When I discuss SAP’s user experience with customers, several common themes emerge in most conversations. There is near universal agreement that while SAP’s ERP capabilities are world class, the user interface is not. The number one request is just to remove the functionality that is not used.
One great example of how a company simplified their SAP screens to make life easier for their sales representatives was Vocera, a Silicon Valley mobile communications company. When their CIO first encountered SAP Screen Personas, he immediately saw the potential to transform the development process for new SAP functionality as well as the way his employees consume SAP.
SAP Screen Personas directly benefits end users while also providing concrete benefits to the enterprise in four important ways:
- Improves end-users’ productivity with simple-to-understand screens, personalized views of relevant tasks and activities based on a user’s role and responsive interfaces that work wherever the users are. More people can get more done, do it more quickly and more effectively.
- Strengthens end-user adoption of important systems, improving employee engagement and work quality in the process.
- Gives IT a way to work with end users, to understand their specific needs from business applications—and then to meet those needs.
- Provides alternatives for customers to extend the life of their existing SAP investments by modernizing their user experience.
At Vocera Communications Inc., deploying SAP Screen Personas for its sales teams has meant a streamlined sales quotation process. The new user experience removed clutter from end-users’ screens, giving them a friendlier, more intuitive interface. The results were remarkable. Simplifying the sales quotation process reduced the need to click through eight screens to only two.
The benefits of this move spread to both IT and business sides. Vocera’s IT organization was able to deploy a prototype of SAP Screen Personas within a few hours. Once the new user experience was in place, it lowered costs for training new sales staff because there were fewer steps to learn—fewer clicks and keystrokes to create sales quotations. The experience has led to higher user adoption across sales teams, with requests from employees in other departments to expand its use. And the implementation process has improved collaboration between the business users and IT, as teams work together to deploy new functionality using SAP Screen Personas and discussing support issues.
This has led to high satisfaction among senior executives at Vocera like CIO Steven Soderberg. “SAP Screen Personas is so intuitive, whether you’re a small or an enormous company, everybody benefits from being able to limit the screens to only the pieces that are being used, and change the [screen] tab and navigation flow to suit user needs,” Soderberg says. “I am very excited to see that it has been embedded into the standard product suite.”
A good user experience is more than just a pretty screen. We know this from our smartphones and our tablets. Every touch we make has a purpose and every response has a meaning. The design ideas that produce personally engaging and delightful experiences should also apply to the world of work. Now with SAP Screen Personas, they do.
Learn more about SAP Screen Personas at www.sapscreenpersonas.com.
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