For me the SAP Usability question is very important and would like to add my piece to the puzzle. In this blog series I would like to discuss my own practical approach. I will also remind the reader of the other blog posts which discuss the same topic to let everybody think about the SAP Usability and maybe help some people to decide which course to proceed.
Before I present my own approach I would like to remind the readers of the blog posts about the same topic which had some useful points to note or to argue with:
Even this short list of relevant blogs (I am sure there are more, but these attracted my attention, so I recommend them) show how many people are struggling with the user interfaces "problem" and the user productivity. Everybody has his own approach; I would like to present mine.
I read many SAP system development offers, I took part in some appointments of the SAP team and the clients (users, managers, sponsors), I spent hours discussing the SAP system usability with the numerous end-users , super-users and support people. What all the conversations had in common was the functional approach. The fundamental message of all the conversations was, the people believe, the implementation of one more SAP module can speed up their business processes, can reduce the number of errors (data quality, delays and subsequent loss), can help "the ordinary people" do their jobs better. I don´t believe it.
A part of my SAP experience which I consider to be very important (both for my career and this blog´s topic) is the HR part. I have been involved in some HR module implementations, changes, enhancements and development. Based on this experience I understand the importance of the GUI (graphical user interface) for the user. On HR project you face more people who don´t spend their working hours doing any ABAP or filling some super-mega-complex-screens.
These people have their own work to do; quite often they use email and the Office at most. They only need SAP to get a leave of absence approved. Or to check how many free days they have left. Some of these people are responsible for the data exchange with the other software the company is running, some of them are responsible for the data entry ("give me the paper, I will fill that into SAP for you"), some are responsible for the data output ("yes, boss, I will make that reports ready for you"), but the message I am trying to share here is that the different users have different needs. Of course, you know that already.
But have you ever tried to:
I tried that - I distributed the users of few (existing) companies I had worked for into the suggested groups. I wrote my thesis around this topic and think some of the conclusion can be useful to provide one more point of view to the general design.
Let s discuss, what you can learn out of such distribution (or from an attempt to create one):
I am sure about what you think at the moment. Of course this happens. A lot. It happens in my company as well. We know about it for ages, why is this guy talking about the obvious?
I talk about all that obvious stuff because I would like to ask (myself) some questions and through answering them I would like to present a part of the "theory" I have built, to understand how the user´s efficiency and the influence of choosing the suitable user interface can be measured.
I understand this post is long enough by now so I will cut it here, but to tell you what will come in the next parts let me present the questions:
I hope I have attracted a user or two who has read this far. Stay tuned. Regards, Otto
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