On March 12, we hosted a webinar featuring IT-Conductor ChAI™ (Change Automation Intelligence for SAP), our newest advancement in SAP transport automation. Now, the process is more streamlined—from requesting change requests through the service catalog to managing the entire lifecycle of SAP landscapes with greater efficiency, visibility, and control.
During the session, we explored how ChAI enhances SAP transport management by streamlining change management across SAP environments. If you missed it, this blog will cover the key takeaways and demonstrate how ChAI works end-to-end.
Challenges of Manual SAP Transport Management
Many organizations still manage SAP transports manually, and based on feedback from our customers, we’ve identified several key challenges they frequently encounter, including:
1. Manual execution and delays
Manual transport execution often involves multiple teams, including developers, BASIS administrators, and other stakeholders. The need for approvals, coordination, and manual deployment leads to delays, especially in large environments with frequent changes. These bottlenecks can hinder business agility and slow down critical projects.
2. Lack of automation
Without automation, SAP transport management relies heavily on manual execution for tracking, sequencing, and executing transports. This lack of automation makes it difficult to monitor the status of transport requests.
Furthermore, managing configurations and addressing remediation efforts become more complex and time-consuming, ultimately increasing IT workload and limiting scalability as business demands grow.
3. High risk of errors and compliance gaps
Deploying transports manually increases the risk of errors, such as incorrect sequencing or missing dependencies, which can disrupt functionality, impact QA, or even bring down critical systems. These risks make it harder to maintain stability, and without automated tracking and policy enforcement, organizations may also struggle with compliance, leading to potential audit and regulatory issues.
4. Extended processing times
Traditional SAP transport management requires multiple touchpoints—from request submission to final deployment—leading to longer turnaround times. Delays in transport approvals, manual troubleshooting, and rework due to errors further extend the processing time, making it difficult for organizations to implement changes quickly.
What is IT-Conductor ChAI?
IT-Conductor ChAI is a solution designed to simplify the end-to-end execution of change requests. From deploying new software to upgrading infrastructure, ChAI provides the automation intelligence needed to orchestrate, monitor, and optimize every step in a change process.
For SAP transports, in particular, ChAI ensures seamless coordination across development, testing, and production environments. It helps detect dependencies, enforce best practices, and validate changes before deployment, reducing errors and minimizing system downtime.
With real-time visibility and proactive monitoring, ChAI enhances control over SAP landscapes, streamlining change execution while maintaining compliance and operational stability.
Key Features
1. Automated Requests
ChAI streamlines the change request process with standardized inputs, ensuring consistency and compliance across all SAP ABAP-based systems, including S/4HANA, BW, CRM, and ECC. By eliminating manual errors and inconsistencies, organizations can accelerate transport requests while maintaining governance.
Standardization is achieved through the service catalog, where users can select from a list of predefined templates, ensuring requests follow a structured format—not just for ticket creation but for seamless execution and monitoring.
Figure 1: SAP Change Management Service Requests (Service Catalog)
We demonstrated this capability in action by executing an Emergency Transport Import Request, showcasing how ChAI automates the process and ensures smooth, controlled deployment from request creation to completion.
Figure 2: Request Emergency Transports Import Wizard
2. Smart Approvals
With dynamic routing based on policies, ChAI automates the approval process, ensuring that requests are reviewed by the right stakeholders at the right time. This speeds up decision-making, reduces bottlenecks, and enforces compliance with internal change management policies.
In the demo, once the request was created, the Production Transport Request workflow (or process definition as what we call it in IT-Conductor) was triggered automatically, pulling all parameters from the request to drive approvals, execution, and tracking.
Figure 3: Production Transport Request Process Definition
3. Execution and Monitoring
ChAI automates SAP transport management with real-time tracking across on-premise, cloud, and SAP RISE environments. Teams gain full visibility into the status of each transport, reducing uncertainty and ensuring smooth, error-free execution.
With highly customizable dashboard capabilities, users can tailor monitoring views to fit their specific needs—whether tracking requests by source systems, target systems, or users. The dashboard also provides a comprehensive view of all transport request submissions, displaying their status, who initiated them, time from start to completion, the target system, and whether they were marked as emergency transports, ensuring complete transparency and control.
Figure 4: SAP Change Management Dashboard
4. Audit and Compliance
ChAI provides comprehensive logging and full visibility into change history, making compliance audits more efficient by maintaining a clear record of all transport activities.
With execution logs, users can view both real-time and historical logs, making it easy to investigate issues when errors occur.
Figure 5: Emergency Requests Import Execution Log
For compliance reporting, audit queries are highly customizable, allowing organizations to generate tailored reports based on specific regulatory requirements. In the demo, for example, we showcased a transport approvals audit report, highlighting how ChAI provides complete transparency and accountability in SAP change management.
Figure 6: Transport Approvals Audit Report
Key Takeaway
Managing SAP transports manually can be time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale. IT-Conductor ChAI transforms SAP change management by automating requests, approvals, execution, and monitoring—ensuring a seamless, compliant, and efficient process from start to finish. With dynamic workflows, real-time tracking, and comprehensive audit capabilities, organizations can reduce risks, improve productivity, and gain full control over their SAP landscapes.
Watch the Webinar On Demand
If you missed the live webinar, you can watch the recording at your convenience to see IT-Conductor ChAI in action and learn how it can streamline your SAP transport management.
Start Your Free Trial Today
Ready to take the next step? Try IT-Conductor ChAI with our free trial and experience the benefits firsthand.
