Business solutions from SAP have always been confronted with the prejudice that they are cumbersome to use. At the same time, user expectations have changed dramatically in the meantime: People who use their smartphones to complete tasks in their private lives don’t want to get lost in cumbersome dialogs at work. Instead, software should also be fun to use at work.
SAP has long since responded to these new requirements. With SAP Fiori, an initiative was launched years ago to ensure modern user-friendliness.
SAP’s new interface technology was to be web-based and initially implemented exclusively with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. In order to be able to implement more complex business applications conveniently, SAP created its own control library and called everything SAP UI5 (SAP User Interface for HTML5).
These unwieldy and technical terms were difficult for customers and users to understand and could not be used for marketing purposes. For this reason, the aim of the technology – a contemporary user experience – and its guiding design guidelines were dubbed “SAP Fiori”. The aim is to realize a contemporary user experience in all SAP applications.
SAP Fiori itself is therefore not a technology, but a term for a specific type of user experience and a guideline for how and with which technologies this experience should be created. On this basis, SAP has gradually developed new applications (Fiori apps) that have expanded the functional scope of the classic ERP system.
With the introduction of SAP S/4HANA, the expectation arose that this new ERP system could only be operated with new Fiori apps. However, it was simply not possible for SAP to redevelop thousands of dialog functions with SAP UI5. It therefore quickly expanded the Fiori definition, i.e. the guideline: SAP Fiori no longer only includes UI5 technology, but also WebGUI and Web Dynpro, each visually adapted to SAP Fiori and SAP UI5. At the core, however, are the previous SAP functions and transactions.
With SAP Fiori, a distinction must therefore be made between the truly new SAP UI5 apps and the conventional user dialogs.
top flow was one of the very first SAP partners to offer certified standard solutions with the new web-based front-end technology SAP Fiori. Since then, users of top MES and top xRM have benefited from innovative user interfaces, particularly for digital files, reporting and visualizing key figures in dashboards.
This means that top flow’s products meet today’s customer requirements. However, SAP Fiori is not simply imposed in top MES and top xRM. Rather, the interface technology can be activated at user level. And for good reason: efficiency must also be taken into account when evaluating the user experience. Beautiful and simple does not automatically mean fast and efficient. In particular, users of complex applications with a lot of data input and a large need for information only benefit from web technology to a limited extent. The same applies to users who want to retain the familiar views of their tried-and-tested ERP system. It can be said: If SAP Fiori can be activated on request, the highest level of personalization is achieved.
While SAP ERP solutions such as SAP S/4HANA focus on modern functions and processes, SAP Fiori can be used to create suitable applications with a focus on design, user-friendliness and user experience. The younger generation in particular wants software that is intuitive to use – making SAP Fiori a powerful argument in the competition for skilled workers. UX is known to contribute to higher employee satisfaction and also to better collaboration .
SAP Fiori applications are simply called up in a web browser via the so-called Fiori Launchpad. They are therefore fundamentally device-independent and also mobile-capable. This is what makes location-independent, flexible and cross-departmental working with SAP possible in the first place. For example, all necessary information and functions can be called up directly via a tablet in any meeting. Important key figures from production can also be viewed directly on a smartphone. Last but not least, entire solutions can be interlinked, for example, the CRM process of the cloud application can be displayed and processed seamlessly with ERP order processing.
top flow GmbH
