SAP Fiori UX · Quote-to-Cash · Design Thinking
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How a global water and hygiene company transformed SAP data access with HANA EE
Global water & hygiene company Delivered 2024
Mindset built the the Fiori platform platform for the company, a Fiori usability layer running across every sales division, and it landed 99% user adoption with a 90% cut in approval time, saving an estimated 20-25 headcount across the company.
By the numbers
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User adoption of the the Fiori platform platform
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Reduction in process approval time
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20-25
Incremental headcount saved
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422 days
Training days saved across 153 users
Before
Manual, division-by-division complexity
- Every division ran its own agreement and pricing process with no unified governance layer, making compliant decisions slow across healthcare, hospitality, textile, and institutional.
- A pre-SAP tool for AVP customer agreements was decommissioned with no replacement, creating data discrepancies that hurt resale accuracy.
- Legacy tooling that couldn't scale across 250 field users or deliver the approval visibility the company needed.
After
One the Fiori platform platform across all divisions
- A single Fiori usability layer with governance, digital contracts, and approval workflows running across all four SAP divisions.
- 99% user adoption and 90% faster approvals, with 20-25 headcount of manual effort saved.
- Full division coverage through a repeatable Design Thinking and two-week prototype-to-production pattern.
“We want to thank Mindset for this amazing partnership! The OTC project has had such a positive impact on our customers and field organization, driving an improved customer experience. We continue to improve our processes with Mindset with a focus on the customer and the team! Thank you for making it happen and most importantly for the continued support to our global enterprise!”
Why this matters
Building a custom Fiori platform division by division and hitting 99% adoption is the kind of result most SAP UX programs only promise. the company got there by starting with Design Thinking every time, not just once at the beginning.
The challenge
the company is a global water, hygiene, and infection-prevention company deep into SAP, with 37 or more deployments since 2008 and roughly 90% of its business running on SAP or EBS. The problem was on the commercial side. Every division ran its own agreement creation and maintenance process, and making clear financial decisions on pricing, incentives, and compliance while staying within business rules was slow and cumbersome across all of them: healthcare, hospitality, textile, and institutional.
The legacy tooling couldn't keep up. After migrating to SAP, a pre-SAP tool that handled AVP customer-agreement and distributor-authorization alignment was decommissioned, and those functions never got ported. That gap created data discrepancies that hurt the accuracy and completeness of resale processing.
the company needed a platform that could bring governance and visibility to these processes across all of its divisions at once, without asking 250 field users to become SAP power users.
What we did
Mindset built the the company the Fiori platform platform over several years, expanding it division by division. the Fiori platform is a Fiori-based usability layer for SAP, designed to surface the right data at the right moment, enforce approval rules, attach source documents directly to digital contracts, and cut the navigation overhead that was eating time across all four core processes: Quote-to-Cash sales contracts, Order-to-Cash pricing and billing, incentives and billbacks and chargebacks, and Record-to-Report invoicing and financial approvals.
The team ran Design Thinking workshops across all four processes with the company stakeholders before writing a line of code. From there, the pattern was a proof of concept and high-resolution prototype in about two weeks, then a production build fully integrated to SAP. That rhythm repeated division by division: Agreements and Incentives (2018-2019), Membership List (2020), AVP Outreach in the Fiori platform 3 (2022), Hierarchies and Accounts (2023).
Beyond the Fiori platform, the engagement included API development for EBS, HANA APS work, Order-to-Cash stability, and the multi-year the program support program, with deliverables covering UI5 application code, SAP ABAP packages, and FRICE documentation. the company co-presented the the Fiori platform story with Mindset at the UX4ERP Summit in 2023.
The outcomes
the Fiori platform hit 99% user adoption after launch, which for a company where many ERP rollouts struggle to break 60 or 70 percent is a real number. Approval time dropped 90%. An estimated 20 to 25 headcount of manual effort was saved across the divisions. The 153 users who trained on the new platform needed an average of just 2.75 days each, saving roughly 422 training days total compared to prior rollouts.
For the Institutional division specifically, the time to process a single request dropped from 24 hours to 12 hours. Across all divisions, attaching original source documents directly to digital contracts increased transparency and reduced financial risk on pricing and settlement decisions.
the company's end users noticed. The unsolicited feedback captured after launch came back consistently positive, and the company went on to become a public Mindset reference, co-presenting on the work at the UX4ERP Summit and winning the 2023 EXperts Award for Best Design Thinking Execution.
Recognition
- Mindset Consulting 2023 EXperts Award - Best Design Thinking Execution (OTC Institutional Stability Project)
If we built this today
Concept · not delivered scopeApprovals that move at sales speed.
This is a forward-looking concept, not the scope we delivered on this engagement. It is the build we would reach for now, grounded in SAP that ships today.
The hard part here was making clear pricing, incentive, and compliance calls fast while every division ran its own agreement process, and a Joule approval agent is built to carry exactly that load today.
The data product
Customer Intelligence
An Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud that grounds the agent in customer history, agreement performance, and incentive spend across divisions. It gives the approval agent the cross-division view the company's old per-division tooling never had.
Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud
The Joule agent
Sales Agreement Approval Agent
Reads the customer agreement, its pricing, incentives, and billback terms against business rules and prior contracts, then drafts the routing and a recommended approve or hold for each reviewer. It flags margin and compliance exceptions before they sit in someone's inbox.
SAP S/4HANA Sales, SAP S/4HANA Settlement Management, SAP Fiori · PROPOSE · Agreement approval cycle time
The Fiori app
Manage Sales Orders, plus the condition-contract and settlement Fiori apps
The OOTB S/4HANA apps for sales orders, pricing conditions, and condition-contract settlement now carry Joule in the launchpad, so a reviewer can ask why a term tripped a rule and approve in context. It is the modern version of the surfaced-data approval screen the Fiori platform hand-built.
Embedded in the Fiori launchpad
We would mine the real agreement and approval flow in SAP Signavio first, map the division-by-division landscape in SAP LeanIX, and let MIND accelerators carry the the Fiori platform governance logic from the old build into the new one.
What we built
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Platform architecture and first production module shipped on time
the Fiori platform platform, Agreements and Incentives
The first the Fiori platform module, built 2018-2019 for Quote-to-Cash sales contracts. Set the design pattern for all future divisions: Design Thinking first, prototype to production in two weeks, fully integrated to SAP.
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Division-by-division rollout model validated
Membership List module (the Fiori platform 2)
The 2020 expansion of the Fiori platform for distributor membership management, extending the governance pattern to a new agreement type.
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Data discrepancies in resale processing resolved
AVP Outreach module (the Fiori platform 3)
2022 module that brought back the AVP customer-agreement and distributor-authorization alignment functions that had been lost when the pre-SAP tool was decommissioned.
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Full division coverage across healthcare, hospitality, textile, and institutional
Hierarchies and Accounts module (the Fiori platform 4)
2023 module covering account hierarchy management, completing the four-division coverage and extending to roughly 250 users in scope.
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90% reduction in process approval time
Order-to-Cash pricing and incentives layer
Fiori UX and governance rules for billing, incentives, billbacks, and chargebacks, with digital contracts and attached source documents to reduce financial risk.
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Institutional request time cut from 24 hours to 12 hours
Record-to-Report financial approvals
Invoicing, settlement, and financial approval workflows built on the the Fiori platform pattern, covering the institutional division's daily request load.
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Won 2023 EXperts Award for Best Design Thinking Execution
Design Thinking program
Multi-year Design Thinking engagements across all four target processes, run with the company stakeholders before each build cycle. Generated the prototypes that became production in two-week sprints.
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Non-SAP application users got real-time access to SAP data
API development for EBS and HANA APS
API layer connecting the company's EBS systems to the the Fiori platform platform, plus HANA APS work to expose SAP data to non-SAP users in near-real time.
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Continuous delivery across the the company SAP estate
the program support program
Multi-year managed support covering Order-to-Cash stability, UI5 application code, SAP ABAP packages, and FRICE documentation across the enterprise.
A look at the work
