[Blog Article] "Wow" is a word often thought by people who daily work with various user interfaces and then switch to their SAP systems.
This "wow" effect has rarely been positive. Because where other software manufacturers have discovered the benefits of pleasant, smooth and innovative user interfaces in recent years, it often felt like SAP had simply forgotten this area. Or underestimated. Certainly, the quality of the overall product SAP thereby is not in question. After all, the features are just too good thought-out. Proved by the large and renowned customer base, but also by the fact that despite the user interfaces for many companies, there is no way around SAP. However, the rigid, unfriendly and old-looking interfaces are certainly not in favor of SAP’s popularity. Consequently, not only the salesforce of SAP and third-party add-on developers are regularly embarrassed, but also responsible managers who are struggling to introduce SAP products in their companies regularly lack an explanation.
However since the introduction of SAPUI5, a growing number of negative “Wow’s” turns positive. Users who work in the new SAPUI5 interfaces often do not even recognize their work environment. Crude symbols have become big interactive buttons. Unclear and almost endless hierarchies have been transformed into an orderly menu. And the rigid navigation has been made a whole lot more intuitive. With the new guidelines for interfaces - called the SAP Fiori Guidelines - SAP has been thinking intensively about their future interfaces and it states where to go on its website: "Personalize and simplify the user experience (UX) of your SAP Applications" (from https://www.sap.com/germany/products/fiori.html#). The SAPUI5 interfaces follow these guidelines unconditionally, forcing themselves to a high degree of simplicity. For example, by deciding to throw some legacy issues overboard in the menu navigation, obviously, they are not only gaining votes from developers and designers, but they also score strongly with end users.
More productive, more innovative, more flexible. In combination with a higher user satisfaction this looks like a promising mixture whose further development interests many SAP customers. Even though the first SAP Fiori Guidelines were presented in 2013, such an interface revolution naturally takes time and only a few SAP customers have ever seen a SAPUI5 interface, let alone experienced. But the future and the success of the SAP software lies in the SAP Fiori Guidelines and thus in SAPUI5. Also, the potential of making responsible managers, sales staff and add-on providers happy is very high.The only question is: how fast can they go? Yet, this is exclusively answered by the customers. With their users. Those who, when it comes to SAP and their new surfaces, in the future again will think of another yet different "Wow".