SAP has announced that SAP Fiori user experience (UX) and SAP Screen Personas software will now be included within underlying licenses of SAP software. For existing customers, SAP will provide a software credit redeemable against future software sales.
In addition, SAP will offer a portfolio of UX services, including design, rapid deployment and custom development, to enhance customer engagement. SAP users can now take advantage of a next-generation user experience based on modern design principles setting a new standard in the industry. The announcement was made at Sapphire Now, being held June 3 to 5, 2014, in Orlando, Florida.
“We want every SAP customer to run simple with a world-class user experience,” says Bill McDermott CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP. “Judging by the commercial success of SAP Fiori, it’s clear that our customers agree. Some customers and our user groups believe we shouldn’t charge for SAP Fiori. We listened to our customers, I agree with them and now SAP Fiori is included with SAP software.”
SAP collaborated closely with customers to deeply understand the business user requirements across lines of business. SAP Fiori was launched last year as a comprehensive collection of apps with a consumer-like UX to improve the user experience of core SAP software functions with an intuitive design.
SAP also provides a set of tools and technologies, such as SAP Screen Personas, that enable customers and partners to quickly personalise SAP software for their enterprise. Currently, there are more than 300 apps that use the SAP Fiori UX.
“By including a user experience based on SAP Fiori and SAP Screen Personas within SAP licensed software, SAP is making widely available a personalised, responsive, simple UX for its customers,” says Henry Morris, senior VP, Worldwide Software and Services Research, IDC.
“Users can focus on core business processes and immediate decision making for improved productivity and business success. Having access to the most critical business information via an intuitive, modern design is essential for customers to maintain an edge in today’s competitive business environment.”
To accelerate the adoption of UX innovations for end users, SAP will offer a complete portfolio of user experience services subject to a separate fee. By helping customers with UX advisory and implementation services, organisations can build their own strategy and road map across multiple devices and environments.
SAP is making the tools and modern design guidelines for UX development available for developers to create their own solutions, which includes key portions of SAPUI5 framework as open source code.
SAP’s focus on experience also extends to creating a rich developer experience. As a result, the company also announced today the beta release of SAP River rapid development environment as part of SAP HANA Cloud Platform.
This development environment, provisioned in the Web, intends to bring simplification and productivity in how developers can collaboratively design, develop and deploy applications that deliver amazing user experiences. With this product, SAP envisions that customers will be able to create new or extend existing SAP Fiori apps to suit their needs.
SAP Fiori is the new UX for SAP software. It provides business users with a personalised, responsive and simple experience across multiple devices, including tablets and smartphones. SAP Screen Personas is planned to be integrated into SAP GUI for HTML, making it easy to adopt for existing SAP customers. As a signal of commitment and focus on design thinking principles, SAP has appointed Sam Yen as chief design officer.