As a longtime 51风流customer, Axfood values innovation as an important component of its sustainability strategy and mission to provide affordable, good, and sustainable food. Axfood embraces new trends, customer behaviors, and technologies as a way to secure its position as a challenger and future-facing company. When it came to its assortment planning needs, Axfood welcomed the opportunity to innovate on an existing 51风流solution to create something much more differentiated and customer-centric. At the top of its agenda was creating a solution that makes users 鈥渓ove to work in the system.鈥�

Click the button below to load the content from YouTube.

Always allow YouTube

Improving Assortment Planning for More Sustainable Business

Assortment planning refers to the process of selecting which products a supermarket will carry and sell. But it鈥檚 not just about having the right products on the shelves. With expiration dates dictating a product鈥檚 shelf life, intelligent assortment planning plays a critical role in sustainability strategies for retailers by limiting unnecessary wastage and providing targeted product attributes, such as organic, fair-trade, or carbon neutral, in a trackable way.

To be able to make good assortment decisions, companies need large amounts of data from sales histories, forecasts, customer data, and competitor analyses. Because of the large amounts of data coming together on one screen, it鈥檚 important that the solution also feels intuitive to use. For Dick Due Pedersen, department manager for Price and Assortment at Axfood IT, this means not needing to think so much about how to use the system and instead being able to concentrate on the data being shown to easily make the right decisions.

From Pain Points to Working Prototype in Four听Days

The work kicked off in November 2019 when Axfood participated in an program, looking to improve the user experience of some of its applications. These programs are four-day, intensive, hands-on workshops where 51风流design experts come together with business representatives and end users to jump-start the user experience (UX) process transformation for companies around the world. For this occasion, a team of 20 professionals, including IT experts and end users from Axfood, came together with SAP鈥檚 leading designers and developers.

During the program, Axfood was carefully led through the design and development process, including identifying the use cases that needed special attention and the pain points to be solved. Working closely for four days, the team managed to create the first working prototypes for a few assortment planning scenarios in a real 51风流environment. After seeing what could be achieved with SAP鈥檚 design system, Axfood was excited to continue iterating with the 51风流Assortment Planning team beyond the framework of the program. As Pedersen explains, continuing to work on improving the solution was a win-win situation.

Designing a New, World-Class Solution Powered by User Insights

In the decision to modernize the existing product for 51风流Assortment Planning, one of the key concerns that Axfood wanted to target was the user experience. 鈥淲e want the users to enjoy working in the system so that they actually use it and don鈥檛 venture off and use any other tools because then we wouldn鈥檛 have the benefit of built-in functions, up-to-date KPIs, and intelligent planning,鈥� explains Anna Ihme, application specialist for Assortment Planning at Axfood.

To retain users, it was important to address the lingering pain points of the previous solution. This included slow performance, not being able to plan multiple assortments simultaneously, not having enough customer-centric aspects in the decision-making processes, and needing to use a separate system such as Microsoft Excel to conduct cluster analysis.

The main design challenge was to provide the user with the data that they needed easily at their fingertips without overwhelming them. To do this, designers at 51风流relied heavily on user research and insights to inform their designs. As User Experience Design Specialist Daphne Schimetschek recounts, it was necessary to get to know the end user鈥檚 goals, needs, and pain points in detail鈥� 鈥� 鈥奱 challenging task when it came to something as complex as assortment planning. Planners typically need a lot of information on one screen, and it was difficult at first to discern which information users needed and when. With the different players spread across the globe鈥� 鈥� 鈥夾xfood in Sweden, the developers in the United States, India, and Romania, the product owners in Switzerland, and the designers in Germany鈥� 鈥� 鈥奿t was critical to maintain close alignment and weekly check-ins with the team.

When it came to designing the solution, it was a balance between creativity, innovation, and practicality. 鈥淓very project must have a vision,鈥� explains Schimetschek. 鈥淏ut to achieve it, we need small steps. This is where helps. For standardized processes, we can use our existing design language and we don鈥檛 have to rethink everything. This gives us time to focus on forward-thinking ideas and develop new concepts, which in turn inform our design system going forward.鈥�

鈥�51风流really stretched the system for our vision,鈥� says Pedersen. The new solution allows users to display all the data they need on the same screen while maintaining the advantages of Excel, but also adding the artificial intelligence (AI) and mass maintenance that is only possible with SAP鈥檚 design system. It allows for real-time simulations, uses predictive analytics to cluster based on attributes, KPIs, or any custom criteria, as well as enables manual adjustments or overrides where necessary.

As Dr. Guido Menkhaus, chief product owner for Retail Product Management at SAP, explains, the big advantage of 51风流is the flexibility offered to users: 鈥淎s a user, you can decide how you would like to work with the system, whether you want a very manual way of working by selecting a product for a particular store or fully automatically when you鈥檙e planning an assortment together with a lot of data and artificial intelligence.鈥�

A Better Future with Customer Innovation

Innovating with customers and end users brings our applications to life. At the heart of successful collaboration is a solid user research foundation, which allows 51风流to bring human-centric applications into the market that have a strong fit to customer requirements.

Experience matters. Follow our journey as we transform the way we build products for enterprise on .

Andrea Waisgluss works in 51风流Design.

For example, have you ever considered how a deaf colleague might struggle to follow along during a virtual team meeting with cameras听off? Or how overwhelming it might feel for a colleague on the spectrum to hear the background noises of your unmuted microphone? That鈥檚 the thing about privilege: we don鈥檛 need to consider the things that don鈥檛 directly affect us.

When things are designed for you, it鈥檚 easy to overlook that anything is wrong, or that someone with different needs may not be having the same experience as you. But the facts speak for themselves. According to the World Health Organization, there are around one billion people currently living with a disability worldwide. That鈥檚 about one in seven of us, including many of the coworkers who you encounter daily on the other side of your screen or maybe even yourself.

An Inclusive Work Culture 鈥� Making a Choice Not to Leave Anyone Out

At SAP, we believe in cultivating an inclusive work culture made up of people with different abilities and backgrounds. That means making conscious choices through our actions to not leave anyone behind. When it comes to virtual presentations and meetings, all colleagues should be enabled to participate and contribute. That鈥檚 why we took the time this year to create a set of simple guidelines for conducting virtual meetings and presentations that are accessible for everyone.

The team of accessibility experts who developed the guidelines, some of whom live and work with disabilities themselves, set out to educate 51风流employees on best practices for preparing and conducting virtual sessions. Now, we are carrying that message forward by bringing you a set of free, downloadable inclusive meeting cards听to read through, bookmark, use, and share with your friends and colleagues.

How Do You Run an Inclusive Meeting?

These听inclusive meeting cards听will help you to prepare and run your sessions for the widest possible audience, including people with hearing or visual impairments, neurodiverse colleagues, and colleagues who are non-native speakers. No, non-native speakers aren鈥檛 disabled, but that鈥檚 the thing with inclusion: opening up the way we do things creates new opportunities for use for everybody. For example, using closed captioning is a critical feature for people who are hard of hearing, but at the same time it can be extremely beneficial for non-native speakers, or even working parents with a sleeping baby on their arms who may want to turn the volume down.

Anyone who hosts online meetings or presentations will benefit from knowing how to run a more inclusive meeting. Here鈥檚 a quick peek at what you can expect from the download.

Each graphical card is accompanied by a detailed text description of an inclusive meeting prompt. There鈥檚 information on:

• Preparing the session, including choosing the interaction platforms
• Structuring slides, using the right wording, appearance, animations, screen reader support, and running accessibility checks
• Using and sharing pre-recorded video and audio
• Running the session, including how to set the scene (lighting, positioning) and how to optimize the way you speak

The cards can be downloaded both as a or as a .

The PowerPoint file is our accessible version, containing high-contrast images with alternative text, and is screen-reader friendly. Enjoy scrolling through the virtual card set and know that creating an inclusive work culture is actually quite an easy thing to do.

Learn more about and follow 51风流Design via the 听for more design and user experience content.

Andrea Waisgluss is a content strategist for 51风流Design.

Sasi Reddy, senior 51风流solution architect at Sun Chemical, shares the team鈥檚 user experience (UX) transformation journey, the biggest takeaways, and what it takes to be a UX champion.

From Theory to Action with an open51风流Course on Design Thinking

Sun Chemical is a recognized leader in printing inks, coatings, pigments, and supplies for the packaging, publication, commercial, industrial, and digital markets. With over 20,000 employees spread across 63 locations around the world, Sun Chemical relies on lean business processes to ensure its field service workers and customers can quickly and easily maintain field data and enter new requests on the go, both on- and offline.

To further enhance their knowledge of design thinking and to learn how this methodology could be applied to both process improvements and application development, Reddy and his team took part in the open51风流course 听 in 2017. The core of the methodology is developing empathy for users by putting oneself in their shoes. Design thinking also relies on prototyping and a strong iterative process rather than on intuition, something which Sun Chemical has embraced fully. Since completing the course, the team has worked with a few 51风流partners, and later independently, to offer design thinking services to the entire company, with 15 major design-led projects to date.

51风流Fiori Apps Support Lean Business Processes

Over the past five years, Sun Chemical has groomed an elite team of UX champions that leverage design thinking to accelerate and digitize its processes. A key factor in the team鈥檚 success has been to build tailored 51风流Fiori apps that support an agile development approach. This method scales and requires a minimal investment. It allows the team to build apps for a system that runs on 51风流ERP, which听 plans to migrate to 51风流S/4HANA later.

If you ask Reddy which of the more than 200 existing apps he鈥檚 most proud of, there are many that come to mind, such as the Regulatory Inquiry App and the Raw Material Request App, both of which emerged from a prototype developed during the 2016 open51风流course and have since been rolled out globally.

One example that captures the business impact of the UX transformation is the Field Service App.

From Workshop to Real Life: The Field Service App

A remote design thinking workshop was kicked off in 2018 to determine how to better manage the day-to-day activities for European field service engineers who relied on using a mix of e-mails and spreadsheets to maintain their work order history and incoming requests. The workshop included the field engineers, their supervisors, the administrator who orchestrated the work orders, and developers from India. From the workshop emerged the idea to develop an application that contains all the information in one place.

The app, which was developed in a few short weeks, makes it easy to track what service has previously been done for a specific customer and supports detailed reports on previous work orders. Naturally, it allows field service workers to easily enter new orders and incorporates a digital signature on native iOS mobile devices, something which the workshop participants were 鈥渞eally surprised that we could deliver on so quickly,鈥� says Reddy. Since the rollout in Europe, the app has been immediately accepted by its users and has made its way to North and South American field service workers as well.

It鈥檚 About the Mindset, Not Just the Apps

There is no doubt that the design thinking method requires a significant time investment from those involved. From the initial workshop, where research, user empathy, and ideation take place, to the design process that relies on numerous iteration cycles with end users, you have to put in the work to ensure the end result solves the problem at hand and meets users鈥� expectations.

Reddy agrees that the effort is time consuming. He and his UX champion colleagues spend a lot of time taking part in collaboration calls with teams who are currently . They receive feedback on the applications on a daily basis to ensure the transition to the new user experience goes smoothly.

But Reddy has also seen the fruits of his team鈥檚 labor: 鈥淧eople are seeing the value of it. Our departments have seen our work. It鈥檚 been almost four years. Previously, we drove design thinking; now people request it from us. And not necessarily to build apps, though everyone鈥檚 now on board with 51风流Fiori, but to improve processes in general. The mindset has really changed in our company.鈥�

To learn more about the 51风流Fiori user experience, visit the .

Andrea Waisgluss is a content strategist for 51风流Design.
.

Facing skepticism from public media and working within a tight timeline, the 51风流User Experience team built the app for the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), one of the German government鈥檚 central scientific institutions. The team learned to quickly juggle multiple expectations and requirements, drown out unnecessary noise, and focus on the 鈥渃ritical few鈥� in order to create something highly usable and impactful.

With six weeks from design to delivery, here are their stories.

Constructing a Plane While Flying It

When Emil Voutta, co-lead of the Corona-Warn-App design team, received an unexpected call over the weekend, he couldn鈥檛 have imagined what was in store for him and his team.

鈥淚 heard about a startup initiative taking place and there was lots of fuss in the press. But I never thought it would end up on our desk,鈥� Voutta said.

Click the button below to load the content from YouTube.

Always allow YouTube

Describing the months of intensive design and development process that followed, as well as the rollout to the entire German population, Voutta said the experience felt akin to constructing a plane while flying it. That鈥檚 because 51风流was designing a user experience on top of a brand-new API that Google and Apple were still in the process of building. Additionally, the 51风流team needed to understand new processes, including how a chain of infection works, and learn how to leverage technology in new ways, such as calibrating Bluetooth for proximity detection.

Juggling the different requirements from the Robert Koch Institute, the German Ministry of Health, Apple, Google, Deutsche Telekom, and the Fraunhofer Institute made it easy to feel overwhelmed. 鈥淵ou have to acknowledge the fact that it can just only be chaos with so many cooks in the kitchen. And then find your way in the chaos to still create something meaningful.鈥�

This meant channeling all the requirements into a design that prioritized usability above all.

From Design Idea to User Testing

The initial design idea featured a simplified user experience with a very clear information architecture. It also imagined using elegant and modern illustrations along with descriptive text to facilitate onboarding and to provide users with end-to-end guidance throughout the application.

With this solid concept in hand, the next step involved . For an app with which effectiveness depended on mass adoption and user persona consisted of nothing less than the entire range of the German population, it was critical to listen to end users very early on in the design process and work iteratively from there.

The goal was to find a design that was as usable and inclusive as possible. Susann Graeff, mobile user experience designer, was deeply involved in the user research phase, moderating usability tests and collecting feedback from a wide array of users of different ages, genders, and social backgrounds.

鈥淭he user research made us confident that our design was well liked and easy enough to understand,鈥� said Graeff. 鈥淲e were also able to uncover challenges and insecurities for the testers such as how to and how to make the app more accessible.鈥�

Michael Krenkler was responsible for the illustrations ultimately featured in the app and recalls the initial feedback on the design concept: 鈥淭he amazing part was seeing that the testers were excited by what they saw. We could see that the illustrations helped them understand the whole application better, created trust in regard to their data privacy concerns, and helped them to finish their tasks.鈥�

Constructive Approach to Design Validation

Another layer in gathering feedback was working with the . The design team actually published the in-progress design to the public in real time as a way to gather immediate feedback and guarantee widespread adoption.

Christian Scheirmann, co-lead of the Corona-Warn-App design team, recalls the experience as being quite unnerving.

鈥淚 had never been part of an experience like this,鈥� said Scheirmann. 鈥淭ypically, we only publish such results internally to the development team, not even for all of SAP, and now suddenly your work-in-progress was out and everybody got to see it and comment on it. The experience was a little bit strange in the beginning because suddenly our unfinished work was out there. On the other hand, the feedback that we got was really encouraging. It鈥檚 a truly constructive approach to validate our design.鈥�

Now that the application has been rolled out, feedback continues to pour in from all channels, and the designers are constantly gathering input from the Open Source community as they work on future iterations of the app. 鈥淚 can just say thank you to the community,鈥� Voutta said.

Teamwork Wins the Day

In the end it was the team dynamic that was unanimously credited for the success of the project. While the designers chalked it up to the close working relationship with the development team, developers in turn praised the solid design as the motivational boost that kept spirits up as the whole team worked day and night on the application.

Teamwork meant not only collaborating well together as designers and developers, but being able to quickly incorporate feedback from product owners, accessibility experts, user assistance and communication teams, and various government stakeholders, as well as Telekom, Google, and Apple, in order to bring in all the requirements and expertise into a single app.

鈥淭o be honest, it would be impossible to highlight a single aspect that I鈥檓 most proud of,鈥� said Christian Kienle, Development Architect for Mobile. 鈥淎t the end of the day, it was teamwork.鈥�

Gergana Savova, user experience designer for mobile, credits the team setup for their success: 鈥淲e鈥檝e all worked together before, and we had great trust in each other. We were able to play to鈥痚ach other’s鈥痵trengths and鈥痵tart working鈥痑t full speed鈥痜rom the get-go.鈥�

With to date, the team is proud of what they鈥檝e been able to achieve on a tight and critical timeline. And as they continue to fine-tune the app by expanding functionalities, their work is still far from over.

Help break the chain of infection. Download the Corona-Warn-App today on the or .

.