Experiences and lessons learned

SAP Fiori has been available for a couple of years now and if you’d ask someone ‘what is Fiori?’ a year ago they would have answered; ‘free apps’.

Several companies has started their SAP Fiori adventure with this idea in mind. In that case the IT professional, most of the time ABAP minded with extended front-end knowledge, was trained to understand SAP UI5. After that de IT staff would check the list of applications for suitable apps.

Experiences with standard SAP Fiori apps

• After a second glance most of the picked solutions didn’t fit the exact needs. Therefor updates were required.
• If the update wasn’t the issue than integration would definitely be. In several occasions a fair amount of work needed to be done to get things up and running. It takes knowledge and experience to install the Fiori Launchpad in a way that makes the right assets and features available per user and per task.
• When the chosen Fiori app is fully operating companies usually figure out that it doesn’t fully fit the needs of the process and tasks. In this case the conclusion is mostly that it was easier to have started from scratch instead of using a free finished app.

Lessons learned about SAP Fiori applications

• Despite the hick ups in the very beginning of SAP Fiori a lot of companies see the value of Sap Fiori and SAP UI5 for front-end nowadays. Companies are developing practical apps for several business segments.
• After the implementation of the first SAP Fiori the development of the following Fiori apps will become a piece of cake. The only challenges left for the other apps will be scope, organization, change management and implementation.
• Next to this the SAP interface of S4 HANA will make other products such as Succesfactors and Solution Manager available in the Launchpad.
• The choice to partner up with Mendix makes it possible to choose different tooling per situation, but as a SAP user you cannot hide from SAP Fiori eventually.

SAP Fiori is starting to grow up and needs to be seriously considered by SAP users because SAP seems to be saying goodbye to their reputation of non-practical screens and handling.