Readers of our blog are probably familiar with Jacob, our SAP HANA & Fiori App developer who was one of three winners in last year’s SAP Fiori Design and Build Challenge.
Just recently, he did us proud again by emerging as a winner in both categories for the 2016 Fiori app development competition. The course was held from February 24, 2016 through May 5, 2016, with over 32360 learners enrolled and over 6000 challenge submissions (200% more than 2015).
To celebrate his achievements (and also learn from him ourselves), we got Jacob to write a post for our blog this week.
Hello, I’m Jacob!
…and in the past year I have been working as a developer for Blue Ocean Systems while concurrently pursuing my degree in Information Systems at the National University of Singapore (NUS). I’ve been lucky to be involved in several exciting developments, and wanted to share my experience with you.
SAP Fiori Design and Build Challenge 2015
Last year, I took part in the openSAP course, Build Your Own SAP Fiori App in the Cloud. I developed the app EMR-DRounds: Electronic Medical Record – Doctor Rounds for medical personnel and patients to review healthcare information in a more organized manner.
I was very fortunate to be one of three lucky winners to walk away with a MacBook Air. (Find out more from the blog post from 2015 here!)
The course really got me thinking about how different industries could benefit from having apps tailor-made to match their own unique set of requirements, and helped me a lot in the design and development process for ZiZu.
Build Your Own SAP Fiori App in the Cloud – 2016 Edition
Since last year, new features such as SAP Splash and Build, SAP Fiori 2.0, and SAP S/4HANA have also been added to the course, so I was interested to try them out. Of course, having an iPad Pro as a prize didn’t hurt! This year, my entry was a facilities management app created for the facility manager to manage the carpark, gym, library, and pool in my university.
My friend and I often hit the gym in school, but it was frustrating at times to find it packed when we’ve already brought our sports gear along and prepared to work out. He suggested developing an app to combat this problem, which I thought was a great idea. We approached the gym’s management to find out what problems they faced, and went from there.
My boss also frequently sends all of us interesting articles to spark creative thinking, and I got some ideas from here and there to develop a persona for my project and incorporate heat map video analytics into my app.
With the rise of IoT (Internet of Things) and the Industrial Revolution 4.0, I thought it’d be a relevant app which buildings can be smarter to assist managers with certain decision making. When you really think about it, there’s so much that can be done in terms of custom-made apps for any industry, and Fiori makes things a lot simpler. It’s not as intimidating as some businesses may think.
Above is a demo video for the prototype if you’re interested, and you can try the app out for yourselves here!
My thoughts on Fiori as a whole
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions often come in an “almost-complete” package that once configured, is ready to go. With SAP Fiori & ERP interventions, unlimited innovations are made possible. Now you have the ease & capability to innovate and customize your ERP further to suit to your ideas and your most unconventional business processes.
SAP is well known for having a comprehensive yet complex UI (User Interface) in the past, and now developers have SAP Fiori, it is going to change the whole paradigm of all SAP Products entry-point UX (User Experience) so as to achieve a delightful experience without too much time or expense.
My journey with ZiZu
While the two Fiori apps were pet projects to develop my skills on the side and push my own limits, ZiZu was my main focus for the past year. It was a tough but rewarding process which helped me discover the many layers and steps that go into creating a product, from coming up with an idea and putting it on paper, to creating a prototype and seeing it come to life.
I got to experience the entire Design Thinking process when my team and myself went down to a potential customer’s office to let them experience the prototype and get immediate feedback on how they really wanted ZiZu to be, and of course their expected user experience.
ZiZu’s original name was ‘S³’, or Self Service Solutions. In a year or so, we have braved through the entire product development lifecycle from getting our development accelerated with SAPUI5, presenting our prototype in SAP Business One Innovation Summit 2015, getting validated & certified as a SAP HANA App by SAP ICC (Integration and Certification Center), and going through a successful branding exercise. Eventually, we marked our milestone with ZiZu, Future Proof Commerce.
Final thoughts
My past year working as a SAP HANA & Fiori App developer in Blue Ocean Systems opened my eyes to the potential of how SAP HANA & Fiori can further improve & customize SAP Business One being more than just an ERP software.
The development process of ZiZu and my two Fiori apps helped me realize that there is much more that can be done to leverage on an ERP system that I previously thought. Now, businesses with unconventional business processes or any ideas that they would want to incorporate into their ERP system, it can be simply realized through SAP HANA & Fiori. In short, almost any idea you can think of can be made reality.
Download our guide on SAP Fiori to find out more about what it does.
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