In recent months, there’s been plenty of buzz about SAP’s new suite of apps – collectively called Fiori. They are billed as a next-generation enterprise user experience for SAP’s product offerings, and service providers are gearing up quickly to provide Fiori expertise.
‘The introduction of role based design in Fiori 3.0 enables designers to create specific experiences for users and user groups. Designing experiences for users is the primary principle, so this is line with that. Fiori is always about responsive interfaces for end-users. Version 3.0 is more flexible in terms of customization – it helps to give a fresh look and feel to design for different mobile devices. We are excited about Fiori 3.0!’ says Pradnya Salvekar, Extentia’s Vice President, Delivery.
SAP calls it ‘a new target design system, which evolves the SAP Fiori design for all SAP products to fully support the Intelligent Suite, running on any device’.
According to Devashish Nayak, Delivery Manager, Extentia ‘The primary motivation for building Fiori apps has always been handling of SAP systems easier. SAP Fiori evolved over 7 years as a unified design with more scalable content. This supports both Native iOS and Android, along with desktop screens for supporting complicated transactions and workflows. The new "Quartz" theme looks simple and responsive for both iOS and Android devices. Finally Fiori 3.0 controls are clearly more compact compared to earlier versions.’
Fiori includes over 300 business related apps – such as finance, authorization, calculation – usable across a wide variety of functions. Typically these would be:
Manufacturing
Sales
Accounting
Human Resources
Research & development
Procurement
Supply chain management
At this time the version in the market is Fiori 3.
Design fundamentals of Fiori
Per SAP, there are three kinds of Fiori apps:
Transactional apps – These are for transactions such as purchase orders, leave and travel requests. There are 25 such apps, with more expected.
Fact sheets – These apps show vital and relevant information about important business processes. They can be drilled down further for more detail in items such as agreements and contracts, to get to information about related entities.
Analytical apps – Look up key performance indicators in real-time, aggregate information, do calculations, and decrease your response time to changes in the market. These apps run on SAP HANA with virtual data models.
Ease of use:
To quote SAP, Fiori is the ‘enterprise user
experience, reimagined’. SAP has built Fiori apps on its SAPUI5 user interface framework, and when used with SAP HANA, it is said to have best-in-class execution time and excellent application responsiveness.
The UX is all about being role based and personalized for users across the enterprise.
Fiori can be used across a variety of devices – desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Users can start a process on one, continue and finish on another. This a feature that SAP has consistently talked about.
Says Kalyana Sundaram, Innovation Lead at Extentia ‘Fiori 3.0 helps users get their work done more easily, efficiently and intuitively. It is possible now to deliver consumer grade experiences with consistency across the SAP product portfolio, enhanced by Machine Learning, Natural Language interactions and by integrating multiple solutions in single pages\views.’
So you want to become an expert on SAP Fiori implementation?
Here’s what you’ll need to know:
SAP HANA and UI5
ERP execution
HTML5 and JavaScript
ABAP program and objects
Extentia is an SAP ISV-OEM Partner, and a member of the SAP AppHaus network, with specific expertise in SAP HANA, mobility, and experience design.
The author, Venkat Srinivasan, is Sr. Director, Marketing & Corporate Communications at Extentia.
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