SAP branches out to appease customers. Will the confusion end?

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SAP branches out to appease customers. Will the confusion end?

SAP branches out to appease customers. Will the confusion end?

Joshua Greenbaum, Years 2004-2007

What is SAP's UI strategy? In an attempt to appease customers who are unhappy with the ageing SAPgui interface, SAP appears to have branched out in multiple directions (Duet, SAP EP, Muse, ties with Adobe, etc); it is all quite confusing from a customer standpoint.

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The answer is that SAP wants to leave open as many GUI options as possible, on the theory that customer choice is the best road to customer adoption. It may look confusing – indeed it is at times – but the bottom line is that if one of the above interfaces can speed user adoption and lower training costs, that's a win/win for everyone. So expect customer choice and customer confusion to be the norm for some time: it beats, according to most users, requiring the use of the wrong interface for the job.

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This was first published in May 2007

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