Remember when our phones were just used to make calls? Now, it is intuitive to, with a few swipes of our fingers, use smartphones to listen to music, browse the web, or look up information. Now, imagine the same intuitive simplicity in designing and ordering something as complex as a state of the art vehicle – such as a helicopter, yacht, car, or plane.
Rather than pore through a million details of graphs, pictures, and descriptions, imagine a SAP solution that is full 3D visualization – allowing a client to feel, see, and explore THEIR vehicle, as they design it, using a few simple icons. A 3D interactive ordering video game!
Video games and SAP?
Did I really just write that as the SAP of the Future? Yes – design thinking helped drive a view of the end user story with ideation and a prototype for a forward-thinking customer. The customer challenges included: significant delays in the design of the vehicle due to scheduling challenges, physical samples that were not exactly what the customer desired, and multiple tools and versions of the truth. The purpose for this effort was to build a prototype for enabling end-customer sessions that capture real-time specifications, linked to a single source of truth – SAP.
We used this powerful approach to drive innovation and create a solution for a global manufacturer that:
- Makes sense, and
- Is so incredibility advanced it is almost unbelievable!
Design Thinking 101
The end customer is tech savvy, and wants to be able to drive the full completion and design of a particular luxury good. How does SAP address this end-state goal? How does SAP drive a creative resolution of this goal? Simply, applying design thinking provided us a means for improving the efficiency of the option selection process and the preparation of the customer customized product. We started with the user story, and then took the design thinking philosophies and embedded them into to full project.
Gaining deeper insights into the user needs and challenges, through the synthesis process, helped us create a solution that is beautiful, easy to use, and built on the SAP platform. We interviewed outliers, and incorporated improvements into our design to ensure that the end customer could customize their luxury goods through a simple, 3D interface.
Our design thinking approach provided us with the ideas to create a solution that has the ability to compare customer options in real time using 3D hyper-real imagery / visuals, immediately showing the impact of a change on a configuration using the business rule engine from the SAP® Solution Sales Configuration application, with Visual Enterprise, Custom Development and 3D visualization.
Don’t Get Bogged Down in Current Problems
Focusing on the end solution, rather than current state problems, enabled us to apply knowledge and expertise required to architect the overall business solution and cohesively integrate partner solutions to create the SAP of the Future. We leveraged the best of SAP to ensure comprehensive compatibility with legacy computer-aided design systems from CATIA and ENOVIA as well as integration with the SAP ECC. With design thinking as a core approach, in less than two months, we were able to connect the 3D sales configurator with SAP Solution Sales Configuration using the SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Asset Management rapid-deployment solution.
Imagine and Push for a Future that is Radically Different than Today
What does this mean? It means that this large manufacturer of luxury goods will be able to realize business benefits rapidly, while giving their customer the most amazing experience in design.
How easy is it for you to conduct your transactions today? Can you see the results? Can you make immediate improvements? What if you could redesign how you interact with SAP to drive your business and provide your customers with the most amazing experience while ensuring you collect all the information required? Design thinking with SAP creates this.
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