LeanIX is one of the best solutions available and I rate it nine out of ten. Its strengths lie in its prescriptive nature, guiding businesses to identify gaps and manage IT resources effectively. I advise starting with quick wins and gradually demonstrating the tool's benefits, ensuring business users understand its value.

Public Cloud

Other

I use the solution in my company for access control and landscape maintenance. It is used to put the life cycle and technical fit. The tool is used to swim through the life cycle and also for building maybe target architecture pictures by adding the objectives, the application, and the business capabilities.

For managing your IT landscape, the most valuable features of the solution revolve around the reports and the presentation that is there. I can develop a report and then do a presentation, or develop a report and some other diagrams and then put them all in one presentation, and from there, I can present things directly, so there is no need to move images.

I am just observing the landscape. For me, reporting is just to see if things are okay. If they are not okay, then I need to see what needs to be approved, what needs to be removed, and similar things.

I think the tool's main issue might be direct integrations. I don't know how the integration features are implemented in the tool. I don't know the exact capabilities, but direct integration with the business process automation system may not be available in LeanIX. Actually, mapping and managing are not available in LeanIX. I know that LeanIX is compatible with Signavo because SAP now owns both tools. The tool offers business process mapping and automation, as well as everything else in one platform, along with the architectural landscape. I don't know how it integrates, so even though there are some projects, I don't know if it can be used as a project management tool along with integration features. I don't know the scope of integration yet, but we did not integrate. Maybe others have already integrated the tool with the help of custom integrations or with other project management products or solutions so that they can read the projects from there and not add them or have the need to maintain them twice in LeanIX and the project management portfolio. It would be better to have readymade integration capabilities in the tool so that I can read automatically the the projects from there, and then I can map them to applications. I don't use Signavio, but I know that it is the most compatible tool with LeanIX.

I have been using LeanIX for one year. I am a customer of the tool.

The tool's stability is subjective and objective because it depends on how you plan to implement the tool and how far we implement LeanIX. So far, the tool has been stable, but we have not fully unleashed everything associated with LeanIX. We are already moving from another IT landscape management solution to LeaanIX. Getting people to adopt the new tool is still a process in progress. I don't know why my company chose LeanIX. Though we are not one entity currently, we are unifying four to five company groups, and everyone has their own set of tools.

I will not know because we are not sure if it is scalable because we are not maintaining it. We just use it.

I don't remember the name of the product that was used in our company.

The product's deployment was done before I joined the organization.

I am not responsible for maintaining the solution.

I can recommend the product to others, but it all depends on their use cases. If people have different requirements, they can use other tools. Some people may want just one solution for their IT landscape and business process management, or they may need a product they can integrate and work with to create other solutions.

Based on our implementation and the scope for which I have used the tool, I rate it a seven to eight out of ten.

LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance.

Implementing LeanIX has significantly improved our organization by providing a unified view of the IT architecture, which helps prevent redundant activities and facilitates the straightforward proposal of appropriate applications within the organization. This unified approach has led to increased operational efficiency.

The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources. These features support IT governance by ensuring that all team members are informed and capable of utilizing the platform to its fullest potential.

Improvements in user interface simplicity could be made, particularly with the reporting and filtering capabilities. These features are currently perceived as complex and could benefit from a more intuitive design to enhance user experience.

I have been familiar with LeanIX for about three months.

The stability of LeanIX is generally reliable; however, performance can fluctuate occasionally. Overall, I rate it as stable, scoring eight out of ten.

LeanIX is scalable, meeting our organization's growing demands. Its scalability is an eight out of ten.

Our internal IT team handles most of the support, and I have not had direct contact with LeanIX customer support.

Given the limited interaction with LeanIX's direct support and reliance on our internal team, I would refrain from rating their service and support.

The initial setup was managed prior to my direct engagement with the tool, but it was presented as ready-to-use with minimal involvement required on my part, suggesting a straightforward setup.

Implementation and ongoing support are managed by an internal team, with no direct interaction with the vendor post-implementation.

I recommend LeanIX as an enterprise architect tool. 
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Primarily, our use case is app rationalization. First, get a clear inventory of what applications we have and how they're categorized. 

Secondly, identifying obsolete ones for retirement or replacement. Those were the key reasons we bought it.

When we input our inventory and components, it tells us which ones are nearing end-of-life, deprecated, or obsolete. It also categorizes them. 

We've added flags, essentially tags, to mark certain things as non-strategic technologies. Using LeanIX, we made conscious decisions about which technologies are strategic and which aren't. 

This allows us to generate reports highlighting applications written in non-strategic technologies, giving us a better picture of our inventory size and what needs to migrate to the cloud or our target technology. 

So, it's about understanding what we have, seeing how it aligns with our strategic direction, and then driving the movement towards that direction.

The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.

Report generation could be more detailed. There are some shortcomings when creating reports. We can't create tag-based reports or go beyond basic technical reports. I'd like to see more tags and more out-of-the-box column reports offered.

I have been using it for six months now. We recently upgraded to the v4 schema.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The customer service and support are good.

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The ROI is significant. It used to take us weeks to gather data on technologies nearing end-of-support or becoming obsolete, but now it only takes minutes or hours.

The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money.  

We evaluated a bunch, like Alfabet and Ardoq. LeanIX just had more features and offered better pricing.

Make sure you have dedicated staff to support the tool going forward. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I used it for a customer where we had to do application rationalization and portfolio optimization.

Ease of use is the most valuable feature. From an enterprise architecture perspective, it's not too cumbersome with too many functionalities, yet it has a lot of attributes for the content it covers.

So it's not too cumbersome. Its depth is good. I like that about it. It's compatible with a lot of other applications. It's catering to the area where others are not. So it's kind of complementing; instead of competing with others, it's complementing them.

Moreover, it's very customizable. So even if I want to implement a new framework, I can do it.

The solution offers ample of options. It's very flexible, with features, functionalities, and an admin console. You can customize it extensively. For example, if I need to add custom attributes for an application, I have that flexibility. It's a very flexible and customizable solution. I'm confident that my requirements will eventually be met within it.

The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner.

It covers a lot from an enterprise architecture perspective, but it's not as robust in business architecture. 

I have been using this solution for six months. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

We have around 15 users are currently using LeanIX in our organization. Our current consumption is at 80%. We often get more requirements to increase its usage.

The customer service and support are good. I have heard positive feedback from my counterparts. I personally haven't had the need to contact technical support as everything I needed was available within the solution. Also, we have an in-house team to support it.

Neutral

We did consider other options like Thick Navio and Solonis, but they were getting cumbersome, especially as we were moving away from certain areas of operation. We found that LeanIX had the capabilities we needed.

In terms of pricing, it's cheap. I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. 

I'd suggest starting with a simpler use case and then expanding as needed.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

We use the solution for:

• Application Portfolio Management
• Portfolio Rationalization
• Democratizing the EA decisions rolled up to CIO/CxO Dashboards
• Model the current state architecture and prepare for the target state architecture
• Business architecture-related activities like business capability model, and landscape views for change management/transformation/tech refresh. 

It helps to map the EA components with project/program management data, costs, and where to invest next (risks and opportunities) based on the TIME framework (tolerate, invest, migrate, eliminate).Now May 2025  : TIME,6R etc are part of application factsheet sections itself

It increases the synergy of architects, project managers, business analysts, and infra. The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem. Now the stakeholders collaborate more effectively like a workbench like the system LeanIX, so the data and insights that the CIO office wants are projected in real-time; it's become more dynamic instead of static Visio diagrams/PowerPoint presentations. The decisions are taken more democratically and as a shared responsibility, with transparency of how the data is collated and presented as a wholistic picture to senior management.

New May 2025 : Roadmaps now more customizable which includes handling more operation side of EA like milestones, initiatives, idea, impacts etc.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include its factsheets, easy data capturing, coarse-grained security access control, surveys for automatic data collection and embedding into the platform data (mapping to meta models), technology life cycle management (with industry data) out-of-the-box dashboards like business capability modeling, matrix reports, etc.

It offers out-of-the-box data sync with ServiceNow (ITSM platform), and REST API for integration.

There's a cloud integration for listing the services/applications an organization uses in AWS, to provide a single window listing in the EA Platform for SSO, license cost, etc.

There can be more factsheets covering [technology capability, application capability, application services, etc. ] New May 2025 : This is now possible using factsheets subtypes.

The whole integration architecture view of interfaces/data exchange could be improved. It would be better if the diagrams generated could be exported as Visio files. 

We need a way to create programmable/customizable dashboards/reports. 

The whole underlying meta-model should have been exposed for easy integrations; it's not good at documentation for easy integration (like AWS Lambda/Python/C#) in the use case of writing a batch application for data sync. 

The export of dashboards is not good or useful for printing or projecting.

We've used the solution for the last five years, starting with Enterprise Architecture Management, then Transformation, Value Stream, etc. 

New Exploration May 2025: After SAP acquiring LeanIX, it expanded its EA to more of a SAP Enterprise Architecture Management.

Now each factsheets supported with sub types which is very handy interms of help in reducing app count for license. Now gives more space to enterprise architects to present the architects in terms of Deployments, Business Context, Different types of Organisation, Interfaces into logical and physical etc.

There are frequent releases of the application. In many cases, the vendor helps with underlying existing data porting as well. Availability is not an issue.

It is scalable system since it is a fully cloud-based SaaS solution.

Often the tickets are responded to within a day. We have dedicated success managers as well that help make this solution really able to deliver value to the organization.

New May 2025 : Now it is integrated with SAP Me portal, not like before, support email not active at all. It takes more time to get resolve tickets

Neutral

It is built using bleeding-edge technologies hence the application is more intuitive.

It is a fully SaaS-based solution and is very straightforward to get this delivered as a portal and start using it. The exception is taking into consideration the sustainability needed for keeping data alive with data sync of other ITOP systems.

We implemented the solution as a team (no vendor involved) and kept the success managers of LeanIX highly engaged to get online quickly and effectively.

We were able to optimize/rationalize 30% of the applications.

LeanIX licensing is calculated per application count; hence the cost will need to be assessed upfront while keeping in mind that the M&A or business strategy changes/roadmaps must be anticipated for the next few years.

New May 2025: Sub types introduction now helps lot to reduce a bit  the license cost

I have used both Essential Projects and Avolution Abacus. Both are suitable for different types of organisations; LeanIX being a SaaS-based solution, helps and is quick to market with a bit more intelligence in-built than a typical reporting solution. New : It is more of collaborative enterprise architecture planning solution now a days. It gives ample space to model the EA, Solution Architecture etc.

Users should see dashboards before buying and see it aligns with the CIO organization style of leadership expectations. It is very important to sustainability that users are keeping the system up to date by automating/integrating with other apps in the ecosystem/ITOPs. 

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure