Multi-national companies constantly receive foreign guests, many of whom are arriving for the first time. Travelers usually have endured a long and tiresome trip, and when they arrive at the airport, sometimes they do face several situations in a complete different place, culture, language, transportation... To help solve this, the SAP Arrival Guide has been developed.
Almost two years ago the idea was initiated. The initial idea was to apply Design Thinking techniques in a project and see how it could benefit us in development. So for that, a “Take the visiting experience to the next level” idea was proposed to few interns from local UFRGS University in a summer internship program with SAP. During two months a couple of DT techniques were applied with colleagues travelling to our Labs and from our Labs to other locations – at the end of this period a prototype was validated. However, no budget was available to continue with the idea. Later in the same year we had the Labs Latin America Grand Opening where many people from other locations would come. Michael Depner came with the following idea: ‘why don’t we validate it with these event participants?’ And we did a first version – still a basic version but it was available for all visitants. A lot of feedback, ideas and suggestions were received – at this time we were sure that the solution could solve true problems for our users.
Later on, with a considerable number of “after-hours” shifts from engaged employees and students, and thanks to two sponsors, we could start with the productization of the Arrival Guide. And last December we had our first version with of course a limited number of features, but with a clear plan for more features to come. And the icing on the cake was the news that the Executive Briefing Center from Walldorf is piloting the solution. In parallel, an integration with Employee Center (Success Factors) is being developed.
For sure, we have a long and winding road ahead. However, we are proud that we were and are building a solution from scratch that help our users in a simple and intuitive way. As a vision, we believe the solution has true market potential and will be successfully sold to customers who care for their employees when traveling abroad.
By Rodrigo Silva, Development Manager - Globalization Services
