ASUG, SAP, and Usability – Face-to-Face Influence on Development

By Johannes Gillar, SAP INFO, SAP AG – November 19, 2004

German Version • This article has also been published in SAP INFO 122

Through the ASUG Influence Model, individual Americas' SAP Users' Group members can ensure that their business requirements are heard by SAP. Steve Dean, ASUG Director of Influence, explains in an interview with SAP INFO how opportunities such as Usability Activities give ASUG members, SAP customers in North America, a chance to shape the direction of future SAP products and services, while enabling SAP to hear direct feedback on usability.

SAP INFO: Users of software often suffer from poorly designed GUIs. What do you think about the importance of usability in general?

Steve Dean: Usability is extremely important. The interface provides the first chance that end users actually get to see and work with an SAP product. The usability and presentation is extremely important to everyone, from a day-to-day user to a casual user of SAP, in being able to retrieve the information they need.

SAP INFO: What role can ASUG play to support SAP in usability?

Dean: The ASUG Influence Model has really started to ramp up within the last two years. We have a number of activities that enable our member companies to interact with SAP to influence the user interface development, presentation, and style. We have just recently concluded the 2004 Forums and the associated Influence Activities that took place onsite. For each of those four Forums, which were a collaboration between ASUG and SAP, an SAP Usability Lab allowed SAP customers to work one-on-one with developers.

The SAP Usability Activities are really catching momentum. For example, last year ASUG held over 550 usability sessions through ASUG events where attendees could have one-on-one contact with an SAP developer – and anyway you look at it, that's a win for SAP customers, ASUG members, the ASUG community as a whole, and for SAP. In 2004 we are anticipating offering more than 600 usability sessions. The demand for SAP Usability Activities has generated a lot of support and enthusiasm for these kinds of activities, at the ASUG Annual Conference & Vendor Fair as well as the 2004 Forums.

SAP INFO: How do you or your members assess the efforts of SAP in terms of usability – for example, UI First, SAP Design Guild, or the more intuitive user interface of new solutions like mySAP ERP?

Dean: SAP is making great strides in migrating from the GUI that we have used in all SAP applications to a much more user-friendly, intuitive process. The first applications suite to roll it out is the mySAP ERP suite, which starts a change in the culture of how users interact with the SAP application set. Not only ERP, but all future SAP products are going to embrace this new presentation style. We are hoping to see a productivity lift for the customer community as SAP rolls out this new interface.

SAP INFO: How far is ASUG involved in the collaboration between SAP and its customers, who are mostly your members? And how does the knowledge transfer in terms of usability and user productivity work?

Dean: The reason ASUG exists is that our member companies want to have direct access to the SAP developers and product management. This is not only to influence current products but also to influence the direction in which new products are going. ASUG offers a number of different avenues for our customers to interact directly with SAP to influence the look and feel, the accessibility, and the usability of all of their products.

For example, the first of the 2004 Forums held this autumn, the 2004 Enterprise Resource Planning Forum, hosted 140 usability sessions and two focus groups, in which our members could provide direct input about not only the ERP product, but all the products, including the interfacing architecture of those products.

SAP INFO: Do ASUG members feel their input makes a difference? Is SAP making progress?

Dean: Definitely so. Some of the comments we've received from SAP customers about the Usability Activities are: "Great, it gives the user the opportunity to exchange with the people who are actually architecting our business solutions," or "Awesome! Extremely valuable." Please, SAP, continue these activities." One quote I remember was when a customer sat down with a developer and said, "This is great, the things that I talked to you about last year I am now seeing in this product. You've taken what I suggested and it is now a reality – I can see it in less than a year." So the program is working, and these SAP Usability Activities are a great success for both SAP and ASUG.

SAP INFO: Usability leads to user productivity, which leads to lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Could you provide real numbers on how your members have been able to lower their TCO through better usability of their SAP systems?

Dean: At this time, we don't have any hard numbers that quantify lower TCO but I can say ASUG has been working with SAP for the last year and a half to try to develop a process for calculating the TCO, user productivity, and eventually, the total return on investment for each of our member companies. The return on investment component is at the top of our list. We are currently working with SAP to determine the right metrics and key process indicators to nail that down. As soon as we do, we will publish it to all of our members.

SAP INFO: SAP provides a variety of services such as SAP Active Global Support to improve the usability and the availability of SAP solutions. What do you think about them?

Dean: The SAP Active Global Support organization is a valuable tool for our membership. It offers a number of services from pre-installation to active support for both new implementations as well as existing, mature implementations. They have the ability to come in and help with productivity issues, usability issues, and the service and support structures that go along with maintaining an installed environment. Our membership is taking advantage of that. Usability is just another area in which they can provide a value-add service.

SAP INFO: SAP offers a service called the Software Developer Network, which is a forum for software developers throughout the SAP community. In a way, it supports the usability of SAP products. What does ASUG think about that offering?

Dean: The Software Developer Network, the SDN, has been in place for over a year and has become very popular with our technical community. It allows technical developers working with leading-edge products to share best practices and tips and tricks on how to use the newer products. The SDN provides a venue enabling technicians to exchange information on architecture, content, and use of products – sometimes in ways that were not expected by the SAP designers.

SAP INFO: Do you think SAP has the right approach to the usability of its solutions? Do you have any recommendation from your member community to help SAP improve the usability of its software?

Dean: SAP has a very good product set. All of the ASUG member companies in the install base profit from the common and consistent knowledge they gain from SAP. SAP provides a good product, a good architecture, and good engineering. They deliver a product that we can use. Like any company, there are issues with various products, services and support; but for the usability of the applications itself, SAP has done a good job listening to our members feedback, providing what we need and presenting it to our customers in way that makes it usable. Once SAP has evolved to the next generation of mySAP ERP, we will also see an evolution of the GUI as it becomes more intuitive, friendlier, easier to use, and more personable. If that is coupled with incorporating a user portal, then we will see an already good software product become a better one.

To improve usability and the interaction with SAP, ASUG is looking to extend our member offerings through what we are calling our Year-Round Communitycampaign. The offering is intended to compliment our face-to-face events and make sure we are engaging and meeting the needs of our membership every month of the year. One way we've discussed doing this is through virtual SAP Usability Activities, where we can deal with the same issues but don't have to travel and sit at a common terminal. We can do that with the technology available today. We can do usability testing, provide feedback, and maybe even help SAP achieve leading-edge usability with their products, though we're not quite there yet.

 

Steve Dean spoke with Johannes Gillar

 

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