In a context of digital transformation, many companies using SAP for their internal and external needs underestimate the importance of user experience. A lot has been said about SAP UX in terms of technology and design but still, the skills necessary for good user adoption are in short supply. That’s why SAP providers are in a constant way of fostering user experience skills in their teams to increase the quality of the end product. Let’s see the challenges of implementing UX into your SAP system from the internal and external user’s perspective.
In a big company, several challenges may arise while working with SAP within an organization. Below please find the list of the issues Elinext SAP developer had to tackle with:
– People from different departments may not know each other and don’t have an opportunity to gather in a focus group for UX-related discussions.
– The use of integrated tools and apps in interaction with different browsers, framework for SAP, and SAP application itself lead to different behavior on different devices. That’s why user documentation is critical for SAP products.
– If a user handles product using a trial-and-error approach, the company loses user performance and gets low ROI.
– On the other side of your SAP system, there are external users which are also objects of UX policy. Insufficient user experience can push them out to your competitors.
Overlooking these challenges may lead to the wrong decisions, inaccurate business predictions and profit losses.
So how do you transform SAP user experience?
The answer is simple: use SAP Fiori – the new UX for SAP offering trending design solutions for adaptive and personalized user experience.
The basis of the UX is Fiori Launchpad which brings a reimagined “personalizable” experience in dashboard style that is smart to SAP users across every device. Relevant information on the apps and workflows a user involved in is surfaced for each screen making work with the system more intuitive.
SAP Fiori launchpad is organized in tiles where a user can access any app. There’s no need to build applications from scratch, as elements are easily configurable and can be personalized according to single user’s needs which allows extending apps to meet more complex business requirements.
What does it mean for non-designer users?
Simply put, this helps them apply best practices of UI that lead to a higher level of user experience. The success depends on following SAP Fiori design best language which is characterized by the following attributes:
– Role-based. Role-based design focuses on eliminating ambiguity. Let your users remove unnecessary clutter irrelevant to their role so that users can navigate within platform with confidence.
– Adaptivity refers to predicting user needs and fine-tuning workflows to be flexible in terms of adding new features.
– Coherent. Apply the same solution to the same problem, As simple as that. Apply intuitive approach across all contexts.
– Find the good sense between “insufficient” and “ too much” and don’t overwhelm your UI with nice-to-have stuff.
– The best way to build the emotional connection between user interface and SAP user is to design it beautifully – fortunately UI Theme Designer for SAP offers great opportunities for customization.
Where is the right place to start?
Probably, the best way to start with SAP Fiori rollout is to develop a well-arranged plan. This will help you organize things in the right order, identify resources, create use cases, and have a definite timeline in mind.
1. Enabling SAP Fiori
The most reasonable way to bring SAP Fiori into your organization is to set the guidelines for designers and developers where their values and priorities are clearly expressed.
2. Identifying recommended features
Having defined the guidelines, you can identify features critical for user experience in your existing application ecosystem. Review the levels of access to data by different users, detect areas of noncompliance and ensure that the new UI is optimized to manage workflows faster and smarter.
3. Aligning the users
Finally, make sure that the right users can access SAP Fiori when it’s implemented and align their workflows according to their role.
4. Turning SAP Fiori on!
In essence, setting up a personalized user experience will transform your digital presence from both external and internal sides. Analyze your workflow strengths and weaknesses and bring the best practices to your SAP system with Fiori capabilities.