It has been almost one year since I posted the review of SAP Fiori Wave 1. Actually Fiori Wave 2 already got released at the end of last year. And I guess it might be the right time to take some time to see what the new SAP Fiori apps has brought to us. I plan to write a series of review blogs about the new wave of SAP Fiori, and this would be the first one.
SAP's User Experience Strategy
It is a good time that SAP makes the company's new User Experience strategy clear. Believe it or not, in my past 6 years in SAP I didn't have many chances to hear much voice from the company level about the UX strategy until this time. I guess previously when we had only SAP GUI and ABAP WebDynpro in hand, it would be a joke that we say we are caring about UX....anyway, let's check our UX strategy.
Transform the enterprise experience. Complex and feature-rich experience must be replaced by a simple, intuitive, and mobile experience.Use different methodologies (New, Renew and Enable) to develop new product UI and adopt current application's UI.
Comments? I think the direction is absolutely right, just a little bit late. Consumerization is redefining the enterprise experience. Users are getting used to the fashion and cool design and look of the consumer apps. If you want to develop mobile apps for enterprise, you have to be the same eye-catching.
Fiori takes the "New and Renew" parts of the new UX methodology. We are trying to make new benchmarks for enterprise mobile apps in terms of design and look at first with Fiori and some other tools or new applications. It defines itself as a set of new Role-based, Responsive and Simple apps the is Coherent to user's feeling and will bring Instant-Value to the users. Does this five makes the new enterprise mobility product's benckmark? Definitely no, but it is for sure a good start.
Expand the Fiori footprints...
In wave 2, we see the number of Fiori apps has been increased to 224 (detailed catalog, refer to Catalog of SAP Fiori Apps - SAP Fiori for SAP Business Suite - SAP Library). And the impacted LoBs are also expanded to Manufacturing, Sales, Finance, HR, Supply Chain, R&D Engineering, Asset Management and Procurement. To make it truly a role-based app concept, in wave 2, we see more apps based on more realistic and crucial roles in enterprise business processes.
The new wave also brings benefits from SAP's innovation product SAP HANA. New wave of Fiori apps includes new types of apps - apart from the Transactional apps we already had in wave 1, we now have Analytical, Factsheets, and SAP Smart Business apps. All the new types of Fiori apps will be based on SAP HANA only.
Compared with wave 1, the consuming channel options are also expanded. We previously only have the browsers (on desktop or mobile devices) that is compatible with SAP UI5. And now SAP also provides SAP Fiori Client app on Android and iOS platforms. And instead of the simple Gateway server consumption, you can now build your SMP platform on top of Gateway for Fiori consumption. SAP Mobile Platform will be the place where you can develop your own enterprise mobility applications no matter what type it is and whether it is SAP related or not. With SMP's kapsel SDK support, customer would have to opportunity of changing the final UI of SAP Fiori apps (launchpad) in whatever style they like.
To conclude the progressive improvements about SAP Fiori wave 2, I think it delivers a strong message to all concerned parties (customers, partners, end-users, etc) that SAP is open to all in user experience area and would like to build the new Eco-system that all of us work together to get the best out of the business applications. It reminds me that SAP also set the target about the enterprise mobility solutions saying that in the very end, we will only provide 1% of all enterprise mobility applications while 99% of the enterprise mobile applications are produced by customers/partners based on the architecture we provided. And I believe Fiori is not a bad start point. (TBC)