The common usage patterns are of primary interest for both SAP and our customers.
- On the one hand this information is highly valuable for SAP as an input into how we formulate the best strategy and approach to prioritise our own design, development and improvement initiatives.
- On the other hand it should also be the basis for our customers to prioritise what transactions they target for improvement.
I want to share my own personal experience.
For years now I have been involved in discussions on this topic. Right at the outset we are confronted by a variety of views on the best terminology to use and how effectively one can segment usage patterns.
A promising avenue that I have just became involved in is to look at enterprise data sets and analyse these with big data analytics. The jury is still out on what will emerge as a working model.
I list five usage patterns below and the ‘time in the system’ increases in a descending order from 1 to 5 below:
1. Self Service Usage: Simple tasks such as booking leave, time entry, but also the approvals type transaction.
2. Reporting: Consumption of report outputs, as opposed to report creation & analysis.
3. Knowledge: This is a broad category that emphasises usage of system outputs as part of a knowledge area. The main work of this type of usage is not inside the application.
4. Professional: This is another broad category that emphasises usage of system functionality, including report creation and analysis.
5. Heavy: This is a broad category that covers from repetitive system transactions (e.g. entering invoices) to a large range of transactions. The common denominator is that these usage patterns account for the majority of system usage.
The five usage patterns above are broad usage patterns and serve as a general indication of what I have observed with many customers.
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