Introducing SAP Fiori

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
  • Identify the dimensions of SAP Fiori
  • Explain the principles of SAP Fiori

The Concept

Screenshots of SAP Fiori launchpad on a smartphone, tablet, and desktop display various charts, graphs, and data analytics for sales orders, revenue, and customer metrics in a business application interface.

SAP Fiori is a design language that brings great user experiences to enterprise applications based on SAP User Experience. It works seamlessly on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

At the point of SAPPHIRE in 2013, the first 25 apps for managers and employees with request and approval functions had been released. Since then the number of apps has increased greatly. SAP Fiori 2.0 was introduced with SAP S/4HANA 1610, taking the idea of SAP Fiori to the next level. Today SAP Fiori 3 is the current target design, which evolves the SAP Fiori design language for all SAP products to fully support the Intelligent Suite.

A diagram showing three sections. Principles: Role-based, adaptive, coherent, simple, delightful. Design: Visual design, information architecture, interaction patterns. Technology: User interface, business logic.

The three dimensions in which SAP Fiori is defined are design, principles, and technology. In each dimension, rules and guidelines from optic, handling, interactions, and architectures to technologies in development and the system landscape are in place to define what SAP Fiori really is.

The Design

Illustration of the value of good user experience. Monetary value: Gain productivity and data quality, save training costs, decrease change requests and user errors. Human value: Increase user satisfaction, inclusion, solution adoption, strengthen relationships (business and IT), and customer loyalty.

People often think of user experience (UX) as something emotional rather than rational, making it difficult to create a business case for investing in good UX. But in fact good UX does have a monetary value, on top of the clear human value of making people happier.

Monetary Value

A good UX helps improve productivity. People can get more done, because they are more effective. The system guides them with intelligence to what needs their attention most. Another important aspect is data quality: Incorrectly entered data costs a lot later on in the process. Ensuring good data quality right from the beginning saves later data corrections.

Easy-to-use software hardly needs any training, so you can save significant training costs and subsequent support desk costs.

If you include your end users in the implementation and ensure that the UX suits their needs up front, you decrease the number of change requests from users. Changes to a deployed UI are more expensive than changes made beforehand. Also user errors are reduced, decreasing costs due to poor data quality and support desk costs.

Note

SAP offers the SAP UX Value Calculator to gauge potential savings and gather arguments that can be used to convince peers and managers to invest in a better user experience:

https://apphaus.sap.com/resource/uxvaluecalc

Human Value

On top of these quantifiable benefits, a good UX brings clear human value benefits – which are particularly important when companies want to attract the best talents. Who does not want to work with cool modern tools rather than unattractive ones? A good UX increases user satisfaction allows inclusion of all employees, and helps ensure that people within the company actually use the software rather than keeping data separate on their desktop.

Providing your business units with software with a good UX helps strengthen your relationship with them, since you are providing software that their teams enjoy using. If the apps are used by customers, then a good UX helps build and increase customer loyalty.

Watch the video to get an overview of design thinking.

The SAP Fiori Design Guidelines Web page displaying options for Web, iOS, and Android.

All details of the SAP Fiori design are available as guidelines for general use. You can find all aspects of the SAP Fiori design starting with the five core design principles up to floorplans of pages and details for UI elements. There are also several resources available for download, such as the SAP icon font or font 72, to empower customers to design their own apps.

Since May 2016, SAP Fiori is also available for Apple iOS. Apple is a strong partner, especially in terms of design. There is a close cooperation between Apple and SAP to provide not only a merged design but also guidance and tools for developers to develop native apps for iOS. In addition, a growing number of apps is developed by this cooperation leveraging the features of Apple mobile devices.

Since June 2018, SAP Fiori is also available for Google Android. It provides a merged design and guidance for developers to develop native apps for Android. However, in contrast to SAP Fiori for iOS, no ready-to-use apps are provided to end users.

Since July 2023, SAP follows a human-centered AI approach, meaning that SAP looks at the users’ needs holistically, which includes aspects like building trust in addition to functional insights and guidance. User guidance can be provided by a graphical UI as well as using a conversational UI. Basically both allow the user to interact with the system and receive guidance. This guidance can be:

  • Predictive by analyzing historical data and making predictions or forecasts.
  • Proactive by providing insights relevant for the activity the user is doing in the system.
  • Reactive by helping users react to external triggers or events suggesting options for dealing with the situation.

To access SAP Fiori design guidelines, visit https://experience.sap.com/fiori-design/.

The Principles

Icons represent five attributes: Role-based (user icon), adaptive (devices icon), coherent (arrows), simple (circle), delightful (heart). Each has a brief description beneath.

In the second dimension, SAP Fiori offers a unified user experience for various clients. Users should have a consistent, coherent, simple, intuitive, and delightful user experience on all devices to be able to work better and more efficiently. The five design principles of SAP Fiori are at the core of every SAP Fiori app to fulfill these goals. The role-based approach is, therefore, the biggest change in comparison with classic user interfaces.

SAP Fiori has changed user experience and empowered users to use role-based applications as compared to functional-based applications. Watch the video to learn how SAP Fiori has changed user experience from functional-based to role-based.

The Technology

Watch the video to see the evolution of SAP Fiori.

Four pictograms representing SAP's desired user experience: Consistent with a network sphere, intelligent with orbits, integrated with circuit lines, and collaborative with two people shaking hands.

In summary, the goal of SAP Fiori is to provide a consistent, intelligent, integrated, and collaborative user experience across all products. This is also known as SAP's customer experience goal.

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