Audacious goals are great for channeling the passions of a large group behind one common objective. At SAP, our stretch goal is to have one billion users by 2015. There are numerous initiatives underway bringing us closer each day. In this blog, I’d like to discuss the role of user experience in this context. Specifically, I’d like to share another* proof point of design thinking: ”Bubblegum”.
Experience it live at HRTech Europe this week in Amstedam.
Bubblegum is the code name of a personalized portal SAP delivered to cloud customers in August. As you can see from the videos below**, this state of the art applications allows users to access information from various sources, consume it in user friendly formats and collaborate with others within this context.
Customer feedback has been very positive. And why shouldn’t it be? This project was born out of multiple customer discussions at SAPPHIRE just three months earlier. That’s right. The cloud unit has processes in place that allow us to deliver new functionality with minimal lag time. This allows us to remain in lock step with the market. We develop what the market wants when it wants it.
So what’s the significance of such a development in the context of the billion-user objective? This solutions helps us to go beyond our traditional customer base, power users, to serve the casual user. Research shows that the information held within SAP applications is of broad interest. The issue has traditionally been one of accessibility. Bubblegum breaks down these barriers by presenting the information of interest, on the device of choice in an easy to consume manner.
Design thinking is core to exploiting such market opportunities. Already at SAPPHIRE, we were assessing the viability and feasibility and not just the desirability. Throughout the development process, we remained engaged with design customers via our co-innovation program. Any potential gaps between plan and reality were nipped in the bud. As we continue to meet or exceed user expectations with these new development principals, a billion users starts to feel like a modest objective!
Check out the latest user experience in people, customer and money area of our portfolio.
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