User Experience or UX may be one of the buzzwords around SAP ERP (as well as the headlines we are force-fed at every SAP conference with examples being HANA, Cloud, BIG data & Mobile) all of which have their pride of place and quite right too!

But ERP UX is something that most people miss the point on. People see UX as an afterthought and not in the initial scoping & delivery of a technology project. This concept and mindset will change but it may take a long time to catch on.

We are starting to see a trend in organisations including UX design in the initial concept stages of projects.

Why?

Unfortunately, many clients find UX design as a “waste” of time and money without realising that it’s actually the opposite way around. Think about it, ‘visual designers and developers cannot create a successful website without instructions from an UX designer’. It’s the same with your enterprise software.

Why have the most integrated & functionality-rich ERP (as SAP) when your users spend 16 clicks to reach one destination or goal? If you were building a customer portal you would try and create a good UX as you would need to stand out and also add that ‘edge’ factor – right? Why don’t we think like this within our internal network within the business enterprise? Now, I am not saying the office will become an ‘APP Zone’, where life in the back office will be similar to social browsing but then again – why not?

Over time, the ‘Generation Y’ of office workers, spoilt by great consumer technology, will not accept unusable software in the workplace anymore. The big factor in all of this (that would interest senior management) is that there is a real business case for improving UX.

What are we doing about it?

At Bluestonex we are looking to engage with clients that run SAP. We specialise in improving not just their User Experience but their Enterprise Experience bringing a different mindset & approach to Projects, Initiatives or bottlenecks in their ERP platforms. A bit like our kids’ nursery classes we are here to ‘show and tell’ our stories & experience and then to empower.

We will be posting several videos on SAP screen Persona’s as you can do some really cool stuff quite easily without any help but there is still a ‘dark side’ and some technical skill you need to really push the boundaries of SAP.

I am not 100% convinced of the long-term strategy around UX in SAP ERP and still feel there are a few mixed messages that still need to be simplified for deployment.