Business Process Documentation & Automation Readiness · SAP S/4HANA workflow decisions
We document and prepare your business processes for automation. ✱
What you get before development starts
Know the process before you automate it
Most teams know they need to document a business process before they automate it. The hard part is turning what people actually do — including exceptions and workarounds — into documentation your team can confidently build from.
Then the hidden rules appear. An exception nobody mentioned. A Friday-only workaround. A step only one employee knows — and that employee wasn’t in the room.
The cost shows up twice: developers rework what they already built, while your most experienced people are pulled back into workshops to explain what the document should have captured.
The problem usually isn’t writing. It’s knowing what is actually true. A document can look complete while quietly filling evidence gaps with assumptions. Those assumptions become bugs, change requests, and delays — usually when they are most expensive to fix.
What we turn your process into
Deliverable 01
Process Design Document
A structured list of process steps built from your recording and supporting files. You receive it as a draft for review — with the evidence behind each step and the open questions that still need your attention — before anything is finalised.
Deliverable 02
Solution Design Document
Once you have reviewed the process and the important questions are resolved, we deliver a build-oriented Solution Design Document. Material design choices are surfaced in a Decision Register instead of being buried in prose.
Deliverable 03
A gap list that tells your team exactly what to resolve
Anything the evidence does not answer becomes an open question. Questions are separated into what the available evidence can resolve and what needs your process owner or SME — so you can close the list in one focused session instead of a string of workshops.
The result is simple: your delivery team spends less time rediscovering the process and more time building, testing, and making the decisions that actually move the project forward.
The honest part
Know what is solid — and what still needs an answer
Every document includes a declared gap list. If the evidence does not support a claim, we do not quietly complete the sentence. We flag it and ask the question.
You can create these documents internally. You can also ask a general-purpose chatbot for a draft. The risk is not getting words on a page — it is getting confident words that nobody can trace back to evidence. Those hidden assumptions tend to surface during testing, when changing them costs the most.
Our documentation pipeline is designed around the opposite principle: uncertainty is visible before it becomes rework. A draft with three explicit questions is more useful than a polished document hiding thirty — because three questions can be answered in one focused session; thirty can consume a sprint.
Built for teams documenting and preparing business processes for automation
Audience 01
Business process and automation teams
For teams that need to understand, document, improve, or prepare a business process for automation — whether you are starting a new project or clearing documentation debt around existing processes.
Audience 02
Companies moving from SAP ECC to S/4HANA
For transformation and SAP teams that need a defensible view of which custom workflows to keep, move to standard S/4HANA, rebuild, or retire before paying to migrate them.
If your process knowledge lives across people, old documents, screenshots, and “that’s just how we do it,” you are not an unusual case. That is exactly where evidence-based documentation creates the most value.
Four steps from recording to build-ready documentation
Record the work once
Your process expert records their screen while doing the work and talking through it. The free Recording Guide shows exactly what to capture; most people need less than an hour. Real data is masked before processing. You send us the recording together with screenshots and supporting files — exports, notes, existing documentation.
We turn the evidence into a draft
Your recording, screenshots, and system exports move through our structured documentation pipeline. When the evidence is incomplete, the draft says so — nothing is invented to make the document look finished.
Answer only the questions that matter
You receive the draft together with a numbered question list. Answer what you can in writing; one focused session with the right people closes the rest — so your SMEs spend their time answering decisions rather than repeating the whole process.
Get documents your team can build from
You receive the final PDD and SDD, plus the Decision Register and the Gap & Question sheet showing what was resolved and what remains open.
SAP S/4HANA workflow assessment
Moving to S/4HANA? Decide what to migrate before you pay to rebuild it
Over the years, ECC environments accumulate custom workflows — some business-critical, some duplicating standard S/4HANA capability, and some barely used. Treating them all the same can turn migration into an expensive exercise in rebuilding yesterday’s work.
Our Workflow Migration Assessment gives each workflow a clear recommendation: keep, move to standard, rebuild, or retire — with the reasoning and evidence behind it. Our starting principle is simple: when standard S/4HANA already covers the need, the custom workflow should justify why it stays.
You get a decision document your team can take into the next steering meeting — from an independent assessor with no incentive to make the migration scope larger.
Questions buyers ask before they start
Can I just send you the recording and let you handle the documentation?
That is the starting point. Send the recording (video or audio) and plain-text supporting files — exports, notes, existing documentation as text. We extract the process into structured steps and open questions, then come back to you with the draft and the questions that need your knowledge before we finalise the documents.
Why not just give the recording to ChatGPT?
You can use general AI to create a draft, but then you still have to manage the documentation workflow yourself: organise the evidence, reconstruct the process, find what is missing, ask the right follow-up questions, check the output, and turn it into a usable PDD and SDD. That workflow is our service. We keep the process evidence together, turn it into structured steps, surface the open questions, work through them with you, and deliver the final documents when you are satisfied. ChatGPT gives you an answer; we give you a controlled workflow for turning process evidence into approved documentation.
What if a process step in the draft is wrong?
You correct it. This is a review workflow, not a one-shot document delivery. You remain the authority on how the process actually works: you mark corrections, add information, and answer questions — we incorporate them, and nothing is finalised until you approve the result.
Do I have to watch the recording again to document the process?
The point is to reduce that work. We turn the recording and supporting files into a structured process you can review step by step. You correct individual steps where needed and focus your attention on the questions that actually need a human answer.
Is Ballast a consulting service or software?
Today you work with us as a service: you send your process evidence, we run it through our documentation pipeline, and you review, answer questions, and approve before final delivery. If you are unsure how to prepare a process or what to record, we help with that too.
What exactly do I get at the end?
When you are satisfied with the reviewed process and resolved questions, you receive your final Process Design Document (PDD) and Solution Design Document (SDD), plus the Decision Register and the Gap & Question sheet — so your team can see what was reviewed, what was decided, and what remains open.
More questions — about business process documentation, automation readiness, PDDs, and S/4HANA workflow migration — are answered on the FAQ page.
Before your next automation starts, capture the process once
Download the free four-page Recording Guide. It shows your process expert exactly how to record a useful walkthrough — what to say, what to capture, and what to leave out. Most people finish the recording in under an hour. Leave your work email and we will send the guide, usually within one working day.