SAP® User Experience StrategyVersion 2

October 2013

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© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

This document outlines our general product direction and should not be relied on in making a purchase decision. This is not subject to your license agreement or any other agreement with SAP. SAP has no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or to develop or release any functionality mentioned in this document. This document and SAP's strategy and possible future developments are subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. This document is provided without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of mer-chantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. SAP assumes no responsi-bility for errors or omissions in this document, except if such damages were caused by SAP intentionally or grossly negligent.

3SAP User Experience Strategy© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

SAP® User Experience Strategy

USer exPerience

User experience (UX) takes into consideration all aspects of the user’s interaction with products, systems, processes, and services. It is not limited to the usability of a system but looks at the users’ holistic experience. Usability as part of UX relates to the ease with which users can achieve their goals while inter-acting with a system.

SAP constantly strives to achieve the right balance between feasibility (technology), viability (business), and desirability (human values) when developing innovative solutions.

TrendS And deSign direcTion

The way people work with software has changed dramatically over the last number of years. Today people use mobile devices as an integral part of everyday life. They are used to the speed and simplicity of using Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. This experience raises the bar for business software as users demand a similar experience from their business solutions at work.

At the same time, tasks that used to be covered by business process specialists are moving increasingly to where they actu-ally need to be done within the business process. This creates

the need for dedicated focused access to a selected part of in-formation needed at this particular point in time – instead of forcing the user to select the information needed from a com-plex business transaction.

Based on these IT trends, and the feedback from customers, SAP defined a clear user experience strategy that incorporates our aspiration, vision, and mission for user experience. We have distilled our strategy into the following design directions:

• Role based: Decompose complex transactions into a task-based experience. Provide the user only with the functional-ity she/he needs to perform a task

• Responsive: Support all types of devices, all sizes of screens, all versions, all channels

• Simple: Provide applications that help one defined user per-sona to deals with one defined use case in a maximum of three screens

• Coherent: Provide coherent design for common activities, one entry point for the user, and a coherent brand experience.

• Instant Value: Enable customers to adapt and users to per-sonalize. Enable deployment of new user experience to users ideally in one day

Following these design principles, SAP will make superior user experience and design an integral part of the SAP brand experi-ence– just as the SAP HANA® platform has reconfirmed SAP’s reputation for innovation.

Figure 1: design innovation

The user experience strategy was crafted together with customers in an intensive and iterative process. It is both a pragmatic, yet also innovative approach to bring a consumer-grade user experience to the majority of users of SAP’s software.

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SAP’S APProAch

new, renew, enable + design Services

To reach these ambitious goals, SAP decided to focus on three areas:

• Provide consumer-grade UX for new applications • Renew existing applications by improving the UX of software

supporting the most commonly-used business scenarios • Enable customers to improve the UX of the SAP software

they use to perform their own mission-critical business scenarios

This product strategy is complemented by a cohesive services strategy. SAP offers specific UX design services that support customers to reach the best users experience for their busi-ness needs.

Figure 2: SAP User experience Strategy

Figure 3: SAP Business in Focus

Vision

Provide the leading user experience for business applications

Mission

Deliver attractive applications that make people successful at work

The UX Strategy: New, Renew, Enable

neW

Customers and users agree that SAP already delivers great new products with consumer-grade user experience. SAP will continue to deliver these applications in all areas – cloud-based and mobile solutions, SAP HANA, and on-premise soft-ware – thereby raising the bar for consumer-grade business applications significantly. SAP will also continue to deliver con-sumer-grade user experiences for consumer apps, such as the SAP Fan Experience solution and PhotoTribe, Recalls Plus, and My Runway mobile apps.

But SAP will not just design new user interfaces. Leveraging SAP HANA and HTML5/SAPUI5 as core technologies, SAP will create a new experience to address emerging working models for business users that will have reach far beyond the tradition-al SAP user base.

5SAP User Experience Strategy© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

RENEWreneW

With a well-established solution portfolio, SAP is focused on improving the user experience of its most significant existing software – SAP Business Suite applications. As the business scenarios it supports and the associated user interface ele-ments numbers are in the thousands, it’s impossible to redo them all. SAP will therefore focus on the business scenarios of highest impact and value for our customers.

Analyses reveal that a limited number of scenarios supported by SAP is widely used by a large number of employees. With the first release of SAP Fiori, SAP rebuilt these top scenarios strictly following the design directions outlined above, thus changing the game of user experience.

To address a holistic access to business processes, SAP has al-ready started renewing transactions in SAP enhancement packages of SAP ERP 6.0 SAP CRM, SCM, and SRM. SAP will continue to optimize its offering by consistently applying ge-neric UX capabilities such as search, theming, branding, and personalization.

The technology used by SAP to decompose and apply the de-sign directions, as done with SAP Fiori, is SAP’s UI develop-ment toolkit for HTML5, accessing SAP’s backend through SAP NetWeaver Gateway. For the renewal of current complex trans-actions, SAP is using WebDynpro ABAP with the Floorplan Manager.

enABLe

Every customer has a set of scenarios considered most strate-gic to their business. These scenarios vary from customer to customer and from industry to industry, and therefore require individual attention instead of a generic solution. For this rea-son, SAP provides tools which enable customers to improve

The UX Strategy: New, Renew, Enable

Figure 4: SAP User experience Strategy

Figure 5: Before and after screens with SAP Screen Personas

the UX of their current applications and to develop new user interfaces.

Tools which enable customers to improve the user experience of their current products include SAP Screen Personas, side panels within the SAP NetWeaver® Business Client, Floorplan Manager, Web UI framework and the SAP NetWeaver UI Theme Designer. SAP also plans to deliver an SAP Fiori toolkit. As an example, SAP Screen Personas helps customers redesign SAP GUI screens, not just to hide fields to achieve focus and sim-plicity, but also to deliver a more modern user experience.

SAP recommends the Floorplan Manager for WebDynpro ABAP and the UI development toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5) to develop new user interfaces. A web application toolkit to develop SAPUI5 applications is planned.

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The SAP Fiori concePT – The neW USer exPerience From SAP

Since the first wave of SAP Fiori apps was very positively re-ceived, SAP decided to expand the reach of the concept. This not only means redesigning user interfaces but also breaking down existing rich transactions into user- and use-case-specif-ic simple steps. This will make scenarios which today are han-dled with functionally rich applications accessible to a much wider user base. SAP Fiori will give users just what they really need to get their job done. As an example, we provide a simple function for sales representatives to change the price in a sales order on the fly in addition to the general functionality for man-aging sales orders.

All SAP Fiori apps will strictly follow the design directions of role-based, responsive, simple, coherent and instant value.

The first 25 SAP Fiori apps were delivered in May 2013 for the SAP Business Suite. SAP will not only continue to deliver more apps for existing SAP Business Suite customers, but also im-plement the SAP Fiori concept across the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP Cloud solutions, and analytics. Thus, the SAP Fiori concept will become the new SAP user ex-perience concept.

This will over time provide users with a coherent experience no matter which SAP product they use to get their job done. A co-herent experience will also be supported through harmonized access points. SAP is currently working on harmonizing the UI clients needed to access its products. The target is to have one unified web-based access point running on all devices.

The SAP Fiori Concept

Figure 6: SAP Fiori-based application decomposition

Key Ui TechnoLogieS And FrAmeWorKS From SAP

The key UI technologies which render the application user in-terfaces as of today are:

• UI development toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5) • WebDynpro ABAP (WDA) with Floorplan Manager (FPM) • Dynpro

SAPUI5 is SAP’s HTML5 UI technology best suited to flexibly build user interfaces across different devices (mobile and desk-top) on top of SAP NetWeaver Gateway. WebDynpro ABAP with the Floorplan Manager and Web UIF are proven UI technologies that allow the configuration of form-based applications on

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Figure 7: Key Ui Technologies and Frameworks (desktop Perspective)

desktop browsers. The focus is on UI consistency and develop-ment efficiency. A set of highly usable customization and per-sonalization options is also provided. The WebUIF is harmonized in run and design time with WDA/FPM. Dynpro remains the most used UI technology. The Dynpro transactions are typically very rich in functionality. Data consumption, application logic, and the UI are typically deeply mixed.

Key UI Technologies and Frameworks | Design Services

SAP will use SAPUI5 or WebDynpro ABAP with Floorplan Man-ager to build new applications for the SAP Business Suite.

User Interface clients like the SAP NetWeaver Business Client and the SAP NetWeaver Portal component act as the entry point to enable a coherent user experience across different ap-plications and UI technologies for end users.

deSign ServiceS

SAP’s focus on design is gaining traction. So much so that cus-tomers now look to SAP for advice on how to establish their own human-centric design practices. SAP helps companies to define and execute the best user experience strategy for their businesses by providing UX design services that advise, realize, empower, and innovate. We engage in a new way with custom-ers and users by applying Design Thinking.

Many companies adapt the standard SAP solutions to their business requirements without any guidelines to ensure an ap-propriate implementation. This often results in challenges for end users. Now, SAP presents customers its user experience strategy and provides advice on how to integrate it into their business reality.

Many usability problems can be solved with existing SAP tools and technologies, but customers are often not aware about the capabilities of SAP solutions. SAP helps to realize fast custom-er value by supporting the implementation of these solutions and their adaptation to specific business needs, optimizing the user experience.

IT organizations base their work on requirements they receive from their business units, but often do not take into account the needs of the end users. SAP empowers customers to be-come more user-centric by establishing a design center of ex-cellence in their organizations and by offering a wide range of trainings and workshops.

8 SAP User Experience Strategy© 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Customers recognize they lack design skills in their own orga-nizations. This impacts the development and implementation of innovative solutions. SAP helps customers to innovate by in-volving them in a co-creation process from beginning to end, it-erating on the design of specific solutions and fuelling innovation.

Classic IT and design will come together: this is a trend. Design is not only making things look aesthetically pleasing, it is an at-titude required to better understand what is really needed. As theses combined skills are rare, SAP built up a Design & Co-In-novation Center to support customers in successfully defining their specific UX strategy and help them to execute that strategy.

recommendATionS For cUSTomerS

SAP recommends that customers base their own user experi-ence strategy on the benefits they require from using SAP soft-ware. This enables business and IT to jointly develop a UX road-map aligned with the SAP UX strategy. To help customers develop their own UX strategy, we provide the following recommendations:1. Investigate the new and renewed applications

• SAP Business Suite Roadmap for User Experience • www.sapsolutionbrowser.com • www.sapimprovementfinder.com

2. Evaluate enabling tools3. Use the SAP UX Explorer for details about UX topics relevant for you

• uxexplorer.hana.ondemand.com4. Follow the design directions for building new SAP applica-tions at:

• https://experience.sap.com5. Follow the user interface technology strategy SAP provides:

• Use Floorplan Manager and the UI development toolkit for HTML5 (SAPUI5) for building new applications

• Use SAP NetWeaver Business Client software and the SAP NetWeaver Portal component as the user interface (UI) client

6. Leverage SAP design services: • https://experience.sap.com/designservices

Recommendations for Customers

www.sap.com/contactsap

Sam yen, nis Boy naeve, Andreas hauser, volker Zimmermann, gerrit Kotze

(october 2013)

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