During the recent SAP TechEd in Madrid, I participated in several sessions and discussions on the NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC). One of the most interesting discussions I had was during (and after J) an Q&A expert session with peter.barker, felix.hoefer and claudia.binder from NWBC product management. The discussion was really focusing on the level of adoption of the NWBC at customer sites. With ‘level of adoption’, obviously was meant a (let’s be careful here) “somewhat disappointing” adoption of the NWBC as SAP’s new UI technology at customer sites. The question raised by SAP product management was basically ‘what is holding back customers to adopt this new UI technology?’ Here I would like to summarize some of the arguments that were put forward by several participants, including myself.
Let’s make clear that we are talking here about the perception of customers, so the arguments do not necessary have to be true, but they do describe how customers evaluate the product and are therefore key arguments for the (non)adoption of the NWBC.
Uncertainty on SAP’s UI strategy
The User Interface has never been SAP’s strongest offer, and customers have seen a lot of initiatives from SAP to improve the user experience. The past couple of years SAP has delivered a broad scale of UI Clients (GUI client, GUI WebClient, Portal, Business Explorer, …), UI Technologies and Tools supporting the development and maintenance of these different clients and technologies.
NetWeaver Business Client is put forward by SAP as a new User Interface but does not replace any of the existing alternatives (GUI, Portal), which confuses customers. Furthermore new initiatives are presented as the way forward including mobile applications, SAP UI5 (HTML5), free UI development based on integration through Gateway and during TechEd we even saw the Microsoft Silverlight based SAP Personas making its entrance. This confuses the customer even more on the direction SAP is taking with their UIs.
All these initiatives claim to be targeting another user group, with specific characteristics, but for partners and customers it seems more like different product teams are developing UI technologies in parallel whilst proper alignment of these initiatives is missing. No clear goal or overall strategy seems available that ties these different initiatives together. They have their own roadmaps, their own tools, their own technology and no clear joint target they are aiming at.
So, customers sit back and wait to see which client, technology and tools will prevail before making an investment.
Implementation effort
Anyone who has been implementing NWBC (whether for evaluation, life or demo scenarios) will recognize the hardship it takes to get the ‘out-of-the-box’ NWBC content working. The implementations we went through show different areas of hardship, which are recognized widely by customers and partners alike.
is sometimes ‘somewhat hard to find’. To get the information required for the implementation of a single end-user scenario, you have to go on a journey through documentation of best practices, business functions (sets), implementation and upgrade guides, Chip catalogs, SAP Notes and so on. Just when you think you are almost there, a small sentence in the documentation will make you shiver: “Configure systems as described in the SAP Standard documentation for SAP ERP EHP6". This will basically mean to go through another implementation effort in activation of business functions, struggling through implementation guides, finding relevant SAP notes and configuration the backend system.
Having to deal with several implementations and configurations when implementing the end-user scenarios for NWBC is understood since new backend functionality is required, for customers this is however a non-expected challenge when what they perceive as the introduction of a new UI client.
The available Rapid Deployment Solution for Sidepanel content in SAP NetWeaver Business Client v2.0 should address several of these needs. Our experience (which I will write about in another blog) is that after implementation of this RDS there is still a lot of work to be done for customers (or partners) to incorporate the NWDS roles and profiles in the existing user management and to configure the backend systems properly.
Although customers are usually impressed by the looks of NWBC and see real added value in the workcenters and business context related content in the sidepanels, they struggle in making the business case.
These are very valid questions which are heard often when showcasing NWBC to customers and usually the answers are somewhat disappointing.
Added value is perceived mainly from the workcenters, the sidepanel (business context content) and the look and feel. The (implementation) effort and (technical) requirements for the realization of this added value are however high and usually one step too far for the customer.
SAP is really missing the spot in marketing the NWBC. It promises a lot that cannot be achieved easily and shows ‘out-of-the-box’ content that is hardly representative for the customer’s needs or environment. Furthermore SAP fails to mention the effort and impact the implementation of NWBC will have on the User and Authorisation Management within the customer’s environment. This leaves the customer with high expectations and wrong presumptions on what NWBC can do for them. Expectations encountered at customers regarding NWBC are:
So, many expectations that customers have from presentations, sales meetings and showcases are not fulfilled. This is not necessary a problem, since all the expected can be realized. This will however require a much bigger effort and have a bigger impact than the customers had perceived.
In short, a lot of customers are delighted to see the NWBC being showcased (demos) and find the new look and feel, the workcenters approach and the business context functionality i n sidepanels very promising. However, when the customer starts to realize what the implementation effort (including role redesign and technical prerequisites) should be, how much dependencies there are on activated and configured backend functionality and how many expectations cannot be fulfilled, they back down and remain at the current UI solution (usually the plain old SAP GUI).
In my opinion, the issues mentioned above should be addressed by SAP and its partners before a better adoption rate for the NWBC can be realized. The technology is there, the available business content is growing every day as is the understanding of the NWBC. It's actually a good concept, build on available technology and available expertise within customer organizations. It is however eminent that the delivery of content and documentation must be improved before the NWBC can deliver on promise.
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