This has led to a 鈥淭erminal Renaissance,鈥� a return to text-in, text-out interaction.

For many applications, text works, letting users express intent naturally with no onboarding. However, text struggles to convey structured data that is common in business, and without real-time updates, static text results lose relevance the moment they鈥檙e generated.

Structured data is easier to digest when users can filter, sort, and visualize it鈥攖hat is why graphical user interfaces (GUIs) excel at presenting structured data and guiding users through complex workflows. But GUIs are expensive to build and rigid, forcing generic, one-size-fits-all solutions that struggle to provide the fluid, tailored experiences users now demand.

Text is flexible but limited; GUIs are robust but rigid. Generative UI is the unmet need between them and the new frontier for business software.

From static dashboards to dynamic workspaces

Imagine a procurement manager investigating a supply chain disruption. Instead of navigating five different applications and manually cross-referencing data, she asks: 鈥淪how me the suppliers at risk in Southeast Asia and model alternative sourcing scenarios.鈥�

This request sets agents to work behind the scenes. They gather and analyze live data, simulate outcomes, and calculate the projected impact of every alternative. Execution agents are also pre-positioned and ready to act on command.

The user doesn鈥檛 have to deal with any of this complexity. For them, a dynamic interface materializes in seconds鈥攏ot a generic dashboard, but a purpose-built mission control center. Interactive maps highlight affected regions and supply chain graphs update in real time. As the user tweaks parameters, risk scores adjust instantly. Embedded controls stand ready to trigger purchase orders or notify suppliers, enabling the user to decide and execute. Collaboration is simplified; colleagues can join a living workspace: no briefing decks, no context-setting calls.

This is the future: a business suite where a user鈥檚 intent defines their interface and their decisions drive action. To get there, we are combining Joule and Joule Agents with our vision for generative UI. This is not just about on-demand dashboards; it鈥檚 about steering a business with interfaces that adapt to each user’s role, context, and tasks. This is 鈥渧ibe coding鈥� for enterprise operations: shifting focus from syntax to intent.

We are entering an era where AI constructs UIs on the fly, allowing users to engage with them immediately. Generative UI marks the transition from static software suites to 鈥渂atch size 1鈥� applications that act like ephemeral control centers tailored to a specific problem.

Challenges and SAP鈥檚 answers

Delivering an intent-driven business suite at enterprise scale requires addressing complex realities. We are building generative UI because we understand its promise and its perils鈥攁nd we have unique assets to bridge that gap.

Accuracy

Large language models (LLMs) can produce plausible but incorrect outputs, or 鈥渉allucinate.鈥� A consumer chatbot that hallucinates a movie plot is tolerable; a procurement system that misrepresents supplier terms has real consequences. Our generative UI approach addresses this by visualizing data directly from systems of record with transparent lineage. Grounding the UI in real-time, trusted data is our first defense against inaccuracy.

Trust

If every interface is generated on the fly, how do users know it is reliable? Trust is built on consistency and predictability. Our generative UI is built on the familiar and proven architectural grammar of 51风流Fiori for lists, dashboards, and workflows. The content is bespoke and the structure is consistent and familiar, so users can always judge and adjust with confidence.

Complexity

Enterprise systems are sophisticated and unique. They are built over decades, encoding massive domain knowledge and business logic. Generative UI builds on Joule鈥檚 existing integration and orchestration capabilities, which already connect to systems across a landscape and coordinate agents to execute complex workflows. Generative UI leverages this foundation, letting users interact with deeply integrated processes through simple interfaces while Joule handles the orchestration underneath.

Why this matters now

The expectations set by consumer AI are real, and the gap between what employees experience at home and what they use at work is widening.

The future of enterprise software isn’t chatbots bolted onto legacy screens. It’s bespoke mission control鈥攊nterfaces that materialize around a user鈥檚 intent, grounded in live data, executed by agents, and governed by the user.

With that, we鈥檙e reimagining how work gets done.

Jonathan von Rueden is chief AI officer of 51风流SE.

To support ongoing expansion, Far East sought more streamlined and efficient lease lifecycle management operations, leading the company to progressively digitalize the entire leasing lifecycle.

Manual processes prompt change

The leasing process at Far East has traditionally been resource-intensive, involving multiple manual steps and significant human intervention across various stages, including pre-offer approvals via e-mail, rental computations, budget comparisons, contract drafting, amendment management, and rental change tracking.

This approach required substantial manpower and created multiple data entry points across the leasing lifecycle, which could affect accuracy and timeliness. Manual updates to rental terms and amendments also contributed to inefficiencies.

The project marks an important step toward operational excellence. By identifying and addressing these systemic challenges, Far East is laying the foundation for a fully digital, integrated leasing platform that supports seamless process flow, real-time data visibility, and more informed decision-making. It is a bold shift toward a strategic, data-driven approach to leasing that enhances agility, accuracy, and growth.

A strategic move forward

For this reason, FEO decided to undertake a strategic transformation to digitalize its leasing operations through a robust, intelligent, and integrated 51风流ecosystem. This initiative unifies the full leasing lifecycle, from lead generation to contract execution and financial settlement, while enhancing operational excellence, data transparency, and customer service.

51风流was selected as the strategic platform for leasing digitalization due to its ability to deliver a comprehensive, end-to-end solution that connects business processes across the leasing lifecycle. With at the core, Far East benefits from a powerful digital foundation that aligns real estate, finance, and operational workflows into a single source of truth, supporting data integrity, process consistency, and real-time visibility. SAP鈥檚 cutting-edge technologies鈥攊ncluding 51风流Customer Relationship Management (51风流CRM), 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), and 51风流Fiori apps鈥攅nable intelligent automation, advanced analytics, and a clean core architecture that supports both standardization and innovation.

This integrated ecosystem empowers FEO employees to leverage real-time analytics for data-driven decisions and reduce errors and eliminate bottlenecks with automated tasks, streamlined processes, and optimized workflows.

The result? FEO experienced an 80% improvement in sales process efficiency at closing leasing sales.

Impact of the leasing digitalization project

The successful implementation of the leasing digitalization project has delivered tangible improvements across the organization, from the residential and commercial group business unit to its financial, operational, and compliance domains. By streamlining and automating leasing processes, FEO achieved over US$500,000 in annual cost savings while reducing operational overhead. The project eliminated redundant data entry through intelligent field derivation and automated rental computations, helping to minimize errors and boost workforce productivity.

In addition, the leasing lifecycle has been accelerated, cutting the lead-to-contract process and reducing contract generation time from days to just minutes. With 100% system uptime since go-live and strong user adoption, the platform has become a reliable tool for leasing operations. Intelligent validations, including budget checks and competitive rent evaluations, have strengthened regulatory compliance and enhanced decision accuracy. Collectively, these outcomes have strengthened FEO鈥檚 position as a digitally enabled real estate business, well-equipped for agile, data-driven portfolio management and continuous innovation.

FEO has made significant leaps forward in the property management industry. Employee productivity has increased with streamlined processes. Regulatory compliance with industry regulations and standards is managed with intelligent validation. And, analytics provide valuable insights into tenant behavior, rent trends, and property performance.

An 51风流Innovation Award winner

For its property management achievement, Far East Organization was selected as a 2025 51风流Innovation Award winner in the Industry Leader category.

Nicolas Englo is program manager for the 51风流Innovation Awards.

The boot camp focused on addressing and analyzing the real challenges faced by the company鈥檚 work order coordinators to optimize their daily work experience and routines.

The challenge: A fragmented, manual process

Before the boot camp, badenovaNETZE’s work order coordination was a fragmented mix of tools and processes. Coordinators were juggling 51风流software, custom programs from SmartService Solutions, and basic applications like Word and Excel to complete their tasks. The status quo resulted in a couple of challenges to address and optimize:

• Improve user experience: The existing interface was difficult to navigate, leading to user frustration and reduced productivity.
• Avoid manual processes: Coordinators had to both transfer information across multiple systems and update data manually, making routine tasks time-consuming and prone to errors.
• Reduce error rate: The repetitive, manual tasks increased the risk of data entry errors, causing delays and additional workload.
• Increase transparency: With limited visibility into work order statuses, coordinators spent a lot of time tracking down information and monitoring progress.

The solution: A hands-on transformation

The company participated in a four-day 51风流Fiori Makers boot camp, bringing together customer end users, IT teams, and partners. The focus of the boot camp was to improve the usability of the work order cockpit by transitioning from manual tasks and workarounds to an 51风流app prototype as a tangible starting point. It aimed at implementing process automation, incorporating dashboards, enhancing the user experience, and reducing error rates.

The boot camp provided badenovaNETZE with the tools and an open, agile workshop format needed to tackle these challenges. Based on this close collaboration with the company鈥檚 coordinators, the 51风流team developed customized solutions that streamlined processes and the final outcome. 鈥淭he beauty of our boot camps is that we get to know and truly understand the challenges of our end users,鈥� 51风流UX Designer Christina Salwitzek summarizes. 鈥淭ogether with the end user and from the beginning, we designed and developed a more efficient solution for this complex workflow.鈥�

The objectives

badenovaNETZE faces operational challenges when managing numerous customer requests in metering, including meter replacement, installation, and removal. Together, the teams set ambitious yet achievable objectives to ensure long-term success. Operational readiness by 2025 was the top priority, with a clear goal of transitioning to an optimized, future-proof system in the first half of the new year.

To support this transition, the boot camp helped increase 51风流technology knowledge and development skills within the badenovaNETZE team. The team is now prepared to maintain, adapt, and expand the new solution as their needs evolve. 鈥淲hat surprised me the most is that we actually made such good progress together and that everybody was able to contribute something,鈥� says Paulina Deren, order coordination advisor at badenovaNETZE.

Finally, the team established a prioritized road map鈥攁 clear, phased approach designed to guide the customer through each stage of the transformation, enabling a smooth journey from concept to realization. The 51风流Fiori Makers team included three UX designers, an 51风流Fiori elements front-end developer who brought the visual designs to life, and a backend developer specializing in the 51风流Cloud Application Programming Model framework to help ensure robust, scalable functionality. The team was guided by Andreas Spahn, principal technology & innovation manager from the 51风流Services team, who moderated the boot camp and facilitated collaboration. 鈥淲hat makes 51风流Fiori Makers so special is that we have one problem statement and we have one team to analyze today鈥檚 problem with the end user and solve it,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his involves experts from technology, design, and development.鈥�

The experience

A core element was the creation of a user-centric and future-focused design for a new work order cockpit. The team used design thinking techniques in combination with the capabilities of 51风流Fiori, 51风流Fiori elements, and 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) to get started. Being one of Germany’s largest regional suppliers of electricity, natural gas, heat energy, and water, badenova already used 51风流BTP for integration scenarios and started using it for application development with this project.

For its intuitive, streamlined interface, the team conducted a thorough feasibility assessment to validate the proposed solution’s technical and operational viability. They then rapidly co-created and prototyped solutions in close collaboration with actual users.

The derived prototype not only simplified complex workflows but also significantly reduced manual tasks, minimized errors, and eliminated data silos. By centralizing all relevant information into a unified system, the team delivered a seamless user experience, initiating the groundwork necessary for full deployment.

The result garnered positive feedback from participants, reflecting the practicality and innovation of the solution. 鈥淢ost impressive to me was the headway made,鈥� Daniel Oberle, business architect at badenovaNETZE, says. 鈥淲ithout the 51风流Fiori Makers boot camp, we would be looking at another half a year to get to where we are just now.鈥�

Real user feedback

To ensure the solution truly resonated with its users, the team conducted three on-site, moderated usability tests using a Figma prototype. Each session included two notetakers capturing live feedback directly within Figma, allowing for immediate insights and adjustments. The initial user stories were visualized using SAP鈥檚 storytelling tool, which enabled the team to quickly create collaborative, visual narratives without the need for drawing skills. These early concepts were then refined with 51风流Fiori design stencils in Figma, streamlining the transition from rough ideas to polished prototypes.

The involvement of 51风流users during the boot camp was instrumental, providing real-time evaluation through cognitive walkthroughs. 鈥淚f the user experience fits, employees are happy and enjoy using the software,鈥� Teresa Mayer, UX designer at SAP, says. This hands-on, iterative process helped ensure the final design aligned closely with user expectations and needs.

This example underscores the critical role user research plays in driving successful, error-free, and beneficial product development. To strengthen its user feedback approach even further, 51风流introduced the听 program. This initiative invites users to participate in remote research activities, allowing SAP鈥檚 product teams to get feedback along the product life cycle. Users can share their product and design experiences to help shape 51风流products to better align with their needs while also getting a preview of new features or products.

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Conclusion

The 51风流Fiori Makers boot camp proved to be a pivotal step in badenovaNETZE鈥檚 digital transformation journey. By combining cutting-edge 51风流technologies with a user-centric design approach, the team not only tackled complex operational challenges but also delivered a solution that significantly enhances efficiency and user satisfaction. The rapid progress made during the boot camp鈥攃utting down development time by six months and projecting savings of 115 working days per year鈥攗nderscores the power of collaboration and innovation.

With the project already underway and goals for 2025 set, badenovaNETZE is well-positioned to continue refining and optimizing processes with an even more engaged and satisfied workforce.

Make your voice heard by听. Registration is easy and taking part in research studies is convenient. To learn more about the 51风流Fiori Makers boot camp, which includes a workshop following the design-led development process, visit听our .

This story originally appeared on with the support of Suparna Chawla.

Tobias Essig is a user research advocate for 51风流Design.

Redefining Business Operations with AI-Driven Productivity

The 2502 update includes advanced AI capabilities, empowering organizations to operate smarter and faster. By automating tasks, providing actionable insights, and enabling better decision-making, the update helps boost productivity.

At the heart of this is Joule, SAP鈥檚 cutting-edge AI copilot, which is now generally available and fully integrated into 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Joule is the AI copilot that can understand your business with these latest innovations:

• Enhanced context and insights: Instead of just identifying problems, Joule can provide detailed context, helping users understand root causes and potential impacts, such as proactive .
• Effortless navigation: Joule helps guide users to the most relevant apps and tools for follow-up actions, working to simplify workflows and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

The Future of Business, Today

The 2502 update is a strategic investment that combines advanced AI with powerful enterprise management tools. Whether scaling your business, enhancing productivity, or building sustainable operations, its capabilities help support a more agile and resilient future.

• Facilitate easier understanding and interpretation of financial data with * and .*

• The * and * features in 51风流Fiori allow for efficient, natural language filtering of business data and seamless summarization capabilities, enabling users to quickly extract relevant information and jump-start subsequent collaboration.

• can provide context-specific, actionable solution recommendations tailored to users鈥� responsibilities.**

Modern and Collaborative User Experience

Enhanced user experiences help revolutionize workflows by providing immediate access to key applications and enabling smart decision-making:

• allow direct actions from the My Inbox application.

• AI-assisted, easy enterprise search enables searches for business objects across the solution.**

• AI-embedded error explanations can enable better understanding of errors in elements-based 51风流Fiori apps and initial resolution recommendations.**

Intelligent and Sustainable Finance

Optimize cash flow and unlock liquidity through instant and while gaining insights into payment behavior via integration between 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and Taulia solutions.

offers various methods to collect carbon data, including and .

The new financial helps enhance group-level analysis of accounting data, provide real-time reporting, simplify group reporting submissions, and improve root-cause analysis.

The 51风流Risk and Assurance Management application can enable effective corporate risk management by offering , enhancing control management through a central risk catalog, increasing transparency, and providing .

Expanding SaaS ERP to Be Tailored Your Industry

We are introducing the 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business solution, which is tailored to retail complexities from merchandising to store operations and supply chains. It helps tackle key customer challenges and leverages our flexible public cloud architecture to help unify industry processes, data, and AI and offer seamless integrations.

Powering Service-Centric Companies

The 51风流Project and Resource Management solution now offers centralized and staffing for . This can enable businesses to maximize the use of their talent across all project-related scenarios.

The 51风流Fiori app . It can provide a unified and flexible entry point for project managers, now also covering work package insights, financial KPIs, and purchasing data.

New service contract management features help simplify daily tasks, reduce maintenance efforts, and deliver data-driven insights on customer behavior, including and .

Price management can be faster and more flexible, enabling companies to offer competitive pricing with and the ability to .

can offer actionable analytical insights for customers with subscription-based revenue streams.

Boosting Manufacturing and Product-Centric Companies

The can enable ad-hoc adjustments to initial transportation plans by splitting handling units that do not fit on the truck into a new delivery order.

The allows for the direct receipt of customer returns and inbound deliveries, supporting additional process variants like consignment pickup.

The new shows date-specific product availability across multiple locations and material planning areas, allowing users to toggle between plant and storage views and evaluate CO₂ footprints.

Establishing a Solid SaaS Foundation

The  enables flexible role design and can improve the understanding of restriction types and apps.

Reach a wider customer base, simplify marketing and sales processes, and monitor add-on versions for smoother deployment with a  for developing and deploying ABAP Cloud model extensions.

An enhanced user experience of the widely-used allows business users to access both standard and country-specific fields.

Industry scope has been made available for retail, real estate, and public sector solutions in additional countries across the EMEA, APJ, and LAC regions.

*Sign up for these features through the .
**Available for beta testing. Sign up .

Lawrence Martin is SVP and chief product officer for Public Cloud ERP at SAP.

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�

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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.

And today, as we鈥檙e amid global socioeconomic and environmental paradigm shifts, our mission to help every company become a best-run business and improve people鈥檚 lives is more relevant than ever before.

In this spirit of designing听in the open, iterating faster, and delivering simpler and better experiences,听I鈥檓 excited to share the next steps in the evolution of SAP鈥檚 user experience (UX) with you.

Where We Stand, and Where We Go From Here

In the vastness of our offerings lies our strength, but also our complexity. We鈥檝e heard and understand the challenges that users often face onboarding into and managing their work with a variety of product experiences given the immensity of SAP鈥檚 product portfolio. Over the past decade, 51风流Fiori — our design language for all 51风流products — has taken monumental steps to solve this problem by bringing consistency, intelligence, and integration to dozens of technologies and hundreds of thousands of screens.

We鈥檝e come a long way, and yet our work is still cut out for us. To ensure we deliver competitive experiences for all generations of people now and in the years ahead, we need to reinvent how we build products.

Adopting an Experience Mindset to Solve the Problems that Matter

As we look toward the future direction of the 51风流experience, we know one thing is clear: our job is to help every person to make business decisions faster, more intuitively, and with better outcomes than ever before. Rethinking, listening to, learning from, and working collaboratively with our end users, customers, and partners is the only way forward.

Just like designing our products, we need to look at our design system as a human-centered design challenge. As a first step on our new journey, we immersed ourselves deeply in our global user research. After all, how can you design a solution if you do not understand the problem? User research is the basis of our experience mindset, and it has allowed us to create an initial framework of four pillars to help our design and development community prioritize and execute with high velocity as we鈥檙e improving all vectors of the 51风流experience:

• Aesthetics: Making each product more approachable, modern, and delightful, ensuring all our products feel as if they come from one family
• Usability: Making our applications feel more effortless and intuitive, so people get their work done faster, more easily, and with better outcomes
• Performance: Optimizing perceived performance, starting with our most-used interactions, flows, and applications
• Accessibility: Accessibility and inclusive design as a core pillar of our design approach, ensuring that all people can do their best work using 51风流services

Introducing Horizon

We are starting with the first pillar, aesthetics. Why? Because first impressions matter. Our users and customers tell us that they want our experiences to look, feel, and sound approachable, friendly, easy to use, and modern. Horizon represents a significant step in the evolution of our aesthetic and the 51风流Fiori design system.

Horizon exemplifies a new set of design principles that are based on our research on how people want to work in the Intelligent Enterprise. We like to think of it as:

• Intentional and exceptional, meeting users’ intentions with relentless attention to detail, resulting in exceptional product experiences.
• Effortless and intuitive, making work feel like second nature while eliminating friction and surprises.
• Seamless and cohesive, delivering a cohesive, cross-platform experience throughout the 51风流solution family and all touchpoints for our users.
• Bold yet friendly, making users feel relaxed and inspired by using bolder colors and typography, with a friendly, approachable, and contemporary look and feel.
• Inclusive and ethical, opening up enterprise software for everyone with a deep commitment to accessibility and strong ethical framework that will flex with the times. Designing with people instead of only for people.

To execute on these principles, we are also evolving our design system to be simpler and more modular with a strong, 鈥渄istinctly SAP鈥� core, adapting to all types of use cases, applications, and technologies. More than just a theme, Horizon represents a new way of building products at SAP.

Putting End Users in the Center, Starting Today

With Horizon, end users will gain an unprecedented role in the way we develop our software going forward. 51风流S/4HANA Cloud 2111 customers can register via to let their users try it out and provide feedback, directly in the system through a build-in survey based on Qualtrics software or by participating in a desirability study. The preview will also be available to developers on 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), as an experimental theme, not yet for productive use.

As we release this preview, we鈥檒l continue to iterate on it in cooperation with our users and prove that we are standing by our mission 鈥� to test and learn in an effort to continuously improve the design. Every user can share with us what works, what doesn鈥檛, and how we can make things better for them.

The introduction of the Horizon theme at 51风流TechEd is just the beginning. The next evolution of the 51风流design system has a large scope and will be delivered in steps across all 51风流cloud products over the next months and quarters. Going into 2022, we are already lining up more products to carry the new design language; for example, as a future update for , along with many more products to come.

And as we update our product experiences, we intend to move through our work transparently and systematically, looking to learn from user input, live user insights, and telemetry every step of the way.

Transforming Our Design and Development Culture

At SAP, we are lucky to work with a vast network of talented designers and developers from all across the globe. Because products are a reflection of the people who made them and how they鈥檙e made, we have also redesigned the way we design at 51风流over the past six months.

In May this year, we鈥檝e introduced our employees at 51风流to a new way of working, building on our global design community across all business units and embracing open source methodology with one shared tool set to allow everyone to contribute so that all can benefit from the best ideas. Our federated model of working will take a centralized, tested design language and spread it over any of our 51风流products. The different units will be able to adopt, customize, and share components, maximize telemetry, and truly move forward together as a networked organism. It is time to redesign how we design and build products 鈥� together.

What you see in Horizon today and what we will release over the coming quarters is the result of the incredible ongoing collaboration of designers, researchers, and UX engineers from more than 11 product areas all coming together to define, design, and implement SAP鈥檚 new design language based on the needs of our users as well as our engineering teams.

Moving Forward, Openly and Together

The most common statement uttered in our virtual halls is 鈥渢he devil is in the details,鈥� and our success is reliant on our attention to those details. These details are not found solely in the aesthetics, but in the overall quality of the user experience shaped by usability, accessibility, and performance orchestrated in harmony.

We know what we have to do, and we are ready to deliver the product experience our users and customers deserve. We are excited to share our first step in this journey and explore together with you 鈥� openly and earnestly. And we cannot wait to hear your feedback.

To learn more about our new strategy, tune into the 51风流TechEd session today, and join the rest of the for more UX content.

You can find additional details in:

To follow along on the evolution of 51风流Fiori, make sure to also visit the .

Benedikt Lehnert is chief design officer at SAP.
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The pandemic spotlighted talent as a key challenge for organizations around the world. 鈥淭he worldwide shortage of full-time developers will increase from 1.4 million in 2021 to 4.0 million in 2025,鈥� according to IDC.* SAP鈥檚 announcements tackle the talent gap with new tools, integrations, embedded AI and learning programs to help both employees and applicants build new skills for the cloud-first era. The announcements were made at , SAP鈥檚 global developer conference, taking place online Nov. 16鈥�18, 2021.

鈥淔or our customers and partners all over the world, the future is in the cloud,鈥� said Juergen Mueller, CTO and Member of the Executive Board at 51风流SE. 鈥淎ccessing the right talent, skills and capabilities for this journey can be a challenge. SAP鈥檚 announcements not only empower citizen developers but also support professional developers in their continuous learning efforts so customers can innovate today and continue building the foundation for success tomorrow.鈥�

Everyone Can Be a Developer

51风流announced a on (51风流BTP) that lets both professional and citizen developers create new applications, enhance existing ones and automate complex tasks. By adding no-code development and automation with the 51风流AppGyver development environment, enhancing low-code development with 51风流Business Application Studio, and offering a , 51风流provides new ways for customers to do more by drawing on technology talent throughout their organizations, whether in or out of traditional IT departments.

, a global leader in the logistics industry, uses 51风流AppGyver to digitalize processes and streamline employee operations for fleet management. 鈥淲ith SAP鈥疉ppGyver,鈥痺e created a mobile app on iOS and Android to better manage鈥痙amage reports for our trailer fleet鈥痑cross Europe,鈥� said Ilari Aarikka, Director, Trailer Pool & Fleet, DHL. 鈥淭he app helped us to increase the鈥痳eliability of reporting while making鈥痠nspections more convenient for鈥痚mployees in the field.鈥�

For professional developers, now includes 51风流HANA Cloud and 51风流Integration Suite. 51风流also offers a for its 51风流Fiori design system.

Toward Composable Enterprise Solutions

51风流announced their business with modular, agile solutions that address individual challenges. The to , the integration layer of 51风流BTP, provides additional prepacked integration content and adapters 鈥攁vailable on 鈥� to integrate 51风流and non-51风流applications. By the end of 2021, 51风流Integration Suite is expected to be available on Google Cloud Platform. 51风流is expected to release to help customers move workloads to the cloud from their on-premise systems in near-real time. 51风流also introduces new ways to facilitate migrations solution and .

Embedded AI Offerings Across the Portfolio

51风流expanded embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that make it easier for developers and customers to harness AI and boost productivity. service simplify building and monitoring chatbots to automate tasks and workflows. 51风流is expected to service, a novel neural network-based recommendation engine that delivers highly personalized recommendations across a wide range of business scenarios. And many to, for example, automate intercompany document matching, recommend actions in workflows, extract and process data from business documents, or provide learning recommendations.

Learning From Classroom to Boardroom

51风流launched an . It addresses at all levels with a simple, intuitive design that makes it easier to upskill or reskill in key innovation areas 鈥� for free. The includes a available in various formats, from expert-led sessions and hands-on training to microlearning videos. 51风流also introduced an and a program to provide and professors.

48 Hours of Live Content at 51风流TechEd in 2021

to follow the event with its 100+ skill-building sessions, 25+ workshops, 8 tech tracks and 48 hours of continuous tech talk on Channel 1, accessible with your registration to the 51风流TechEd conference.

51风流TechEd News Guide 2021

More details on all news, launches and updates on .

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 51风流customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

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For customers interested in learning more about 51风流products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-151风流(1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Benjamin Nickel, +49 170 4920616, benjamin.nickel@sap.com, CET
Julia Fargel, +1 (650) 276-8964, julia.fargel@sap.com, PT
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

*Source: 鈥淨uantifying the Worldwide Shortage of Full-Time Developers,鈥� Doc # US48223621, IDC, September 2021
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.
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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.

In order to support its vision for a next-generation retail experience, Elkj酶p decided to replace all 12 systems with a new integrated architecture. The dramatic, cloud-based overhaul resulted in a next-gen retail platform that has both improved workflow and delivered 100% uptime.

The strategy has yielded an array of other benefits for Elkj酶p, including:

• 100% in-store mobility for employees
• 500 legacy interfaces evaluated and either replaced, updated, and/or re-connected
• 4,500 employees trained on new systems using an e-learning platform

But these achievements only came about because Elkj酶p was willing to take a critical look at what employees and customers needed and honestly assess the changes that had to be made.

What鈥檚 in a Name?

In Norwegian, the brand 鈥淓lkj酶p鈥� literally means 鈥渆l buy鈥� 鈥� with the 鈥渆l鈥� being a shortened version of elektrisk (electric) or elektronisk (electronic).

It’s no surprise, really, since the Oslo-based company is the largest consumer electronics retailer in the Nordic region.

A subsidiary of Dixons Carphone, a multinational consumer electrical and mobile retailer and services company, Elkj酶p sells a variety of goods, including mobile phones, computers, and kitchen and other domestic appliances to both consumers and businesses.

With a brisk online trade, as well as more than 400 stores, the company employs over 11,000 workers while operating under a number of names in its home country, as well as Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

Stepping into the Future

The decision to create the next-generation retail platform did not come easily 鈥� Elkj酶p had little choice but to take this dramatic step. Systems serving critical processes did not support the latest innovations, and the legacy retail systems could not provide mobility to the sales staff.

In order to deliver certain services or close a sale, a store representative might be forced to leave a customer, seek out a desktop computer, then return. Other times, employees had to log in and out of multiple systems to complete a sale. In addition, legacy systems were incapable of adapting to new business models, like wireless subscriptions.

Change was critical, yet daunting. Upgrades to systems capabilities meant adjusting all 12 different interconnected legacy systems, touching 500 different interfaces.

As Elkj酶p re-evaluated its strategy, it turned to a solution that had been serving the company well for several years.

Cloud-First Advancement

Elkj酶p first deployed 51风流ERP Central Component in 2015. The application is a core component in managing transactional and financial processes. Modules communicate with each other, working to create a fully integrated solution specific to customers in a variety of industries.

Because of this successful experience, the company opted to base its next-gen retail platform on 51风流ECC and other 51风流solutions. A number of requirements were met with micro-services based architecture 鈥� software applications designed as suites of independently deployable services.

Custom add-ons came from ASAPIO/Kafka, enabling information to flow between 51风流and non-51风流applications, on premise and in the cloud, in real time.

The monitoring challenges of Elkj酶p鈥檚 high volume retail business were supported with an approach centered on 51风流Fiori 鈥� a set of applications for business functions, like work approvals, and apps specializing in finance, calculation, and various self-service tasks.

Failover architecture was created to protect computer systems from mishaps, allowing standby equipment to automatically take over if something went wrong.

Unified Execution

The next-gen retail platform went live in Denmark on May 8th, 2020 and was quickly deployed in 110 of the 460 stores. Changes were immediately evident. Using one unified customer master record, the new architecture delivered a seamless customer journey across in-store and online channels, with employees better prepared to anticipate clients鈥� wants and needs.

Today, employees say the next-gen retail platform has enabled them to be more productive, while customers report quicker service times both online and in person.

For 鈥渄elivering the retail experience of the future,鈥� Elkj酶p Nordic earned the distinction as a finalist in the 2021 51风流Innovation Awards, meeting the key requirements of improving customer experiences, solving complex challenges, and serving the greater good. Learn more in Elkj酶p鈥檚 51风流Innovation Awards .

Keith Greenberg is an 51风流Global Marketing contributor.

With SAP鈥檚 support, SunRice has extended existing systems to simplify, streamline, and enhance the user experience for rice growers and administrative staff.

Improving the Connection Between Growers and Administration

Growers had become frustrated with existing solutions, which could not provide them quick and easy access to functions that are key to supporting the auxiliary business processes associated with growing rice. Challenges included:

1. There were difficulties accessing key industry information.
2. Where real-time information on harvest deliveries was key, growers could only access dated reports.
3. There was limited mobile access to the portal, preventing users from performing tasks and reviewing information when in the field.
4. The legacy solution did not provide an intuitive experience, leaving growers unable to find the correct information at the right time.
5. It was essential for the company to streamline administrative processes such as the existing process of creating a contract over the phone.

User-Centric Design Process to Involve All Stakeholders

SunRice teamed up with 51风流and partner to transform its growers鈥� portal and yield significant user experience improvements by extending existing systems using 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP).

Bourne Digital was responsible for the design of the user interface and the user experience (UX) design of the new solution. The company conducted several remote design thinking sessions proceeding along to define requirements for the envisioned solution.

To understand the needs of the end user, the designers and a small subset of growers met and took a close look at a usual day in the life of a grower. This research helped to create several personas to better understand existing pain points. The approach allowed for deeper, holistic insights into the current processes for both grower and administrative tasks, their core frustrations, and opportunities for improvement.

Throughout the design-driven process, designs were user-tested and iterated to address the common grower frustrations. Feedback from the end users was implemented to refine the solution in alignment with best practices regarding accessibility and user experience.

New Intuitive and Innovative Portal with 51风流BTP

As a result, SunRice and Bourne Digital developed a new Grower Portal and an Admin Portal on 51风流BTP. This solution suite simplifies, streamlines, and enhances the user experience for growers and admins. What鈥檚 more, the platform is built on an extensible architecture, thus allowing the solution to be further extended and enhanced. Through a user-centered approach to design and implementation, the new portal addressed user pain points in a targeted way. It offers the following opportunities:

• In a new Harvest Dashboard, data visualization for harvest moisture, trash, and dry weight assist in making important decisions. Real-time updates for harvest deliveries helps ensure growers are both informed and engaged.
• Quick links to important information is available; via the My Payments tile, growers can view — in near real time — their payments received and upcoming. They can also download their tax and delivery documents at their convenience.
• Opt-in harvest delivery and other alerts help keep growers informed, giving them instant notification of delivery receipt, which is particularly helpful when they are out in the field harvesting.
• With mobility, growers no longer need to wait to access the portal on their desktop, they can now access information and perform tasks all from their mobile devices.
• Through online forms, wherever they are, growers can now access and submit key forms such as Trading and Farm details leveraging 51风流BTP workflow. For the Admin team, approvals using the 51风流Fiori app, 鈥淢y Inbox,鈥� are now a reality. Approvals and updates can thus be made seamlessly.
• With grower resources, growers can easily access the most relevant and up-to-date information to assist them.
• The user-friendly interface on the portal is built with , which allows for a to provide a better view in the sun.

Increased Convenience and Simplified Work for Growers

The primary focus of the new solution was to make growers鈥� lives easier through the regular operational and communication touch points that connect them to SunRice. The refreshed look and usability of the new portal have made information more accessible with clear user guidance, tabs, and dashboards for simple navigation.

Growers no longer have to access the portal on their desktop; they can now access information and perform tasks all from their mobile devices. In particular, growers can now view delivery information and other critical data instantly, remotely, and effortlessly, and can receive alerts direct to their phones for added mobility and convenience.

The grower portal was released just prior to the rice harvest season in early 2021. During this time:

• More than 400 growers accessed the portal during harvest.
• Over 9,000 harvest alerts sent to keep growers informed about their deliveries. Growers opt in to these alerts via the portal.

SunRice UI5 Admin Portal as the Perfect Counterpart

The Admin Portal is built using SAPUI5 and to be used by SunRice administrators for the following tasks: approve grower and farm detail changes; create and approve contract requests; post key messages to growers; and manage Grower Portal resources and forms.

What鈥檚 Next?

New features such as contracts have already been added to the Grower and Admin portals after the initial implementation. Contracts provide the ability for growers to apply for contracts in the Grower鈥檚 portal and the ability for admins to create and approve contracts in the Admin portal.

SunRice is exploring further ways to improve the portal, including bringing enhanced reporting capabilities to the new system and continuing to gather feedback directly from growers to inform new changes, design edits, and added functionality.

By putting growers at the heart of decision making, SunRice is driving new innovations that make a real difference for the grower community.

According to Gartner, 鈥淢ultiexperience development platforms provide software engineering leaders and teams with a unified way to create rich, interconnected user experiences across web, mobile, conversational, digital twin, IoT and AR applications. This research evaluates 13 MXDPs based on ten critical capabilities and five use cases.鈥�

鈥淚n a world that is more connected than ever, customers expect a harmonized digital experience across all of their applications to stay innovative and competitive,鈥� said Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board, SAP. 鈥�51风流Extension Suite is part of 51风流Business Technology Platform and delivers consistent, personalized and unified experiences across multisensory touch points and modalities. Customers such as CLAAS benefit from accelerated time to value, increased engagement and productivity, and greater business resilience.鈥�

, a global agricultural machinery manufacturer, uses 51风流Extension Suite to help achieve a 95% employee satisfaction, a 40% reduction in development costs and faster time to market.

鈥淏y unifying our technology in the field of digital applications, with 51风流Extension Suite we can respond quickly and efficiently to the requirements of our internal customers and employees,鈥� said Bernhard Schuchert, CIO of CLAAS. 鈥淎nd we can provide innovative web and mobile solutions that are otherwise only experienced in the end-user context.鈥�

SAP鈥檚 multiexperience development offering consists of , including the 51风流AppGyver tool, 51风流Business Application Studio, 51风流Conversational AI services, the mobile development kit service, native SDKs for iOS and Android, and the 51风流Fiori design system.

The offering enables customers to boost productivity and engagement by delivering tailored experiences for 51风流customers and employees alike. 51风流supports by enabling IT and citizen developers to deliver seamless multiexperience application practices with the ease and simplicity of low-code/no-code tooling. 51风流also supports sophisticated pro-code development that is complemented by innovative AI services, APIs, prebuilt integration and extension components on .

Learn more about and .

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Julia Fargel, +1 (650) 276-8964, julia.fargel@sap.com, PT
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

*Gartner, 鈥淢agic Quadrant for Multiexperience Development Platforms,鈥� July 26, 2021. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner鈥檚 research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

It brought together field service technicians, business leadership, and IT experts to create a new mobile app that improved customer satisfaction, gave employees time back every day, and will continue to save Patterson over US$1.3 million annually. With just a few user experience (UX) champions, a diverse group of stakeholders was created to focus on empathy, find the real problem, and deliver an innovative solution.

Modern Field Service Processes Require Access from Anywhere

The technical service team at Patterson spends much of its time at customer sites. Field technicians provide dentists and veterinary offices with the expertise, products, and services they need to keep their practices running smoothly and efficiently. Patterson’s customer experience sets it apart from other distributors. Not only does it sell and install products, but it provides services to make sure dentists’ equipment runs smoothly.

Prior to working with Mindset to develop a mobile solution, the technicians needed to be back at the office or their home each night to load the information from their service appointments into the 51风流system that ran the business.

Walking in the Customer鈥檚 Shoes and Riding in Their Trucks

Patterson鈥檚 director of Technical Field Service and vice president of IT reached out to design thinking expert and UX champion, Mindset. To gain a complete understanding of the problem and underlying business processes, Mindset decided to team up with several field service reps for a series of 鈥渞ide-alongs.鈥� By riding in service tech vans, going on real service calls, and getting to know and interact with the service techs, Mindset project managers got a unique perspective on the pain technicians go through to deliver great service every day. This would prove very helpful when facilitating the design thinking sessions with a broader team.

With Design Thinking, People Focus on What Matters Most

After capturing the preliminary information from traveling to multiple sites in the field, Mindset set up a design thinking workshop at , a space created specifically to cater to such workshops.

The workshop included the technicians from the field research, business sponsors, IT experts, and Mindset facilitators. Jonathan Bragg of Mindset served as Patterson’s principal UX architect. Getting everyone together made a big difference in building empathy for everyone鈥檚 needs. The ability to ask 鈥渨hy鈥� across roles led to a deeper understanding of the current situation and problems along the entire process flow.

The design thinking workshop followed the typical steps for problem finding, problem solving, and iteration.

• Empathize:鈥� By bringing various stakeholders together, everyone was able to understand how their part of the process affected the entire company. In many cases, it was the first time the field service reps had a chance to speak with IT directly.
• Define: Once everyone understood the overall situation with the current field service software, which was based on 51风流Customer Relationship Management (51风流CRM), they were able to work as a team to narrow the scope and create a clear problem statement. Since the field service technicians spend most of their time at customer sites, one of the key requirements was that the solution needed to have a mobile-optimized design.
• Ideate: With a clear problem definition, the cross-functional team suggested many ideas for improvement that spanned the entire business process. Not only did this make it easier to enter data during service calls, it also improved how Patterson used the information downstream to improve customer service and reduce company costs.
• Prototype: During the workshop, the Mindset experts were able to create prototypes, gather feedback, and make improvements in an iterative and agile manner. With the insight from the design thinking session, they were able to develop an app that could be tested in the field.
• Test: The initial pilot version went to a group of 17 technicians in 17 locations. This allowed for further refinement of the app, using agile methodology to put new functionality into people鈥檚 hands quickly to see what worked and what needed further refinement.

Throughout the process, a dedicated product owner from Patterson helped the Mindset team prioritize development and ensure the features they developed addressed the user stories that were documented during the workshop.

鈥淎 design thinking workshop is somewhat of a magical event for our customers. You get people from all walks of life into a room together for three to four days and out comes an amazing, thoughtful proposed solution that can be estimated, built, tested, live, and championed. It鈥檚 these workshops that form lasting bonds between business end users and IT, showcasing how everyone is one the same team and everyone wants to make a difference鈥�

— Jonathan Bragg,
Director of Software Products,
Mindset

Agile Development Process Added Validation Steps for Clean Data

The discussions in the workshop revealed that without a dedicated mobile app, field reps needed to return to the office or their home to enter details from their site visits. Besides being inconvenient, the complexity of a desktop screen sometimes led to data inconsistencies. During the prototyping phase, it became clear that adding validations into each step of a linear process would be successful in ensuring that only clean data can go into the system. Once they focused on this pain point, they were able to make small modifications to the app that accommodated the checks and balances they wanted to build into the new service process that weren鈥檛 available in the original system.

The initial plan was to create a native iOS application. During the field observations, the team learned that not all the technicians had iPhones. Since 51风流Fiori was already used in other areas at Patterson, the developers decided to create an 51风流Fiori app that runs in a browser so it could be used on any device.

Intuitive Screens Lead to High Adoption and Measurable Business Benefits

• The new app was so compelling to use, that over a four-month period, 85% of the field reps chose the new app over the old process. The number of clicks and associated time to complete various processes dropped by over 50%.
• Better visibility into order status allowed the company to focus its resources and reduce the number of orders open longer than 60 days from 13,000 to 4,000. This translated into $1.3 million in annual savings for Patterson.
• On the human side, technicians were able to complete the administrative part of their jobs more quickly, so they were happier. And, they were able to check on tasks from anywhere, so they could be more responsive to their customers鈥� needs, adding to their job satisfaction. With the ability to complete work remotely, people could bypass a trip to the office for 鈥減aperwork鈥� and switch to relaxation mode when they got home, rather than staring at their computer to document tasks they had completed hours earlier.

Digitalization Will Drive Further Business Improvements

The design thinking approach is more than just bringing a bunch of people into a conference room, either physically or virtually, and expecting magic to happen. If you have the right facilitators, who can ask the right questions, and the right development team, who can build apps quickly and make updates based on user feedback, along with the key business stakeholders, you greatly increase the chances of success. If you lack the skills in your organization, then bringing in an outside expert is a great way to gain the results you want while learning the process.

To learn more about the 51风流Fiori user experience, please visit the . Bookmark the or follow the to catch all the stories in the series.

Peter Spielvogel is senior director of Product Marketing for 51风流UX Engineering.

.

The integrated order management cockpit on 51风流Business Technology Platform provides end-to-end and real-time visibility into sales and purchase orders and can enable听colleagues from procurement, customer service, and application engineering听to collaborate in order to handle material delays, escalations, and other issues.听This way, the business can experience improved customer experience (like on-time delivery), an optimized and streamlined order management with clear line of sight for all stakeholders, a reduction of duplicate work, the facilitation of hand-offs and material escalations, and increased visibility and accountability.

Tony Serati, vice president of Procurement at Border States, said, 鈥淭he solution will improve collaboration and speed of information within our company, resulting in an improved experience and service for our customers.鈥�

Border States is 100% employee-owned and has more than 2,300 employee owners and 98 branch locations in 22 states. Employee ownership drives Border States鈥� commitment to deliver total satisfaction. Border States was founded in 1952, when two entrepreneurs wanted to serve the electric utility industry. After nearly 70 years in business, the company鈥檚 mission and values haven鈥檛 changed; Border States remains a trusted advisor and problem solver, providing value to tens of thousands of customers in the construction, industrial, and utility markets. The company does this by delivering quality products, material management solutions, and industry expertise.

The integrated order management cockpit provides a centralized space for all stakeholders to have visibility into order statuses, collaborate, and resolve escalations in a timely manner.

“I am very excited about the collaboration piece. It is an immediate way of communication and will make the life of a buyer much easier,鈥� said Christa Lavey, purchasing supervisor at Border States.

The flag feature allows CSR teams to request specific actions from the procurement teams. They are also able to post comments on order status updates.

With an escalation toggle, the subject matter experts can help resolve escalated orders proactively. The stakeholders can provide material level updates, too.

鈥淭his tool allows us to escalate and collaborate on orders to find alternatives and work with customers and suppliers to prevent impacts,鈥� said Lex Silbernagel, vice president of Alliances at Border States. 鈥淚t will enable us to better manage and communicate as challenges arise.鈥�

Technological Foundation

The integrated order management cockpit is built on 51风流Business Technology Platform, leveraging 51风流Integration Suite, 51风流Extension Suite, 51风流HANA Cloud, and the 51风流Fiori design system. It provides colleagues from procurement, customer service, and application engineering with a central place to manage escalated purchase and sales orders. With this solution, teams can have real-time, cross-team visibility, rather than working in multiple disjointed systems and unsynchronized tools. This allows for improved communication and direct feedback between stakeholders, working to improve process efficiency and eliminate the duplication of work. In addition, new team members can be onboarded quickly and raise and manage issues as they occur.

The semantic data models on 51风流HANA Cloud make the solution 51风流ERP data agnostic, allowing for seamless integration with 51风流ERP now and 51风流S/4HANA in the future. 51风流Integration Suite helps integrate the solution directly with data from backend solutions. 51风流Fiori provides a simplified user experience, enabling users to manage escalations quicker and more effectively.

Key Results

• Approximately 16,000 hours saved annually for customer service representatives and buyer roles
• About 2% productivity gained for CSR and buyer roles
• About 1% improvement on material availability resulting in improved on-time delivery, improved customer experience and increased revenues

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.
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: My grandfather went blind just one year before I was born. Our own way of interacting helped me learn that there is more than one way to communicate, and much of what he said still remains with me to this day.

The reality is that people with disabilities still experience a divide in accessing software. This must change. According to the听, more than 1 billion people worldwide have some sort of disability 鈥� or, better said, different abilities.

To create a more inclusive environment, everyone must feel equally empowered with their individual abilities. We take accessibility support in our products very seriously and continuously strive to improve our offerings. Our efforts to intensify the work on improving software accessibility are, just like security, a top priority for 51风流product teams.

Accessibility is therefore a substantial part of our user experience strategy and a core priority for product quality; not just an afterthought.

Thinking one step ahead, accessibility is not only a necessity, but also an opportunity — both from a business and an ethical perspective. If you look at the economic power of people with disabilities, it is impressive to see that they cover an . It is smart and it is our social responsibility to embrace accessibility. Including people with disabilities is nothing else than a win for all: for innovation, for business, but most importantly, for people and society.

Hidden Benefits of Built-In Accessibility

Accessibility fosters innovation that we can all benefit from — just think of touch devices or live captions. Making accessibility features a benefit for all is the result of inclusive design methodology, which is an integral part of the 51风流Fiori design system and SAPUI5.

One example of an inclusively designed implementation is our 听, 51风流high-contrast black and 51风流high-contrast white. These themes make it possible for people with visual impairments to more easily access our software, but they also have additional benefits for all users. For example, the themes are built to operate under a wide range of light-sensitive conditions, such as sunlight hitting the screen and window reflections. Over the past few years, we have seen the widespread adoption of the 鈥渄ark mode鈥� . That鈥檚 because its purported benefits — reducing eye strain and encouraging better sleep patterns — are embraced by all users. It has become so popular that it is used as a default preference for many users, as are dark contrast UIs for mobile in general.

Another example of accessible design being embraced by all users is the zooming function realized by听听, meaning that visual and text-based content retain layout and structure. This is designed for users with visual impairments, but who among us doesn鈥檛 use the zoom function when screen sharing or after a long day of staring at the screen?

Developing products with accessibility needs in mind reduces complexity and improves the user experience. Thanks to a change in perspective, you simply look at your products and processes from a different angle and with a greater capacity for empathy. What emerges as a result — a clear information structure, a consistent and simple design, and inclusive components such as tool tips — are not only key for users who require these assistive tools, but benefit every user.

More Than Just a Corporate Initiative

Lastly, accessibility can also be an enabler for overcoming the shortage of highly skilled professionals. By giving everyone a fair chance and including everyone in the labor market, we just might be able to solve some of the current societal challenges that digitalization implies.

51风流is deeply committed to equality and inclusion,鈥搘hich for me is a mindset rather than a corporate initiative. That is also why we decided to replace insensitive language with a more inclusive language听to actively fight racism and discrimination. As a software company, we know about the benefits of bringing people with diverse backgrounds together to drive innovation. And this mindset reaches from our product engineering world to the world of our users 鈥� as we continue to strive for user-centricity in everything we do.

I look forward to making the outcomes of the 51风流Accessibility Summit a tangible improvement for our customers.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Product Engineering.
.

Businesses are seeing an increased share of change as the impact of the recent pandemic continues to unfold. This experience is more than just shifting how people work, learn, and interact. It鈥檚 also empowering organizations to rethink how they can pivot their processes, tools, and policies fast enough to navigate through significant risks and plan for whatever comes next.

This new reality is a consistent topic of conversation among 51风流customers that are focused on building a more resilient digital foundation. Now more than ever, they want to know if they are on the right path or if they need to adjust their business process to help ensure they stay ahead of the curve.

Setting the Foundation for Continuous Collaboration and Success

Such in-depth discussion and innovative thinking inspired 51风流to introduce 51风流Enterprise Support guides. Through an efficient and programmable approach, the framework provides prescriptive and proactive guidance as part of 51风流Enterprise Support services, covering the entire migration or implementation life cycle to 51风流S/4HANA.

Seamlessly integrated into the 51风流S/4HANA Movement program, 51风流Enterprise Support guides offer a goal-based approach to achieve a successful deployment. The framework is a natural first step after 51风流S/4HANA Adoption Starter Engagement because it is tailored to a customer鈥檚 requirements and expectations. Planned interactions with specialists and journey checks at the right project milestones are featured to help ensure that organizations minimize potential disruption and have guidance at each stage of the entire project lifecycle.

Having a customized and guided expertise along every step of an 51风流S/4HANA project can be pivotal for the success of a digital transformation. This benefit was certainly realized by the largest drinking water company in the Netherlands,

Vitens N.V. takes its responsibility in giving customers 24/7 access to high-quality drinking water at the lowest possible price, as well as delivering required services, seriously. As part of its ongoing drive to provide the highest level of service possible, Vitens decided it was time to migrate its databases and begin a phased implementation of new enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology. It knew expert assistance was neeerded to help ensure these projects ran smoothly and prevent any disruption to its customer experience.

According to Wendy Coffeng, IT project manager for the 51风流S/4HANA Program at Vitens N.V., 鈥�51风流Enterprise Support remotely delivered services and programs have helped us on our journey to implement and run 51风流S/4HANA. Having the 51风流Enterprise Support Advisory team to address all support matters has been, and still is, of great value.鈥�

We are also finding that the influence of our program methodology can be felt across an entire industry. For example, needed to integrate its business operations and leverage real-time business insights across the enterprise to speed innovation and harmonize operations after a recent merger.

By using expert guidance, the automobile components manufacturer accelerated the implementation of 51风流S/4HANA with a thorough analysis of its 51风流environment and the use of best practices for custom code and data volume management. Furthermore, the company adopted a new user experience (UX) strategy by following a step-by-step approach to configure 51风流Fiori apps 鈥� setting the stage for a powerful new development in the future of mobility.

Helping Ensure the Right Direction Toward a Successful Transformation

Like Vitens N.V. and HYUNDAI TRANSYS, many 51风流customers are finding the guidance of 51风流Enterprise Support to be empowering. Every day, we see businesses worldwide use the expertise and guidance of 51风流Enterprise Support to make their transitions to 51风流S/4HANA easier and digital transformation more successful.

Available in English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and French, 51风流Enterprise Support guides support the entire journey to 51风流S/4HANA in ways that reduce the total cost of implementation and mitigate risk. More importantly, our customers have the valuable insights and best practices they need for a successful deployment, so they can respond to every shift in our fast-moving, ever-evolving world.

Learn more about .

Stay in the conversation by following the 51风流Services and Support on
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Araceli Grau-Castilla is global vice president and head of Lifetime Customer Experience at SAP.

Designers were among the first to understand the potential of AI to improve the experience of individual users. Design provides users with more meaningful information and options that can help them master complexity. In the past, however, intelligent designs added complexity to the user experience with features such as relevance ratings, recommendation options, confidence ratings, and incompetent chat bots. This led to user frustration and mistrust.

After all, people aren鈥檛 interested in cool technology features. They just want the best way to do their work. Users expect AI to function in an unobtrusive, reliable way. At the same time, they want to be able to understand, correct, and override intelligence if needed.

To meet these needs, designers must support a seamless collaboration between humans and machines, where both use their specific strengths to support one another 鈥� but humans retain control. We have developed a set of design principles and guidelines to establish this approach in our solutions.

New Interaction Techniques

AI provides a huge opportunity to combine traditional means of interaction, such as mouse and keyboard, with new techniques, such as gaze control and conversational interaction. Today, none of these methods are well-developed enough to replace the others, but combining them can become a game changer.

Gaze control can increase speed and productivity by offering additional information on the user鈥檚 focus. This supports easier selection and filtering, contextual information, and more detailed information. Conversational interaction allows users to express their intent in their own words and allows systems to translate these aims into an appropriate response.

All of these channels help designers widen and enrich communication between humans and machines 鈥� supporting more intuitive, immediate, and bidirectional communication.

More than ever, technology has become a social force, and design is shaping the way this force interacts with people. Enterprises communicate their values not only through marketing messages, but also through technologies used by their employees and customers.

Therefore, purpose has become a larger focus for enterprises. Questions like 鈥淲hy are we doing things?鈥� and 鈥淎re we doing the right things for the right purpose?鈥� have assumed a higher priority. Design can influence the interaction between businesses and their employees and customers. This influence goes beyond corporate identity and marketing and reflects how decisions are made and communicated.

To empower the workforce and gain employees鈥� commitment to enterprise purpose, design must create software that reflects respect and transparency. Therefore, spending time explaining actions and decisions should also be part of the user interface design.

Designing for the Everywhere Interaction

Today, the combination of smart devices and appliances covers a good part of our interaction with our technical infrastructure. Technology is embedded in our daily lives, creating the user experience of the digital world. We interact with the most complex systems through any available channel, in any possible situation. Enterprise software is following suit. Business tasks are already becoming accessible through standard interfaces embedded into other channels, such as smart speakers or car interfaces. With the user experience, we have started breaking down complex business tasks into smaller apps that can be completed on a phone.

We are reducing the information even further by identifying specific figures that users need in each context and allowing users to adjust figures to their individual needs, securely and reliably. Thus, modularization and contextualization of complex information structures in the back end is both a design and technical challenge.

While users expect simpler and more natural interaction with software, the underlying facts and processes are getting more and more complex and intertwined. This is apparent in enterprise software, where we are exploring the potential of new visualization and input methods. We are looking beyond charts into multidimensional visualizations and AI-optimized visualizations that differentiate signal from noise. Using predictive technologies and combinations of input methods, including gaze and speech, enables better accuracy and faster input than traditional means.

Finally, constructing and harvesting context information is one of the most powerful tools to simplify user interactions. Based on context, systems can detect business process exceptions and associate combinations of parameters with business impact and suitable mitigation. With a better understanding of the business context, the system can detect, confirm, and correct the machine鈥檚 interpretation and solution proposal without requiring the user to manually enter data.

Top 5 Design Principles

To address these current UX trends, I recommend that developers focus on five key design principles.

1: Understand the user and the use case
This is the most important principle. Creating a product must be focused on the people that will use the product to accomplish their task. Neither architectural nor design excellence will help save a product that misses the use case.

2: View limitations as a source of innovation
While boundary conditions are often determined, many innovations have been triggered by a creative way of addressing those boundary conditions. Things we can鈥檛 imagine today may be possible tomorrow.

3: Embrace diversity
Enterprise software is an enabler for businesses, and we can鈥檛 afford to leave anyone behind. Different people, working conditions, and cultures determine whether a solution is enabling or hampering productivity. Understand those differences and design for them by contextualizing them, creating specific variants, and offering supportive means and smart suggestions. Finally, offer the tools that allow customers to optimize standard solutions with little cost.

4: Keep the user in control
At any given point in time, users must be able to understand and control the status of the system. User control means that system decisions must be clearly communicated and can be overwritten. Empowerment requires knowledge and transparency.

5: Design stretch-fit solutions
Standard solutions that are designed for best practices and use cases can further be optimized to stretch fit individual roles and preferences by means of usage-based optimizations and through personalization and automation.

Flexibility Versus Scalability

Many things that sound exciting in consumer software are not appropriate in an enterprise setting. Business processes must be standardized, reliable, repeatable, and auditable. And even if we strive for the best user experience for the individual, companies must ensure that people do things the right way.

Training and supporting employees require stable, standardized processes and software. Required process steps, checks, and information must be entered correctly and, in most cases, can鈥檛 be left to the indeterministic decision of an electronic mind. Therefore, corporations tend to restrict flexibility and leave adjustments in the hands of certain expert users. Flexibility can only be offered within clearly defined boundaries, leaving the underlying business processes unchanged.

The highest potential for individualization is the contextualization that helps provide users with right solution options and defaults in any situation. While the process stays unchanged, the system becomes better at providing the right information at the right place, offering the right options that best fit the situation.

Today鈥檚 technology allows us to design systems that better understand users鈥� intentions and support them in the best possible way, keeping them in control. Yet flexibility must allow the system to adjust to the user鈥檚 information needs and intentions without compromising the procedural, legal, and economic goals of the enterprise.

In enterprise software, innovation in interaction patterns must be evaluated against the impact on employee productivity. Unless we identify significant improvements in effectiveness or efficiency, using established standard patterns that require minimal training and change management is preferable. In many cases, the challenge in enterprise design isn鈥檛 coming up with an innovative and appealing new design, but is optimizing and extending standard designs to meet the complex and specific requirements of certain business roles.

The art of our profession is creating a design system built on components and patterns that are simultaneously stable and reusable in various business contexts, work with long and short texts in different languages, are accessible, and can efficiently be used across different devices. This is a huge and often under- estimated investment.

We implement scalability in design into our technical frameworks. This helps us and our customers create and maintain effective, efficient solutions at the lowest possible cost of development and ownership.

Our role as designers is to make sure that our products make the best use of our design system, are constantly optimized to fit user needs, and can be implemented in a scalable technology framework. As we have seen with 51风流Fiori throughout the past seven years, this is an evolutionary process that requires continuous investment.

And design is just a part of the story. For us this means working closely with our product units, customers, and development teams to adjust our designs to best accommodate user requirements, market needs, and technical restrictions.

We don鈥檛 design for the purpose of good design. Instead, we design to create products that help our customers best support their business 鈥� making it sustainable and resilient to any turn of history.

About Horizons by 51风流

Horizons by 51风流is a future-focused journal where forward thinkers in the global tech ecosystem share perspectives on how technologies and business trends will impact 51风流customers in the future. The 2020 issue of Horizons by 51风流focuses on Context-Aware IT, with contributors from SAP, Microsoft, Verizon, Mozilla, and more. To learn and read more, visit .

Read more Horizons by 51风流stories on the 51风流News Center.

Alex Lingg is head of 51风流User Experience.

The transformation of on-call, reactive customer support is fascinating to watch. Over the past few years, 51风流has discovered new ways to simplify processes and automate them to optimize the value it brings to customers. Then the company brought in predictive analytics to detect and resolve issues early on.

At SAP, such optimization and predictive capabilities of customer support are setting the foundation for proactive services. This vision is created with the mindset of helping customers become more productive and profitable than ever while taking advantage of the latest intelligent technologies.

Outcome-Driven Support Experience for Customers, Built on Intelligence

Take the听听service, SAP鈥檚 first step toward creating a predictive and proactive support model. With a combination of machine learning and AI, the company is expanding the ability to intelligently understand customer issues, quickly propose relevant solutions, and efficiently resolve problems without the need to submit an incident report.

Over time, the real power behind Incident Solution Matching has become increasingly effective as more customers use it to research solutions for technology challenges and rely on its intelligence to find the corrective action. Now, the service has grown from a whiteboard concept into a full-fledged crucial line of support for customers using all 51风流and 51风流Ariba solutions.

Customers using 51风流S/4HANA Cloud will be the first group to benefit from the enhanced recommendation content. The Incident Solution Matching engine will provide recommended solutions not only from 51风流Notes and 51风流Knowledge Base Article services, but also from additional data sources such as 51风流Help Portal, the road-map viewer tool, and 51风流Fiori apps reference library.

The success of Incident Solution Matching inspired 51风流to further evolve the Next-Generation Support approach with a clear road map based on data intelligence, rule-based automation, and predictive capabilities. With such a strategic plan, the company is effectively improving and simplifying the support experience to customers’ needs and expectations with through optimized business outcomes.

Quick Resolution with Personalized Customer Support Experiences

This strategic move toward intelligent services led to the creation of guided incident workflow and personalized support assistant capabilities. When initiating assistance in an 51风流solution, customers can benefit from an efficient, convenient, and intuitive experience as they find a solution that resolves their issues immediately.

The support assistant workflow asks users targeted and relevant questions about the problems they encounter until they are narrowed down to a solution, such as knowledge base articles, updates, or patches. However, if a solution is not identified through the workflow wizard, the user is automatically prompted to submit relevant log or trace files.

In the background, parser engines analyze the information, pinpoint the issue, alert the customer about the criticality of its problem, and ultimately deliver the right solution. By the end of the interaction, 51风流has documented the incident 鈥� complete with the underlying issue, lessons learned, and proven solution. This can be leveraged for future solution development and support interactions.

Additional innovation in 51风流services also led to the introduction of the service. It provides customers with an easy way to engage directly with 51风流support managers in order to bring management attention to a service exception or service dissatisfaction, complementing 听and听听services. During a scheduled, live phone conversation, customers have a real-time channel for sharing their 51风流solution concerns and demands with a qualified manager, reducing the effort and frustration of handling critical business needs.

SAP鈥檚 experimentation with neural machine translation is another benefit of its work with AI and machine learning. Doing so allows the company to from English to Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, or German. 51风流is already working on potentially making this technology available for translating incidents into those nine languages.

This automatic translation feature would enable customers to use information on documented incidents, best practices, and terminology. Like the company鈥檚 ever-evolving customer support services, this functionality is self-learning 鈥� continuously improving the quality of translations based on feedback and machine learning.

Product Training and Accreditation Focused on Customer Needs

The product support team at 51风流has also created new services and tools to fulfill customers’ ever-evolving needs. Users can explore new ways to benefit from offerings through the听听program at no additional cost.

The two-hour, guided learning experience includes short videos detailing the latest tools and capabilities of 听support services, designed to optimize the value of their 51风流solution investment. Customers can review the content at their convenience as often as they like to stay up to date.

An Evolution Toward Ultimate Customer Support Vision

As 51风流continues to innovate with AI and machine learning, support processes will become more efficient and accurate. More importantly, it will bringing the company closer to its ultimate vision for predictive and proactive customer assistance.

51风流will continue to design and deliver new tools, channels, and functionalities to give customers the predictive support experience they want. Just imagine how this experience will evolve as more cloud solutions are backed by analytics processing trillions of captured data points in the background. Customers may never again encounter issues with their technology because intelligent capabilities will reroute the user experience around a detected problem.

Milestone after milestone, 51风流is taking the support experience in an entirely new direction as part of its desire to help customers succeed 鈥� always.

Stay in the conversation by following 51风流on
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Mohammed Ajouz is senior vice president and global head of Product Support at SAP.

With support now for Mac Catalyst, the enables 51风流and Apple customers to build, deploy and run employee apps across iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Mac Catalyst enables developers to easily bring their iPad apps to run natively on macOS, utilizing the same frameworks and resources from their iPad apps, with the ability to add unique features just for Mac.听The 51风流Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, along with reusable design components provided by the design language, enables developers to build beautiful, intuitive, native applications on the services and capabilities of 51风流Cloud Platform, and their back-end data systems.

鈥淭he world is becoming increasingly multitouch and multiexperience, requiring application delivery to mobile, desktop, laptop, kiosk or any other touch point,鈥� said Dan Lahl, global vice president, 51风流Product Marketing, SAP. 鈥淲ith SAP鈥檚 latest version of our that includes Mac Catalyst support, enterprises can now easily deploy new app experiences for their Apple users across iPhone, iPad and Mac, helping to fulfill SAP鈥檚 promise of the Intelligent Enterprise being available to everyone, anytime, on any point of interaction.鈥�

While Mac Catalyst can quickly give iPad apps a head start to get up and running on macOS, developers can also adopt key macOS features such as menus, toolbars, full-screen sizing and more. These capabilities are compatible with the 51风流Fiori for iOS design language, and APIs are available to implement platform-specific layouts or behavior within the same project, increasing code reuse and reducing cost.

Now, 51风流and Apple developers will have the opportunity to deploy apps developed with the 51风流Cloud Platform SDK for iOS to both the App Store and Mac App Store, in addition to their existing internal deployment mechanisms.

. Download the 51风流Cloud Platform SDK for iOS and learn more about the .

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Media Contact:
Samantha Finnegan, +1 (415) 377-0475, samantha.finnegan@sap.com, ET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

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51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.