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SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Portal Services is widely recognized for its ability to efficiently publish secure business sites, including employee portals, supplier portals, and support sites. As a result, many large organizations are now leveraging SAP BTP Portal technologies for administrative work, managing their teams, time management, and organizing leave requests. The platform is enabled to allow the Fiori launchpad as the entry point for any Fiori apps or site templates and extensions. However, with several different products available your business might be wondering if SAP Launchpad Service, SAP Work Zone for HR, or SAP Work Zone makes the most sense with your business objectives?
To help your business make the best decision to meet your needs, these three tools will be compared to determine which will be most effective in increasing your bottom line.
SAP Work Zone
With SAP Work Zone, customers will be able to streamline and harmonize experiences across platforms and applications throughout the entire organization. Additionally, this update is intended to enhance productivity with customization and personalization, presenting information the user cares about to help them get work done. It reduces the time required to discover, find and access information and removes information barriers by connecting people, business data, and processes together. Connecting people is reinforced by an open connector integration with Microsoft Teams and Slack with a central bot.
Issues in the fragmented online workspace have been resolved with SAP Work Zone, which consolidates solutions across the SAP ecosystem, including partner apps, in Launchpad Service while adding additional features in collaboration and content management.
Is SAP Work Zone right for my business?
Is your business looking bring all Line of Business (LoB) business applications from on-premise to cloud? Or are you looking for a platform that offers requires built-in collaboration and knowledge management features? SAP Work Zone might be the right solution for your business regardless of the industry you are operating in.
SAP Work Zone for HR
SAP Work Zone for HR provides employees with a single point of access to information and is set up as a "digital workplace experience." In contrast, with the SuccessFactors Portal, SAP Work Zone for HR is an entry point to all HR needs, not just SAP SuccessFactors. SAP Work Zone for HR was created with the concept of human experience management (HXM) in mind. HXM is the act of putting people at the center of the workplace and enabling them to be productive. SAP Work Zone for HR is considered an HXM offering to solve the challenge of needing to use many different applications to accomplish a straightforward task. In comparison to SAP Work Zone, this solution is offered as a pre-packaged experience to address the needs of HR organizations based on SAP Work Zone. SAP Work Zone for HR offers out of the box HR content templates including templates for workspaces, guided experiences and integration cards.
Other features of this product include
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Ability to access team workspaces and communities that multimedia content can be shared in (i.e. Onboarding videos)
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Ability to access personal workspaces
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Invite colleagues to team workspaces
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Upload information and share with others
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View content created by others
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Exchange ideas/comments/feedbacks in workspaces
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Launch business applications
Is SAP Work Zone for HR Right For My Business?
Is your business already operating SAP or SAP SuccessFactors? If so, you might be eligible to receive additional cost savings (since SAP SuccessFactors is a prerequisite for deploying SAP Work Zone for HR). This solution also aligns with any organization that is operating with the intention of improving overall agility with a business-wide move to the cloud from legacy on-premise systems.
Customers who already operate SAP Jam (SuccessFactors collaboration portal) will automatically transition to SAP Work Zone for HR when subscribing.
SAP Launchpad Services
Alternatively, SAP Launchpad Services provides centralized access to all applications and service users. With this product, users can easily access content from SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Suite, SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP Business Technology Platform and other custom SAP apps and third-party sources. This includes all SAP products, not just HR-specific ones. Contrary to SAP Work Zone, SAP Launchpad Services does not provide the ability to create portal-like scenarios using freestyle capabilities.
Information regarding the free trial for SAP Cloud Platform Launchpad can be found on the SAP Community blog.
| SAP Launchpad Service | SAP Enterprise Portal | SAP Work Zone for HR | SAP Work Zone | |
| User Experience | SAP Fiori launchpad | L-shape / Fiori framework page / custom design | Integration cards, Workflow templates, Fiori launchpad | Integration Cards, Workflow templates, Fiori launchpad |
| Branding | Full | Full | Full | Full |
| Single Sign On | Integration with SAP IAS,IPS, principle propagation, certificates, OAuth | SAML, Certificates, Kerberos, principle propagation, SAP SSO2, etc. | Integration with SAP IAS,IPS, principle propagation, certificates, OAuth | Integration with SAP IAS,IPS, principle propagation, certificates, OAuth |
| Application Integration | Remote integration (content federation) with SAP S/4HANA and other SAP solutions | Generic App Integrator | Integration with SAP IAS,IPS, principle propagation, certificates, OAuth | Cards & Widgets , SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Widgets, Business apps from various sources, Microsoft Teams and Remote integration (content federation) with SAP S/4HANA and other SAP solutions |
| Development Environment | SAP Business Application Studio, SAP Web IDE, VS Code, Eclipse |
Eclipse / NW DevStudio. SAP Web IDE for SAPUI5 apps | SAP Business Application Studio | SAP Business Application Studio |
| Mobile Consumption | Built-in responsive site design with mobile ready site templates including SAP Fiori launchpad. | Via a dedicated SAP Fiori framework page | Out of the box Mobile App is available | Built-in responsive site design or Fully custom mobile app creation capabilities supported via SAP CP Mobile add-on. |
| Collaboration | Not Available OOB | Available | Available using Workspaces | Available |
| Deployment Options | Cloud | On-Premise | Cloud | Cloud |
| SuccessFactors subscription required | No | No | Yes | No |
Is SAP Cloud Platform Launchpad Right For My Business?
This solution is not industry-specific but should instead be deployed for any businesses seeking a central launchpad for employees to access SAP and non-SAP business applications. This offering also adds valuable benefits for customers looking to move from Legacy on-premises Portal to cloud as part of their digital transformation strategy.
Comparison of The SAP Portal Services Stack
For those new to SAP BTP Portal, adopting one of these solutions will depend on the requirements of your business and the available features. It is important to remember that this technology is not a strategy but rather a tool that enables your team. Therefore, when using this chart to compare features it will also be beneficial to outline how this technology will be used within your organization.