SAP Adds Four User Experience Rapid-Deployment Solutions

SAP has created four rapid-deployment solutions designed to help organizations quickly and predictably upgrade their user experience and take advantage of SAP's Fiori platform, designed to simplify the user experience.

At SAP's Sapphire Now conference last month, the company announced that Fiori would be a free add-on for existing SAP users, which helped spike interest in the solution. The rapid-deployment solution is designed to turn that interest into action.

"The trigger for us with creating the rapid-deployment solutions was to make sure that we get this new user experience into the hands of as many users as possible. A good experience will lead to contented, happy customers, and those are the best ambassadors, the best net promoters we could have," Elvira Wallis, senior vice president of analytics, database, and technology in mobile solution packages for SAP, says.

"Because we have a history of a user experience that's challenging, we expect to see a tidal wave with a large number of customers wanting to update the user experience," Wallis predicts. Since the conference, she's seen many discussions on SAP user groups about Fiori, "asking the kind of question you only expect if people are interested in user experience renewal. Not window shopping questions, but serious questions," she explains.

The rapid deployment solutions contain content to help people plan their implementation in a predictable way, with step-by-step instructions that can be carried out either by the company itself, a partner, or SAP professional services. The timeline of the project and the cost are most predictable for those using SAP's rapid-deployment solution. Depending on what kind of user experience renewal a company wants to carry out, the process can take between two and eight weeks.

The infrastructure-focused option, SAP Fiori Infrastructure rapid-deployment solution, will help implementers take care of things such as security standards for dozens of Fiori apps at once. For apps themselves, the SAP Fiori apps rapid-deployment solution will help people bring individual apps live. Companies that want to create custom apps can use SAPUI5 Design rapid-deployment solution to accelerate their project. For areas that aren't widely used and don't have Fiori, the SAP Screen Personas rapid-deployment solution can be used refresh their user experience.

For those not ready to implement, "we are going to have an openSAP curriculum, so online, at their own pace, [they] can learn about this," Wallis states, noting that the "class doesn't cost anything other than time." SAP hopes to use these classes, which will launch later this year, to educate people as they get closer to acting on the upgrade themselves. "We're seeing a pull from customers, asking 'Can you do Webinars, or hands-on sessions?' The amount of customer inquiries has gone up tremendously."

Wallis hopes the rapid-deployment solutions coupled with high interest following the announcement that Fiori would be included in a standard software license will spark adoption and in turn change SAP's reputation for being difficult to use. "If users enjoy working with the software, they are more likely to endorse it. If they don't get to enjoy Fiori, the perception will never change."

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