Why we are still talking about SAP Screen Personas

For the past three years here at Bluestonex, we have avidly advised our clients on the potential benefits of adopting SAP Screen Personas as part of their enterprise user experience initiative. We first got our hands on SAP Screen Personas back in 2014 and immediately identified 101 use cases where a screen modification solution could potentially add significant value to a customer’s existing SAP investment.

Despite the SAP Fiori and mobile application era we all live in as daily consumers of IT, many of our clients’ vocational SAP user base still interacts with SAP via the means of the traditional desktop SAP GUI, even when performing rudimentary daily back office functions such as purchase requisitioning and purchase order approvals.

Whilst it is widely acknowledged that SAP provides relatively broad functionality and rich features for its transaction coverage, it has often been at the consequence of the intuition and usability of its overall user interface for more vocational SAP business users who interact with the system on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, delivering simplification to traditional SAP Dynpro screens has often previously been overlooked by IT teams or proven too costly and complex to warrant any significant IT investment.

In the light of new cloud and emerging SAP mobile technologies, consumer grade user interfaces are now expected by customers’ generation “X” SAP user base as the “norm”. This can now be achieved more easily than ever within the enterprise through deploying user interface solutions such as SAP Screen Personas. SAP Screen Personas provides a simplified means of tailoring the way users interact with SAP technology to primarily suit business user needs. Furthermore, the availability of a native JavaScript based API facilitates the automation of frequently executed user keystrokes and tasks.

The overall benefits from harmonising people, process and technology stem broadly from increasing user productivity to simplifying user decision making within the enterprise environment. From our experience, typical use cases have stemmed all lines of business, from a warehouse management cockpit to an accounts payable simplification initiative. Many of our clients have further acknowledged that SAP Screen Personas provided the fastest, most cost effective and easiest way to deliver the SAP Fiori user experience on a desktop device.

Despite the hysteria, the strategic importance of SAP Screen Personas has been continually underlined by SAP commitment to support innovation for SAP Screen Personas 3.0 on the SAP S/4HANA platform. The roadmap for SAP Screen Personas continues to address key capabilities of the solution including a more responsive rendering format and a broader coverage of rapid deployment solution content to accelerate customer deployment and overall solution adoption.

From our perspective, it is both unrealistic and not feasible to expect SAP Fiori coverage for an estimated 400,000+ SAP GUI screens anytime in the near future (not to mention any custom developments). Whilst SAP Screen Personas doesn’t receive the high-profile recognition of its big brother (SAP Fiori), it has continually prevailed as a powerful and flexible tool for improving the overall usability of traditional SAP GUI transactions both quickly and efficiently.

In the context of SAP Fiori, we very much see complementary and strategic use cases for both technologies, often advising our client base on how to “get the best of both worlds”. We continually acknowledge SAP SP as a foundational tool to help deliver consumer-grade user experience to your enterprise, whilst maintaining that SAP Fiori is the ultimate goal for many of our clients. However, our pragmatic advice in 2023 still remains the same, START your enterprise user experience journey through the adoption of available tools such as SAP Screen Personas…today.