Typical challenges in adopting SAP Fiori as THE SAP UI

Keeping your knowledge on software that gets a new release every 3 months up to date is challenging, not to mention keeping such software always on the newest release. The question that we need to ask ourselves is, is it really worth upgrading our S/4HANA systems every quarter? How do I assess if the benefits of the upgrade are of a high-enough value to my company?

SAP Fiori, the interface that intends to do away with the popular “counterintuitive” tag that SAP software is often associated with. Browser-based, mobile ready, shiny and modern-looking. Enough of marketing, let’s talk about the facts!

Fiori was first introduced in 2013 and 11 years later we are now offered its 3 major version. The idea was, as you can imagine, mainly to improve the usability of SAP software. Nowadays, more than 3000 S/4HANA apps are offered as modern Fiori applications.

Some Fiori applications have recently also received a groundbreaking addition – AI capabilities (what else were you thinking in 2024 ;-)) and this also seems to be the direction that SAP is evolving this interface in.

But its adoption at scale is rather a bumpy ride, not a smooth motorway drive. Let’s dive deeper into why that is and how to overcome it

Why it is so difficult to adopt at scale

Having to learn a new way of executing daily tasks after clicking the same buttons for 10+ years is challenging for everyone. After all, we get accustomed to routine tasks quicker than we think. Does it come as a surprise that the adoption of Fiori is not really a challenge for software-literate developers, architects or managers but it is for “normal” (non-techie) business users? It should not.

We expect all these super users to suddenly trade their beautiful-looking, well-developed lists of favourites that they first see after logging into SAP GUI for “fancy-looking” Fiori launchpads that work on any device (yeah, because they all need their apps to work on mobile, tablet and smart watch – who wouldn’t!)

So a natural question arises – how to overcome this hurdle and move people towards innovation and user-friendliness?

The answer is simple (woah! it’s not “it depends”!) – encourage or enforce.

To force or to encourage, that is the question

Every large-scale strategic decision (and changing the main UI of critical business apps is one!) should always be business-driven. If there’s a business incentive behind it – it’s worth finding a way to get it to work. If there isn’t – well…

Business value in introducing a modern UI like Fiori could be found in metrics like:

• Shallow learning curve – easy to learn and onboard new employees
• New useful capabilities – apps let you do more than the old functionality
• Efficiency – routine tasks take less time
• Stability and reliability – fewer mistakes are made

It’s up to each company’s internal work culture and priorities to find which one of the above is best fit and how to measure it. But now, let’s assume we’ve already found a business case for it and want ADOPTION. What are the 2 ways to approach it?

Adopting Fiori through encouragement

Having the right functional experts on your team can result in building interesting business cases that will actually speak to these old-school SAP GUI experts in their language. If an app can do more, do something quicker and be less of a pain in the a** when using it – they will be tempted to try it out and maybe even fall in love with it.

An example I’ve recently been faced with was that a group of business users was sent to functional workshops delivered directly by SAP, in which SAP showed them “a new way of doing X” using all modern apps and capabilities, and you know what? They were amazed! The first thing they did after returning from these workshops was filing requests to get these apps activated on their sandbox S/4HANA systems. They did it because they saw value in them for themselves, not for the company, not for SAP, for themselves.

Adopting Fiori through enforcement

If we can’t encourage people to do it of their own free will and the company still insists on adopting Fiori at scale (see above, business value!), another option might be to actually force users to switch. Of course, the switch needs to be properly planned (ideally in phases), not to impact business operations but it’s possible. “Starting from October 1st you need to switch to SAP Fiori, go and search the internet to see what it is and how it works. Please and thank you” would probably not be the wisest move but there are better ways!

Another example I’ve recently been faced with (funnily enough – same customer, just a completely different department) was that an application manager turned to the central S/4HANA transformation team that I was supporting and said “We were informed that our critical app X will be decommissioned by SAP in 2027, here is the app that will succeed it – can you please enable it so we can start exploring?” Nobody encouraged them to try out the new version of the app, they were simply told to get going or they’ll be left with no options if they slack for too long”

This is a rare case, SAP still hasn’t officially flagged many SAP GUI t-codes as to-be obsolete but it happens! How can we enforce the use of Fiori in different cases though? Here are some ideas:

• Increase support SLAs – “We are embracing technology, the SLA for problems with SAP GUI apps will be increase to XX days”
• Block extensions (especially modifications!) – “Starting from October 1st we will not be able to further customise XX t-code, please switch to the YY Fiori App”
• Transformation opportunity – “Custom app X will not be moved to SAP S/4HANA because there is a new standard Fiori app that covers 95% of the same functionality, the 5% can be added with a simple extension”
• etc.

Please remember though, alternatives must be offered. Don’t ever say “You need to stop using X” without supplementing it with “because YYY (justified reason), here is how to switch to the improved capability…”. If you don’t add the “because…” users will simply put it off for as long as possible.

SAP Fiori Activation effort

Surprisingly, activating standard Fiori apps is actually very simple in S/4HANA. Remember, SAP S/4HANA is shipped with a lot of standard Fiori capabilities and you don’t need to download or develop anything. Simply activating the underlying OData services and the ICF nodes & maintaining the right configuration of user roles is all you need to do.

Tip: See Rapid Content Activation – way to activate standard apps with very little effort.

Fiori extension and development options

But what if the standard Fiori app doesn’t tick all the boxes our beloved SAP GUI transaction did? Well, it’s not the end of the world – trust me!

Since this article isn’t really focused on extending or developing Fiori, let me just list a few resources that you can do a quick Google search for – they should be your starting points!

• Fiori Apps Library – SAP tool to find apps, info on how to activate, access and extend them
• Adaptation Projects – Adapt Fiori apps to your needs, without modifying the standard
• Key-user tools – some changes won’t even require a single line of code!
• Custom Business Objects – simple apps built from scratch without any code
• ABAP RESTful Application Programming model – for more advanced cases, developers needed

Also, I would highly suggest that you follow Jocelyn Dart – User Experience Strategist at SAP. She does an amazing job with all her articles on adopting Fiori at scale (both technical and functional).

Best tip for trying out adoption

Trying out SAP Fiori in large-scale organisations is tricky. Even if you establish a decent process to get standard apps efficiently enabled and users onboarded, there might still be a good bit of effort in creating the right set of data, maintaining the right customising, etc. This is what I’ve also been facing in one of the projects I’m supporting.

What I suggest doing in this case is trying out a SAP fully-activated appliance – a preconfigured system that comes pre-packed with both customising and data to make your journey a breeze (woah – marketing, sorry – not sponsored!)

Once you have a good setup in place, granting access to curious users should also be simplified – make generic users, potentially multiple clients for different locations/departments, offer a regular system refresh, etc. – all depending on your organisation needs

So, is investing in SAP Fiori worth the hype?

Even if you are not fond of the browser-based UI because you are still used to SAP GUI and you have your beloved t-codes, favourites and even macros – I need to disappoint you. SAP is sooner or later going to drop these old-school screens and move to SAP Fiori. They have already done this with S/4HANA Public Cloud. They have also done it with all the SAP BTP capabilities. I somehow can’t imagine SAP GUI still being around in 2035 – I can’t (maybe for basis or some dev tasks).