Latest Update November 2021: Added the link to blog post SAP Activate – Understanding the UX Adoption workshops
This blog post is currently applicable to the roadmap SAP Activate for RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition. Similar features may be extended to other roadmaps in future.
You want to bring the new business value of SAP S/4HANA to your business users. You know that means you need to deploy the SAP Fiori for S/4HANA User Experience (UX).
So now you are wondering:
How does the UX Adoption process work in context of other project activities such as fit-to-standard and adapting/extending apps?
Even more importantly if - like most customers - you cannot realistically bring all the new UX in one wave...
How can you establish UX Adoption as an iterative process?
In this blog post you will understand the flow of the workshops and how they fit with other project activities. You will find below UX Adoption as an iterative process – the overview diagram
Followed by: The 10 key principles that drive the iterative UX Adoption approach.
These UX Adoption principles are based on experiences from real projects and from conversations with customers about what works/what doesn’t.
Lastly you might be asking, have other customers successfully grown their UX adoption over time? YES!
For example, one of my favourite (and small) New Zealand customers grew from just 12 apps for a handful of user at go-live to more than 100 apps and over 990 users in less than 1 year!
You will find a short summary of successful customer approaches in Experiences from other customers.
In the diagram below you see an explanation of how UX adoption works as an iterative process. The UX Adoption workshops are highlighted in blue and bold.
IMPORTANT: Please note this diagram covers the major activities. For minor activities, such as taskTransport Fiori Activation, refer to the roadmap using the User Experience tag as explained in: SAP Activate – Introducing the User Experience tag
For those who prefer a summary table:
You can also see from the UX Adoption diagram that selecting your UX comes before activating SAP Fiori and before you explore the apps in fit-to-standard. That might surprise you. But customer experiences show us that it’s more efficient to select UX first.
In some upcoming blog posts you will find:
These are the 10 key principles that drive the iterative UX Adoption approach:
Start small and iterate to grow is a clear pattern of success that can be seen again and again in customer stories and customer events. This holds true for both very small customers through to very large customers in SAP S/4HANA and even for those who introduced SAP Fiori in SAP Business Suite or Suite on HANA.
By focusing on a small group of users, it’s much easier to understand needs and pain points, discuss options, deliver success, and grow change evangelists to the rest of the business.
Start with users who are eager for change and will therefore be more patient as you build skills.
You need to discuss the business value of UX early in the Discover phase of each iteration. You do this to flush out early high-level expectations around desired business outcomes and desired changes in user’s working behaviour.
Discussing potential value early means you can include those value expectations in your business case and adjust scope, skills, and solution needs based on your high level UX adoption roadmap that you use to guide your first/next waves of UX adoption.
A high-level UX adoption roadmap, some initial business expectations, and some default best practices are enough to get started on your UX Strategy. You need to agree on some cross functional fundamentals to keep your user experiences coherent and narrow the technical scope such as:
In the Prepare phase, you select your target UX before fit-to-standard. Essentially, you need to be aware of what UX options are available to you before you go into the process discussion.
You raise awareness of generic possibilities, such as self-service personalization and in-app extension options. You start shifting mindsets from old to new to ease the fit-to-standard evaluation process.
You narrow down which SAP Business Roles need to be activated so you can explore them in detail alongside your process use cases in fit-to-standard.
In the Explore phase, you use fit-to-standard to do a deeper verification to confirm your chosen UX aligns to your to-be processes and your specific use cases. This includes reviewing the available personalization and in-app extension options for your apps for quick ways to fill any identified gaps.
Most functional consultants and business process experts will automatically consider process efficiency. But to really change user behaviours fast you need to consider end-to-end task efficiency. You want the end-to-end task to follow the path of least resistance.
You will need to capture app-to-app navigation points as you evaluate, including dynamic navigation points from SAP Fiori apps to classic UIs such as GUI transactions. Users should feel the next logical step is only 1 click away. That makes sure your launchpad content is complete and ready for creating custom business roles (see principle 9).
In the Realize phase, you configure, adapt and extend apps where needed.
Most SAP Fiori apps do not require any additional configuration. If the process is configured, and data exists, the app works. There are always a few exceptions, where you need to check the app documentation.
With extensions your aim is to keep the core clean to minimize future roadblocks and maximize opportunities to take advantage of the latest business and technology innovations. Refer to Custom Extensions in SAP S/4HANA Implementations - A Practical Guide for Senior IT Leadership
The launchpad home page is the first impression of SAP Fiori for users.
A good default launchpad layout per business role gets immediate UX Adoption buy-in from your business users by showing you understand what they do.
A good layout makes immediate sense to your business users in their business roles(s) and makes sure they are productive from first login.
The fastest and safest approach to business role creation is to start from a fully working SAP Business Role and remove any apps you don’t want, then add anything extra such as your custom apps and your launchpad layouts.
Think of it as like building from a kit home rather than architecting a house from scratch. If you would like a deeper discussion refer to blog post SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Creating your custom business roles – the end-to-end process and video p....
Managing the pace of change means following through on your roadmap. That means once you deploy and start to run your new UX you need a trigger for the next wave of UX adoption.
As a minimum, set a review point to capture lessons learned and discuss whether anything needs to be adjusted in the current deployment as you bed in your new UX. Then discuss which business users will be next and why.
In SAP S/4HANA Customer Care we have seen all customers from very large to small, and all sorts of approaches that have worked successfully including:
The takeaway is that you can start wherever you want so long as you are pragmatic about scope, skills, and capacity for change. The sooner you get started, the quicker the time to value.
Visit your community topic page for SAP Activate and community topic page for SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA
Other helpful links in the SAP Community:
Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA Customer Care and RIG.
You might like to subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA.” This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we help you get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA are an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business, like Finance and Manufacturing & Supply Chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, Extensibility, User Experience, and Upgrade Management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
Follow us via @Sap and #SAPS4HANAValueSeries
This blog post is currently applicable to the roadmap SAP Activate for RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition. Similar features may be extended to other roadmaps in future.
You want to bring the new business value of SAP S/4HANA to your business users. You know that means you need to deploy the SAP Fiori for S/4HANA User Experience (UX).
- You like the idea of the UX Value Goals as a way to select UX that fits with your desired business outcome, as explained in SAP Activate – Introducing UX Value Goals for your UX adoption roadmap.
- You have understood how App Selection by UX Value Goals works as explained in, SAP Activate – Selecting apps using the UX Value Goals.
So now you are wondering:
How does the UX Adoption process work in context of other project activities such as fit-to-standard and adapting/extending apps?
Even more importantly if - like most customers - you cannot realistically bring all the new UX in one wave...
How can you establish UX Adoption as an iterative process?
In this blog post you will understand the flow of the workshops and how they fit with other project activities. You will find below UX Adoption as an iterative process – the overview diagram
Followed by: The 10 key principles that drive the iterative UX Adoption approach.
These UX Adoption principles are based on experiences from real projects and from conversations with customers about what works/what doesn’t.
Lastly you might be asking, have other customers successfully grown their UX adoption over time? YES!
For example, one of my favourite (and small) New Zealand customers grew from just 12 apps for a handful of user at go-live to more than 100 apps and over 990 users in less than 1 year!
You will find a short summary of successful customer approaches in Experiences from other customers.
UX Adoption as an iterative process – the overview diagram
In the diagram below you see an explanation of how UX adoption works as an iterative process. The UX Adoption workshops are highlighted in blue and bold.
Cycle of SAP Activate phases showing UX Adoption and related workshops and activites of each phase
IMPORTANT: Please note this diagram covers the major activities. For minor activities, such as taskTransport Fiori Activation, refer to the roadmap using the User Experience tag as explained in: SAP Activate – Introducing the User Experience tag
For those who prefer a summary table:
| Phase | Workshop / Task |
| Discover | Establish the business value of UX (workshop) |
| Prepare | UX Strategy and Guiding Principles (workshop) Scope the Future (workshop) Envision the Future (workshop) |
| Explore | Activate SAP Business Roles (refer to task Activate SAP Fiori in the initial system) Fit-to-standard (workshops) |
| Realize | Configure, Adapt, Extend, Build UX (refer to tasks User Interface Design, Enhancement and Development of User Interface) Design your Launchpad Layout (workshop - can alternatively be executed late in the Explore phase) Create your custom business roles (refer to the task Create your custom business roles) |
| Deploy | (no major tasks - minor tasks include Transport Fiori activation) |
| Run | Review realized UX business benefits (workshop) |
You can also see from the UX Adoption diagram that selecting your UX comes before activating SAP Fiori and before you explore the apps in fit-to-standard. That might surprise you. But customer experiences show us that it’s more efficient to select UX first.
In some upcoming blog posts you will find:
- SAP Activate – Understanding the UX Adoption workshops - an overview of each of the UX adoption workshops, e. how they help you drive the conversations you need to have about UX, and
- a discussion on why it is more effective to select your UX before fit-to-standard when you are managing the pace of change of UX
The 10 Key Principles of UX Adoption
These are the 10 key principles that drive the iterative UX Adoption approach:
- Aim to start small and iterate to grow
- Discuss the business value of UX early
- Agree on your initial UX strategy up front and adjust as you grow
- Select your UX before fit-to-standard
- In fit-to-standard verify your selected UX aligns to your to-be processes
- Consider end-to-end task efficiency
- Keep the core clean as you configure, adapt, and extend
- Design launchpad layouts that make your users productive immediately
- Refine your own custom business roles using SAP Business roles as templates
- Retrospectives on lessons learned trigger the next wave of UX Adoption
Principle 1: Aim to start small and iterate to grow
Start small and iterate to grow is a clear pattern of success that can be seen again and again in customer stories and customer events. This holds true for both very small customers through to very large customers in SAP S/4HANA and even for those who introduced SAP Fiori in SAP Business Suite or Suite on HANA.
By focusing on a small group of users, it’s much easier to understand needs and pain points, discuss options, deliver success, and grow change evangelists to the rest of the business.
Start with users who are eager for change and will therefore be more patient as you build skills.
Principle 2: Discuss the business value of UX early
You need to discuss the business value of UX early in the Discover phase of each iteration. You do this to flush out early high-level expectations around desired business outcomes and desired changes in user’s working behaviour.
Discussing potential value early means you can include those value expectations in your business case and adjust scope, skills, and solution needs based on your high level UX adoption roadmap that you use to guide your first/next waves of UX adoption.
Example UX Adoption Roadmap showing UX Value Goals planned for selected business roles
Principle 3: Agree on your initial UX Strategy and adjust as you grow
A high-level UX adoption roadmap, some initial business expectations, and some default best practices are enough to get started on your UX Strategy. You need to agree on some cross functional fundamentals to keep your user experiences coherent and narrow the technical scope such as:
- UX entry points (local launchpad, SAP Launchpad service, SAP Business Client, SAP Logon)
- Types of mobile devices and access channels (Internet, VPN, or intranet access)
- Cross functional launchpad features (Search, Notifications, User Assistant, Personalization, Corporate theming, Accessibility options, etc.)
Principle 4: Select your UX before fit-to-standard
In the Prepare phase, you select your target UX before fit-to-standard. Essentially, you need to be aware of what UX options are available to you before you go into the process discussion.
You raise awareness of generic possibilities, such as self-service personalization and in-app extension options. You start shifting mindsets from old to new to ease the fit-to-standard evaluation process.
You narrow down which SAP Business Roles need to be activated so you can explore them in detail alongside your process use cases in fit-to-standard.
Principle 5: In fit-to-standard verify your selected UX aligns to your to-be processes
In the Explore phase, you use fit-to-standard to do a deeper verification to confirm your chosen UX aligns to your to-be processes and your specific use cases. This includes reviewing the available personalization and in-app extension options for your apps for quick ways to fill any identified gaps.
Principle 6: Consider end-to-end task efficiency
Most functional consultants and business process experts will automatically consider process efficiency. But to really change user behaviours fast you need to consider end-to-end task efficiency. You want the end-to-end task to follow the path of least resistance.
You will need to capture app-to-app navigation points as you evaluate, including dynamic navigation points from SAP Fiori apps to classic UIs such as GUI transactions. Users should feel the next logical step is only 1 click away. That makes sure your launchpad content is complete and ready for creating custom business roles (see principle 9).
Principle 7: Keep the core clean as you configure, adapt, and extend
In the Realize phase, you configure, adapt and extend apps where needed.
Most SAP Fiori apps do not require any additional configuration. If the process is configured, and data exists, the app works. There are always a few exceptions, where you need to check the app documentation.
With extensions your aim is to keep the core clean to minimize future roadblocks and maximize opportunities to take advantage of the latest business and technology innovations. Refer to Custom Extensions in SAP S/4HANA Implementations - A Practical Guide for Senior IT Leadership
Principle 8: Design launchpad layouts that make your users productive immediately
The launchpad home page is the first impression of SAP Fiori for users.
A good default launchpad layout per business role gets immediate UX Adoption buy-in from your business users by showing you understand what they do.
A good layout makes immediate sense to your business users in their business roles(s) and makes sure they are productive from first login.
Principle 9: Create your own custom business roles using SAP Business roles as a starting point
The fastest and safest approach to business role creation is to start from a fully working SAP Business Role and remove any apps you don’t want, then add anything extra such as your custom apps and your launchpad layouts.
Think of it as like building from a kit home rather than architecting a house from scratch. If you would like a deeper discussion refer to blog post SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA – Creating your custom business roles – the end-to-end process and video p....
Principle 10: Retrospectives on lessons learned trigger the next wave of UX Adoption
Managing the pace of change means following through on your roadmap. That means once you deploy and start to run your new UX you need a trigger for the next wave of UX adoption.
As a minimum, set a review point to capture lessons learned and discuss whether anything needs to be adjusted in the current deployment as you bed in your new UX. Then discuss which business users will be next and why.
Experiences from other customers
In SAP S/4HANA Customer Care we have seen all customers from very large to small, and all sorts of approaches that have worked successfully including:
- Big bang with more than 450 SAP Fiori apps introduced on day 1
- Slow and careful growth with some quick wins
- High value innovation first
- Focus on mobile first
- Focus on real-time analytics first
- Using upgrades to kick start significant uptake
The takeaway is that you can start wherever you want so long as you are pragmatic about scope, skills, and capacity for change. The sooner you get started, the quicker the time to value.
Find out more about SAP Activate in the SAP Activate Community
Visit your community topic page for SAP Activate and community topic page for SAP Fiori for SAP S/4HANA
Other helpful links in the SAP Community:
- See all questions and answers about SAP Activate
- Follow SAP Activate for more blogs and updates
- Ask a Question about SAP Activate
Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA Customer Care and RIG.
Looking for even more…
Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast
You might like to subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA.” This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we help you get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA
openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA are an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business, like Finance and Manufacturing & Supply Chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, Extensibility, User Experience, and Upgrade Management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.
Your voice matters!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community. This platform which is available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers and partners has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community: register here
- SAP Activate Community here
- Feature Scope Description here
- What’s New here
- Help Portal Product Page here
- Implementation Portal here
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