Across banking, insurance and asset management, financial institutions are realizing data orchestration will define their future competitiveness.
This is apparent in recent headlines. For example, JPMorgan Chase has ambitiously invested in AI, building a team of over 2,000 AI experts and developing proprietary models to improve everything from fraud detection to investment advice. But the story underneath the surface is just as important.
Bold bets can only be made from a solid foundation. Before any AI, analytics or digital transformation initiative can succeed, the data behind it must be clean, connected and controlled. Leading financial services firms recognize these initiatives can only deliver value when the data feeding them is complete, synchronized and auditable.
In an environment where transactions span mainframes, SAP systems, cloud platforms and best-of-breed specialty tools, orchestrating data flows rather than just integrating endpoints becomes the competitive differentiator. Instead of adding more tools, you need to build better pipelines. Your filings, financial statements and liquidity metrics are too critical to allow stale, inconsistent and siloed data to inform them.
The more orchestrated your data movement, the faster and safer your institution can move. Whether you manage $5 billion or $500 billion, orchestration supports financial close acceleration, real-time risk aggregation and ongoing compliance with evolving regulations.
And it’s achievable now.
The stakes are higher in finance
Whereas it would be a mere efficiency problem in some industries, data friction in financial services is a major business risk. When your systems operate in silos or on rigid schedules, you open the door to fines, missed cutoffs, extended close cycles, customer dissatisfaction and other negative outcomes.
Meanwhile, the AI and analytics platforms you’re investing in, from SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to Azure, Databricks and beyond, can’t deliver value if the pipelines feeding them are delayed, error-prone or unverifiable. Precision and timing are non-negotiable when you’re dealing with the precious numbers that impact the lives and livelihoods of your valued stakeholders.
From static pipelines to dynamic orchestration
Despite years of modernization efforts, many financial institutions have invested heavily in connecting systems via APIs, ETL pipelines or middleware. These integrations were a necessary step, as they enabled data movement between SAP S/4HANA, legacy mainframes, cloud data warehouses, CRMs and more. But whether data moves isn’t the question; it’s whether it moves correctly, completely and in sync with the events that drive your business.
Without considering this connectivity and complexity, you’ll lack event-driven control, data validation checkpoints, dependency management and real-time recovery, among other key capabilities. An intelligent orchestration layer addresses these gaps, especially if, like most financial operations, yours operates across a hybrid mix:
SAP S/4HANA or SAP Central Finance
Legacy mainframes for core banking or policy systems
Cloud data warehouses and analytics platforms
CRMs like Salesforce
Risk engines, actuarial systems, customer applications and partner ecosystems
It’s important to have a living nervous system connecting it all. A foundation that can monitor, react and adapt automatically across SAP and non-SAP systems will help you meet ballooning expectations brought about by AI, evolving regulations and more industry-specific factors.
True data pipeline enablement requires the ability to:
Trigger workloads across SAP, cloud and legacy systems based on real events instead of static schedules
Validate and sequence data automatically — delaying or rerouting jobs until quality gates are cleared
Coordinate ML model execution tied directly to upstream data pipelines, whether scoring loans, recalculating provisions or updating liquidity forecasts
Automatically log, track and retry processes to maintain auditability and meet SLA commitments
Push structured, enriched datasets to SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI and other downstream consumers
Orchestration makes this possible. It doesn’t replace your SAP platforms, APIs, data lakes or CRM systems. It connects and governs the financial data flowing between them, automatically and intelligently. And AI and compliance-readiness depend on this very orchestration.
Modernizing an SAP landscape at one of the world’s largest wealth managers
Multi-national financial services firm UBS faced complex challenges integrating SAP systems with non-SAP core banking platforms. They needed faster financial reporting, lower operational risk and greater agility to respond to market demands.
By migrating to RunMyJobs by Redwood, they achieved real-time orchestration across hybrid systems, reducing the time required for financial data consolidation and strengthening SLA performance. These changes came alongside a 30% reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) of the company’s IT process solutions.
Today, UBS runs mission-critical financial workloads reliably and scalably. Read the full story.
Building an efficient automation fabric around everyday financial processes
Your organization lives and dies by its ability to respond to change, and it all begins with having every dataset, account and rate positioned correctly from the outset. An automation fabric is the layer that connects and synchronizes your tools, data sources and processes across your IT environment, no matter how complex it is.
Setting your entire organization up for resilience begins with the first transaction of the day. Here’s what orchestrated start-of-day financial operations can look like with a secure, advanced workload automation platform as your control layer.
Ledger updates and overnight postings
Finalize overnight processes — interest accruals, FX revaluations, journal entries — using SAP Financial Accounting (FI) and SAP Treasury and Risk Management (TRM)
Validate completion of all wrap-up jobs
Check dependencies and prevent downstream jobs if failures are detected
Balance reconciliation
Trigger FF_5 to import bank statements
Run matching logic and update general ledger balances
Launch ML cash application processes in SAP Cash Application (Cash App)
Automatically alert stakeholders about missing files and manage escalation workflows
Opening balances and cash positioning
Refresh One Exposure hub with new data
Load memo records and run liquidity forecasts in SAP Cash Management
Pull FX rates, payment maturities and treasury forecasts from SAP TRM
Data loading for exchange rates and market data
Import daily FX rates and market indices into SAP tables
Validate values against prior-day data
Alert treasury and risk teams of major discrepancies that could impact valuations or cash forecasts
Risk checks and exposure updates
Run FX valuation jobs
Generate treasury dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)
Monitor for trading limit exceptions and notify teams automatically
System readiness and transaction processing enablement
Execute standing instructions and direct debits in SAP Banking Services
Generate payment proposals (e.g., F110, APM)
Route for approvals via SAP Bank Communication Management (BCM) and transmit to banks
Monitor acknowledgments and update One Exposure with outgoing flows
Every step is timestamped, validated and fully auditable, so you’re ready to operate at full speed from the first minute of the business day. Your firm can create resilient, auditable pipelines, reduce risk, enable AI and advanced analytics and scale cross-system processes without adding complexity or risk.
RunMyJobs ensures readiness across SAP FI, TRM, BCM and external systems while automatically triggering ETL pipelines once jobs complete and feeding analytics platforms like Databricks, SAC, Tableau or Power BI.
Supplement your orchestration with Finance Automation by Redwood
High-performing institutions take automation even further. Choosing to complement your advanced workload automation platform with an end-to-end automation solution for financial close, reconciliations, journal entries and disclosures can help you achieve:
Continuous accounting and faster period-end close
Greater accuracy across income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements
Stronger governance and full traceability from source systems to boardroom-ready reports
Harnessing the orchestrated advantage for hybrid environments
Financial institutions have long recognized the importance of data. However, the sheer volume, velocity and variety of financial data are exploding. Fueled by real-time event streams, the proliferation of APIs and embedded finance, plus an increasing reliance on AI-driven insights, the data landscape is becoming exponentially more complex.
The future demands a fundamentally different approach to managing this ever-growing tide. Intelligent automation and orchestration are essential for building a resilient foundation capable of handling the dynamic and interconnected nature of tomorrow’s financial operations.
To navigate an expanding hybrid data landscape effectively, you must build a robust orchestration layer that ensures data integrity, auditability and observability across all systems.
Read more about how to get your data out of the modern-day maze.
The month ends, the pressure mounts and the race to close the books begins. It’s a familiar cycle, often marked by a frantic push to hit deadlines, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. But what if we could fundamentally change this experience by moving beyond simply meeting the deadline and instead focusing on a smoother, more accurate and, ultimately, less stressful close?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about why the month-end close in so many organizations feels like a series of disconnected tasks, performed by teams working in silos with limited visibility into the bigger picture. Different individuals or teams own specific accounts or processes, diligently working on their piece of the puzzle. Yet, the connections between these pieces — the understanding of how one person’s output directly impacts the next stage and the final financial statements — often feel flimsy.
The problem with traditional close timelines
This situation is often exacerbated by a phenomenon known as Parkinson’s Law, the idea that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If we allocate a set number of days or hours per month for the close, the work tends to stretch out to occupy that entire timeframe. This happens both consciously and unconsciously. Tasks that we could complete more efficiently can become drawn out and the initial urgency can dissipate, leading to a last-minute scramble.
It reminds me of a poorly orchestrated assembly line. Imagine a car factory where each worker focuses solely on their individual task, like installing a door or tightening a bolt, without any real-time feedback on the quality of their work or how it affects the subsequent steps. Compound this with the fact that each worker feels they have “all day” to complete their seemingly small task.
Then, picture the pressure intensifying. Leadership demands the finished product by a specific time, no excuses. The focus narrows to speed, potentially overshadowing the crucial element of quality. The car rolls off the line “on time,” a superficial victory. But when quality control steps in, the reality hits: misaligned parts, missing components — a fundamentally flawed product requiring significant and costly rework.
Sound familiar? When those month-end financials are delivered on schedule but later reveal discrepancies, incomplete documentation and overlooked details? That frantic, siloed approach, often fueled by the creeping influence of Parkinson’s Law, leads to precisely this outcome. We allow the work to expand to fill the available time and end up creating more work, and potentially more significant issues, down the line.
Assembly line reimagined: What automation makes possible
What if we could transform this disjointed process into a seamless, interconnected “accounting assembly line?” This is where automation comes into play, offering a direct antidote to the inefficiencies brought about by Parkinson’s Law.
Consider the impact of robotics and sophisticated systems in a modern car factory. These technologies not only accelerate production but also dramatically improve accuracy and consistency. Imagine automated systems flagging inconsistencies early in the process, preventing downstream errors. An automated accounting assembly could perform complex tasks with unwavering precision, unaffected by the human tendency to let work fill the available time.
Automation offers the same potential for our month-end close, directly combating Parkinson’s Law by:
Imposing efficiency by design: Automation tools don’t succumb to the temptation to stretch out tasks. They execute processes in a standardized, efficient manner, completing them in their actual required time, regardless of the broader timeframe allocated for the close.
Shrinking task timelines and fostering focus: Automating repetitive and manual processes drastically reduces the time needed for these core closing activities. This inherently shortens the close timeline because it prevents work from expanding unnecessarily and forces a more focused approach.
Promoting timeliness and accountability: Automated workflows with reminders and escalation protocols inject a sense of urgency and ensure tasks are completed on schedule, directly counteracting the procrastination that Parkinson’s Law often encourages.
Enhancing accuracy from the start: Automation minimizes human error, leading to cleaner data and fewer discrepancies. There’s no longer a need for extensive investigations and rework at the tail end of the close. It essentially prevents the rework “penalty” of a rushed, Parkinson’s Law-influenced process.
Fostering integration and visibility: Automation can connect disparate systems and provide a holistic view of the closing process. It breaks down silos and demonstrates how each task contributes to the final outcome.
By understanding the subtle yet powerful influence of Parkinson’s Law on traditional close processes, we can better appreciate why simply allocating more time, adding more bodies, offshoring labor or purchasing siloed automation tools isn’t the solution. Embracing strategic automation isn’t just about closing faster; it’s about reclaiming our time, enhancing accuracy and creating a more streamlined and less stressful month-end close by actively preventing work from expanding to fill the available void.
It’s about building that high-quality “car” efficiently the first time, rather than constantly fixing a rushed and flawed product, then replicating the process to continue to produce that same quality of vehicle.
Why do finance automation adoption numbers lag behind a belief in its importance? See the latest industry stats in “The R2R automation playbook.”
Look for the signs
Think critically about where Parkinson’s Law might be subtly impacting your current close. It doesn’t exactly announce itself.
Ask yourself and your team:
Are we still relying on Excel spreadsheets for close task management?
Do we wait until the last 48 hours to reconcile bank statements or finalize accruals?
Are our ERP systems feeding real-time data into our close checklist, or are we still relying on someone to tick a box when a task is complete?
Are we discovering discrepancies too late and forcing rework that derails forecasting and decision-making?
If the answer to any of these is yes, it’s time to analyze how you might be unintentionally allowing Parkinson’s Law to creep in and shape your workflows.
Win back time and drive a predictable, quality close
Speed alone isn’t the goal. What moves the needle is a close process that doesn’t crumble under pressure.
Automation can empower your team to own a predictable, auditable and resilient close process. When every financial transaction, journal entry and general ledger update flows through a standardized, automated system and quality control is built right into the process, they’ll spend less time chasing manual steps and more time refining strategy.
You’re not removing people from the process; you’re allowing them to work smarter. Not only will automation eliminate the delays and stress that so often plague the month-end effort, but it will also help you with the practical stuff: identifying cash flow issues before they hit the balance sheet, validating metrics, ensuring data consistency and more. Automation is your lever against the inevitable.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard “AI” at SAP Sapphire 2025 …
AI was simply everywhere at this year’s events. From Christian Klein’s keynote to the show floor demos, it was the foundation of nearly every conversation. But beneath the buzzwords and bold visions, I noticed one question kept surfacing: How do you actually do it? How do you make AI actionable inside the day-to-day workings of an enterprise?
That’s the question we were thinking about at the Redwood Software booth and in our customer sessions and roundtables. It was fantastic to see the energy this year: standing-room-only demos, deep discussions with IT and business leaders and a steady stream of customers stopping by to share what they’re already doing with job scheduling, orchestration and workload automation (WLA). The excitement was real, but the deeper story was about who’s already rolling up their sleeves instead of just dreaming about digital transformation that actually realizes the value of AI.
Redwood was proud to be recognized for the second year in a row with the SAP Pinnacle Award in a category honoring innovative partners that provide economically relevant solutions, validating our ability to consistently drive high adoption and ROI for SAP customers. We also announced that RunMyJobs by Redwood is now an SAP Endorsed App, Premium certified — the highest level of SAP verification, indicating outstanding customer value.
The best part? We’re not talking in hypotheticals. These milestones are a testament to the real-world outcomes our customers achieve when integrating with the latest SAP technologies, maximizing the value of their SAP investment. We saw that in full color in sessions and roundtable discussions with RS Group and others, whose teams shared striking results they’ve achieved using RunMyJobs. They haven’t been waiting for the AI wave. Instead, they’ve been preparing for it by modernizing their WLA. And it’s paying off.
We’re making business AI real as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Klein’s sentiment rang true throughout the event, especially his keynote theme: To thrive in an AI-powered world, it’s not enough to modernize ERP. Foundational processes, especially the ones running behind the scenes, must be intelligent, agile and orchestrated. WLA platforms like RunMyJobs are already doing the work of preparing SAP landscapes for AI by coordinating processes end to end, orchestrating the tasks that drive efficient data pipelines and ensuring the reliability that AI output depends on.
Redwood customers leading the charge
SAP made it clear: the future isn’t about cobbling together best-of-breed tools. It’s about building a smart, cohesive suite. That suite extends beyond core ERP to include the applications and automation fabrics that make an entire business run. Redwood customers are already there.
RunMyJobs isn’t a standalone job scheduler. It’s the connective tissue for automation fabrics across SAP and non-SAP systems, delivering the kind of real-time orchestration that complex, data-intensive environments demand. Redwood’s shared product vision with SAP is helping customers optimize operations to scale with AI. That alignment is also what earned RunMyJobs its SAP Endorsed App status.
We spotlighted compelling Redwood customer stories at SAP Sapphire this year, including the following.
RS Group: Transforming global supply chain operations for a demanding market
As a global industrial distributor, RS Group faces an unforgiving supply chain environment. Before RunMyJobs, they couldn’t even run business operations processing (BOP) daily for all 26 markets they serve. The complexity was enormous. They had to stagger market runs, which put customer promises, such as delivery timelines, at risk.
Using RunMyJobs to re-engineer processes and workstreams and optimize job logic, they now run BOP for all 26 markets daily.
We now meet our promise to our business and customers.
Dharmesh Patel, Head of SAP Development & Services, RS Group
But that was only the beginning. Previously, RS Group faced issues with poor monitoring, alerting and visibility, leading to frequent Priority 1 (P1) and Priority 2 (P2) incidents in critical operations like order processing and warehouse management. With RunMyJobs, they introduced custom alerting, rebuilt job frameworks and created a governance model for continuous improvement.
The payoff of using RunMyJobs for RS Group: No P1 or P2 incidents in critical operations in over a year and job execution reliability over 99%
This isn’t just operational success. It’s setting the stage for AI readiness, because AI needs more than just access to data. It needsreliable, actionable data at the right time, integrated into the processes that power the business. RS Group is ready. When you run a global supply chain, “ready” isn’t a luxury.
Ready on day 1: How fit-to-suite automation prepares you for the AI future
The real takeaway from SAP Sapphire wasn’t that AI is coming. It’s that AI is already here, and the companies reaping the benefits are the ones that did the foundational work early. Redwood customers like RS Group have already modernized their WLA. They’re not bolting on AI. They’re ready for what’s happening now and what’s to come because their automation is fit-to-suite: deeply integrated, spanning SAP and non-SAP systems and built for scale and AI innovation.
RunMyJobs provides the automation fabrics enterprises need to orchestrate complex, cross-system workflows and support the data pipelines AI depends on. It connects SAP S/4HANA to the hybrid architectures, business process layers and related data AI needs to drive better, faster decisions and more efficient attainment of business outcomes.
When your business runs on well-managed, intelligent processes, you don’t just hope your AI strategy will work — you know it can.
An obvious and undeniable message of SAP Sapphire 2025? WLA modernization isn’t a side project. It’s a prerequisite. See how Redwood supports SAP customers in future-proofing their ecosystems.
A large United States-based manufacturer recently approached Redwood Software with a high-stakes decision to make: Renew their legacy workload automation (WLA) contract at five times the cost or modernize and move to the cloud. Their IT leadership had already committed to a cloud-first strategy aligned with their broader digital transformation goals. Renewing with their vendor would have meant staying tethered to costly on-premises infrastructure and putting off much-needed modernization.
The business case was clear for moving to a cloud-native WLA solution. But the clock was ticking. With just three months before their existing contract expired, the company needed to evaluate new platforms, prepare for migration and go live in that tight timeframe without disrupting critical business operations.
That’s when they turned to Redwood.
Our team of migration experts quickly mobilized, leaning on Redwood’s proven methodology, cloud-native platform and proprietary migration tools. We helped this company not only meet their deadline, migrating from a legacy platform in just 14 weeks, but also use the migration as a strategic opportunity to improve automation processes, retire technical debt and set the stage for long-term success in the cloud.
This isn’t an edge case. Whether you’re facing similar licensing deadlines, preparing for a RISE with SAP transformation or simply looking to modernize a fragmented automation landscape, you’re not alone — and you don’t have to start from scratch.
At Redwood, we understand that migration isn’t just a technical change. It’s your chance to rethink how automation supports your business and make sure you’re ready for what the future brings.
Speed is essential — but so is strategy
Time constraints are common in these scenarios. Redwood frequently works with organizations facing license renewals that force a go/no-go decision, RISE with SAP transitions that require cloud-readiness and/or internal mandates for tool consolidation and legacy system modernization.
These deadlines create urgency, but a rushed migration without strategy leads to risk. It can carry over inefficiencies and complications into your next-generation platform. Too often, we see companies fall into the trap of replatforming without rethinking.
In our experience, there are two primary mindsets when it comes to WLA migration:
Lift-and-shift first, optimize later: Move jobs as-is to meet tight deadlines, with plans to modernize after go-live.
Modernize as you move: Take the opportunity to streamline architecture, remove redundancies and improve process logic as you migrate.
Most organizations fall somewhere in between, and that’s exactly why Redwood approaches migration by tailoring it to your environment, not a one-size-fits-all script.
Migration as momentum: Essential considerations
What kind of change are you driving? Are you simply replicating jobs or using this transition to streamline, modernize and reduce complexity?
How will you optimize the new platform? Are you planning for better performance and improved reliability from the start?
Is your automation strategy aligned with broader goals? Will the migration support larger initiatives like cloud adoption, tool consolidation or SAP transformation?
Who needs to be involved: Are departments, service providers or external teams part of the process, and are they looped in early?
Redwood evaluates your:
Source platform and job volume
Critical business processes and dependencies
Timeline flexibility and go-live constraints
Appetite for technical debt cleanup
This ensures we don’t just recreate your existing environment but deliver a better one.
Rather than thinking of migration as a one-time event, consider it the start of a smarter operating model. Redwood’s Professional Services team brings decades of experience helping enterprises like yours transition from legacy WLA platforms to our modern, cloud-native solution, RunMyJobs by Redwood. Here’s what that means for your business.
IT infrastructure savings
Migrating off legacy systems sooner lets you decommission outdated infrastructure, eliminate those redundant support contracts and reduce operational overhead. This is especially important if you’re heading toward hybrid or full cloud adoption.
Business process improvements
We don’t just move your jobs; we evaluate them. During migration, we help you identify inefficiencies, unnecessary handoffs and outdated dependencies. This is your chance to streamline.
Operational efficiencies
Redwood provides pre-built templates, connectors and industry best practices to fast-track implementation. These accelerators and our unique testing frameworks help you get to production faster.
The groundwork for long-term gains
One of the most overlooked benefits of a well-executed migration is how quickly you can begin realizing value, and not just from the software itself. Value comes from removing friction. Thus, you need a team with a track record of doing just that.
With Redwood, you begin seeing results almost immediately:
Noticeably stronger stability: Our migration process is designed to minimize disruption and deliver a stable production environment from day one. You don’t need weeks or months of post-migration troubleshooting to feel the benefits.
Improved visibility: Instead of toggling between tools and spreadsheets, you have a single source of truth for managing jobs enterprise-wide. Thus, fewer blind spots and better operational alignment.
Reduced manual effort: With intelligent automation and reusable templates, your teams spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on process improvement.
Accelerated business outcomes: Faster financial closes, improved service availability … whatever you’re after, Redwood removes the bottlenecks and gets you there quickly.
Greater agility: Once you’re on a modern, cloud-native platform, you can scale, adapt and evolve your automation environment in lockstep with your business. Adding new systems or integrating third-party tools becomes significantly easier.
Modernize on your terms
Migrating to a new WLA solution involves much more than moving scripts or job chains. Your goal should be to enable a new level of orchestration across your enterprise. That’s why it pays to work with a partner who specializes in this exact domain.
Redwood’s Professional Services team is focused solely on successful automation implementations. We offer:
Proven methodologies for assessment, migration and rollout
Proprietary tools to streamline job mapping, testing and cutover
Flexibility to adjust your scope in real time
Risk mitigation with detailed validation and go-live readiness
Post-migration services to keep advancing your automation maturity
At Redwood, we don’t just bring technology. We also offer unmatched focus, tools and experience. Organizations across industries have trusted Redwood to help them leave behind legacy WLA platforms.
If you’re feeling the pressure of an expiring contract, a cloud deadline or a business that’s outgrown your current WLA solution, Redwood’s proven migration approach is here to move you forward with a clear vision.
Hear directly from Daniel Sivar, Technologist at American Water, about how Redwood guided the largest regulated water and wastewater utility company in the United States through “managed waves” to ensure a successful migration.
Enterprises are sprinting toward AI-powered futures, yet many are dragging decades-old technology behind them. They’re adopting cloud ERP, implementing new data platforms and dreaming of AI-driven insights. But, ironically, they’re still running critical backend processes on legacy job schedulers that were never designed for today’s data volume, velocity or complexity.
It’s a disconnect that’s quickly becoming unsustainable. While the pace of AI adoption is moving faster than other disruptive innovations, it simply won’t work if the rest of IT doesn’t catch up. And as SAP made clear at SAP Sapphire 2025, there’s no value in building AI on a shaky foundation.
The new mandate: Modernization beyond ERP
SAP’s strategy has evolved beyond ERP. SAP CEO Christian Klein says true transformation is now about incorporating the “flywheel” of applications, data and intelligence. The implication is that SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), embedded AI and unified data models aren’t peripheral to the core — they are the core.
The explosion of SaaS tools hasn’t produced better outcomes. In his SAP Sapphire Orlando 2025 keynote, Klein noted that global productivity growth has slowed rather than accelerated because too many businesses are duct-taping together apps and automations without the foundation to make them work together.
The implication is clear: You can’t just modernize your ERP and call it a day. Supporting systems, especially those running behind the scenes, such as workload automation (WLA), must evolve in lockstep. Otherwise, you’re introducing friction into every cross-system process (and therefore, AI model) you run.
Old schedulers, new risks
Traditional job scheduling tools were built for a different era. They rely on locally installed software, custom scripts and fragile connections to coordinate batch jobs in static environments. They were never designed for real-time, intelligent processes across cloud-native applications and rapidly evolving AI models.
Sticking with these tools introduces unacceptable risks:
Operational complexity from maintaining brittle, outdated architecture
Technical debt from endless scripting and patchwork connectors
Challenges with maintaining clean core principles
Fragmented automation across SAP and non-SAP systems
Inability to leverage SAP’s AI roadmap due to data silos and latency
Delayed time-to-value from SAP innovations
You can’t derive reliability and maximum value from AI if your job scheduler is stuck in the past.
Hidden costs of sticking with what worked in the past
Lost agility: You can’t adapt job logic or build new automations fast enough to keep up with changing business needs.
High support burden: Teams waste time firefighting job failures, maintaining scripts and investigating manual handoffs.
Transformation delays: Legacy schedulers slow down cloud migrations and SAP modernization projects.
Compliance risk: Unsupported scripts, lack of auditability and limited visibility introduce risks and compromise clean core.
Missed AI value: Data pipelines are fragmented or delayed, preventing timely, reliable input into analytics and AI tools.
Why AI fails without clean, timely data
It’s easy to think AI fails because the models are wrong. But in enterprise environments, the more common culprit is something far less glamorous: bad data. When job scheduling is not modernized, it can quickly become unreliable or disconnected and fail to feed AI systems with what they need to produce in-depth, accurate insights. When they deliver irrelevant or dated insights or hallucinations, it undermines trust in the intelligence you’re trying to deploy.
AI can’t magic its way past old and brittle plumbing that was already on the brink of needing replacement. Trying to update your kitchen or bathroom with fancy new showerheads and faucets with all kinds of bells and whistles may make it look nice, but the water that’s critical to its functioning may struggle to get there at the right time and temperature. A remodel will always require a certified inspection of the pipes and supporting foundation to ensure they work safely and reliably with the upgraded fixtures.
No workaround necessary: The modern approach to WLA
SAP has been loud and clear about the clean core mandate. What was once a push to keep ERP extensibility under control is now a requirement for AI readiness. SAP’s vision of a “fit-to-suite” architecture, where apps, data and automation are in harmony, can’t happen if your WLA layer brings discord into the mix.
Trying to keep your legacy scheduler working is like bringing a VHS tape to a Netflix pitch meeting. Sure, you might find a dusty adapter somewhere in the back closet, but you’ll be miles behind before you even press play. No amount of workarounds will make outdated technology compatible with a world that’s already streaming ahead.
Modernizing WLA for SAP and non-SAP processes means orchestrating every part of your business to be faster and more intelligent. It means having:
Cloud-native SaaS that orchestrates processes across hybrid environments without additional infrastructure
Frictionless architecture that provides a singular secure gateway to connect with every SAP and non-SAP application, reduces maintenance and eliminates failure points
Deep SAP integration that aligns with SAP product roadmaps and innovation strategies
Pre-built templates and connectors to accelerate time-to-value without violating clean core
Centralized orchestration for SAP and non-SAP processes from a single interface
Automation purpose-built for an SAP cloud and AI future
Redwood Software and SAP share a trusted partnership built on over 20 years of co-development, innovation and roadmap alignment, making RunMyJobs by Redwood a strategic extension that maximizes the ROI of your SAP investments.
What sets it apart?
SAP Endorsed App, Premium certified: RunMyJobs reduces risk, accelerates time-to-value and offers long-term reliability to SAP customers. It’s certified across a broad range of SAP technologies, meeting SAP’s highest standards for performance, security and integration. It delivers native functionality and deep integration across complex hybrid and cloud deployments, with built-in, SAP-specific templates and connectors that eliminate custom code and scripting. This supports clean core strategies and helps customers solve critical business challenges more efficiently.
The only WLA solution included in the RISE with SAP reference architecture: RunMyJobs is included in the RISE reference architecture through managed services offered and delivered by SAP Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS). ECS handles the direct installation and maintenance of the RunMyJobs’ secure gateway connection within your RISE landscape, eliminating the need for extra infrastructure, custom workarounds and friction in the RISE journey. You can also opt into additional ECS-managed services for enhanced monitoring of SAP processes automated with RunMyJobs, improving visibility and enabling proactive issue resolution.
What defines AI-ready in the context of WLA? It’s more than speed and scale.
Your processes are orchestrated, not just scheduled. You’re connecting tasks and dependencies across SAP and non-SAP environments using event-driven automation.
Governance is built in. You have visibility and control over every job and data flow, from development to execution to exception handling.
Business value is clear. Automation is no longer a backend utility but a strategic driver of innovation, efficiency and competitive advantage.
These elements have already been realized by companies that have modernized with RunMyJobs.
RS Group, a global industrial distributor, modernized its legacy job scheduler as part of its digital transformation and supply chain operations improvement programs. The company now runs business operations across 26 global markets daily, maintaining job reliability above 99%, and have eliminated Priority 1 and Priority 2 incidents in critical operations for over a year.
UBS, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, relied on RunMyJobs to replace a legacy scheduling solution that couldn’t scale with the complexity of its SAP environment. UBS transitioned to RunMyJobs for its cloud-native architecture and reliability. The company built a cleaner automation landscape, achieving faster recovery from exceptions and future-proofing its foundation to support advanced analytics and AI-powered compliance.
Centric Brands, a leading lifestyle brand collective with a complex ecosystem of SAP and non-SAP systems, used RunMyJobs to consolidate multiple legacy scheduling tools and modernize its WLA. By eliminating manual job chains and replacing legacy scripts with standardized, centralized automation, Centric increased visibility across end-to-end processes and significantly reduced errors. Unifying orchestration improved operational efficiency and positioned Centric to adopt AI-driven forecasting and planning tools without needing to overhaul its backend infrastructure.
Rather than being a bolt-on scheduler, RunMyJobs builds automation fabrics that prepare your SAP environment for embedded AI and intelligent processes.
AI-ready businesses don’t wait
SAP’s future is already unfolding, and AI is at the center. But its effectiveness depends on the quality and timing of your automation. If your job scheduling can’t keep up, neither will your strategy. The decisions you make now will determine whether your organization will be ready to act on AI opportunities or stay stuck reacting due to technical limitations.
Modernizing your ERP isn’t enough. You need an orchestration layer that aligns with SAP’s direction, accelerates transformation and eliminates risk. RunMyJobs gives you that edge.
In any complex IT environment, things go wrong. A critical process fails, services are interrupted and the pressure is on. This is the world of incident management: the crucial, immediate “firefight” to restore service as quickly as possible. Tools like the RunMyJobs by Redwood Monitor are essential for this, providing the real-time alerts and control you need to manage the moment.
But what happens after the fire is out? This is where you make real, lasting improvements. This is the world of problem management: the forensic investigation into the root cause of an incident to ensure it never happens again.
Redwood Insights is the essential tool for this investigation in RunMyJobs, enabling you to identify trends that are critical for long-term problem resolution. With persona-based dashboards that visualize near-time historical execution data, Redwood Insights allows you to move beyond guesswork and find the root cause of your most complex operational problems.
This post explores how you can use Redwood Insights to transition from a reactive operational posture to a proactive one, using data to solve complex issues and optimize your automation landscape.
Core challenges of effective problem management
Without the right analytical tools, it’s difficult for you to move from a “hunch” to a data-driven conclusion about the root cause of an issue. Teams often lack the aggregated historical data needed for a proper investigation. This leads to two common, frustrating scenarios:
The major incident post-mortem: A critical production process failed last night, causing significant disruption. The incident team resolved it, but the question remains: Was it a one-time anomaly, or is it a symptom of a deeper flaw that will cause another major outage soon?
The “death by a thousand cuts:” A seemingly minor job fails intermittently, causing small disruptions. You log it as a low-priority incident every time and manually fix it. No single incident is big enough to warrant a major investigation, but the cumulative impact on team resources and user confidence is significant.
Real-world problem management scenarios with Redwood Insights
Let’s look at how Redwood Insights helps teams move from putting out fires to preventing them through data-driven investigations into both major incidents and recurring annoyances.
1. The major incident post-mortem – anomaly or systemic flaw?
The process: Following a major outage of a critical data warehousing job that was resolved by the on-call team, you’re tasked with conducting a root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence.
The investigation with Redwood Insights:
The Job Insights dashboards can be accessed when viewing jobs in the user interface for easy contextual analysis.
You open the Job Insights report for the failed job to get a complete historical view.
You use heat maps to see if failures have ever correlated with this specific date or time of month before, trying to identify patterns.
To determine if this was an infrastructure issue, you switch to the Job Server Analysis dashboard. This allows you to quickly rule out a systemic problem by comparing performance across your environment.
Confident that the infrastructure is sound, you return to the job’s execution data. As you analyze the widgets, you clarify the situation using a smart narrative, powered by AI: a simple, natural-language summary of the data.
The business outcome and ROI:
Action taken: Based on this clear, data-driven context, you can confidently classify the issue. You document the anomaly and close the problem record, avoiding an unnecessary and costly investigation into a one-off event.
Business outcome: This data-driven approach avoids wasting resources chasing ghost issues while ensuring that genuine systemic risks get the attention they deserve.
ROI: This leads to improved long-term service stability, more efficient use of skilled engineering resources (who now solve real problems) and increased business confidence in the automation platform.
2. Solving the recurring problem with data
The process: An end-of-day reporting workflow has been failing intermittently for weeks, creating a backlog of low-priority incidents.
The investigation with Redwood Insights:
The Operator Overview is your starting point for problem investigations and analysis.
You begin your investigation on the Operator Overview dashboard. Your eyes are immediately drawn to a widget highlighting the “top ten jobs with most frequent failures,” which confirms this reporting job is a chronic offender that needs attention.
You analyze the job’s history and use heat maps to discover a clear pattern: The failures almost always occur on weekday afternoons.
To understand why, you pivot to the Queue Analysis dashboard to drill down into the systems involved. Here, the data clearly shows that when the reporting job fails, queue wait times are consistently high, indicating resource contention is the likely culprit.
The business outcome and ROI:
Action taken: With definitive proof of the root cause, you submit a change request to create a dedicated queue for the reporting workflow, a targeted improvement based on historical data.
Business outcome: The recurring incidents stop completely. The business service becomes reliable, and the stream of low-priority tickets ceases.
ROI: This eliminates the hidden operational cost of repeatedly fixing the same small issue, frees up your Operations team from repetitive tasks and improves the reliability and timeliness of service delivery.
Your toolkit for proactive problem management
The Queue Analysis dashboards provide a system view that enables users to visualize the relationship between performance and platform configurations.
These tools give you the operational visibility and historical context to take IT operations from reactive troubleshooting to a data-driven, intelligent function.
Identify recurring issues: Use the Operator dashboards to prioritize the most impactful, systemic problems by highlighting key metrics, such as the top ten failing jobs.
Correlate failures to find patterns: Use interactive widgets like heat maps to uncover underlying triggers for recurring problems by correlating failures to specific dates or other factors.
Isolate system-specific problems: Use the Job Server Analysis and Queue Analysis dashboards to understand if failures are application-specific or tied to a particular component, which is crucial for problem management.
Drive data-driven improvements: Use the detailed Job Insights and Workflow Insights dashboards to perform targeted analysis, enhancing processes through redesign or resource reallocation based on historical performance data.
From reactive firefighting to strategic reliability
Redwood Insights provides the essential tools for a mature problem management practice. It allows you to move beyond the immediate incident and analyze historical trends to find and permanently eliminate the underlying causes.
The result is a more stable, reliable and optimized automation environment. This leads to fewer outages, more efficient use of IT resources and consistently more timely and reliable service management.
Watch this video preview of Redwood Insights to learn more.
Ready to move beyond firefighting and start solving problems for good? Discover how Redwood Insights can power your problem management process. Book a demo of RunMyJobs today.
