In this week's edition of SAP’s Fiori Side Chat session, we had the opportunity to listen to Shaun weigh in on SAP's User Experience (UX) strategy. It is a common misconception that UX is relegated to deciding something as straightforward as the colour of a button or the background of an interface. While the new and improved Fiori Design languages consider both, the experience has evolved into something more. These concepts are now looked to as an overarching strategy that focuses on assuring consistency through all tools used by the end user. However, achieving this consistent experience often requires innovative thinking to define “what is SAP UX strategy?”
The answer to this question was shared throughout this video. In addition to highlighting this, our recap will also consider how SAP partners such as ConvergentIS has applied these principles to our own business.
When it comes to implementing new SAP solutions, it’s not just about taking the processes and the technology and change managing it, in the traditional sense, “onto” people. A solution focused on the user experience should be centered “on” the people using the tool. By considering the people and the processes they use to work, the technology can then be built to back it up.
Since end users play such a crucial role in determining the overall experience of the solution, a 360-degree view of the people is necessary from the beginning. End users should be incorporated in the explore phase of the project, since they are the ones that know the business best. They will also be the ones that can suggest innovations to further improve the user experience. Therefore, by the time the developers are involved, users will already know that they are getting a solution that reflects the ways they work. This ensures higher adoption post go live.
Among our own team, we do this by ensuring end users are part of our prototyping phase so that they can touch the proposed solution long before anything is built.
When we think Intelligent Enterprise, it is easy to assume we are referring to advances in artificial intelligence (AI). However, innovation in reference to the intelligent enterprise can also refer to making a process easy to follow. These intelligent enterprise principles are seen in many consumer products today, and can provide end users a reference point for what they have come to expect in their transactions on SAP. One example is the simplicity in locating a product and making a purchase off Amazon. Duplicating this simplicity makes sense. However, this also brings rise to the assumption that the company will now need to build something from scratch.
For common problems, co-innovation with many organizations becomes an ideal solution. Building one simple-to-use app that can be duplicated and shared among many parties. To ensure SAP UX strategy principles were still considered, we focused on the “1-1-3” concept. This concept refers to having one purpose, one app, and no more than three clicks to complete this task.
The concept is what we are using to inform the ConvergentIS T2200 app. In Canada, this is effectively the work from home tax form. Traditionally, an organization might have to fill out 100 or 1,000 forms for their remote workers. However, this year organizations might expect to fill out 50 times this number to account for their entire remote workforce. To ensure users were ready to take on this challenge, our team wanted to consider firsthand how we could create an effective solution for customers.
Even when times are challenging and money is tight for companies, we want to continue considering how we can move our business forward. In a recent webinar, we talked about frugal innovations that will continue to drive customer success even in the face of uncertainty. SAP Fiori is just one example of a frugal innovation. How so? Frugal innovation considers making better use of things you already own. Therefore, if you are currently an SAP customer, you already have access to SAP Fiori.
Shaun urges us, “If you are paying your maintenance you already have Fiori. So, make use of it.” Having someone struggle through “ME81N” is not an effective use of their time. If something is not efficient or easy, it doesn’t cut it in an era where the user is the focus of new product developments. This is the opportunity to change that.
SAP continues to look to customer expectations to introduce new innovations that make sense for enterprise systems. As Janice Shushworth from SAP says, “it’s not just about being cool” and adopting new technologies we see other companies using. To be cool in an enterprise system means to be efficient. This promise of efficiency is one that we are excited to see evolve UX strategy and influence other tools like SAP Analytic Cloud. For more information on Analytics, we encourage you to watch last week’s Fiori-side chat.