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SAP Fiori Development · UX Redesign · Offline Mobile

Public Sector and Education SAP ECC SAP Fiori

A research university replaced an 11-year-old SAP UI with Fiori apps so intuitive they needed no training

A Major Research University Delivered 2019

Mindset redesigned a research university's high-traffic SAP transactions into tile-based Fiori apps across 10,000-plus active users. The new apps required no training, unlike the original SAP transactions.

By the numbers

  • 10,000+

    Active SAP users reached by the redesigned apps

  • 0

    Training required for new Fiori apps

  • 11 years

    Old SAP UI replaced by tile-based Fiori

  • 5 sprints

    Employee Display enhancements delivered

Before

An 11-year-old, menu-heavy SAP interface

  • A packaged SAP UI unchanged for eleven years, with menu-driven navigation that required training and created friction for 10,000-plus users.
  • No mobile option for field asset tracking beyond handheld scanners tied to legacy SAP transactions.
  • No co-development model or DevOps practice to let the internal team build and sustain Fiori apps.

After

Tile-based Fiori apps, no training needed

  • Redesigned procurement, time entry, and employee lookup apps that users called intuitive and required no training to operate.
  • Offline-capable Fiori apps on Android replacing handheld scanners for field asset tracking.
  • A DevOps roadmap giving the internal EBS team a sustainable path to grow the application portfolio.

Why this matters

Eleven years is a long time to live with a rigid enterprise UI. This university did a Design Thinking workshop, co-developed with Mindset, and ended up with Fiori apps that needed no training at all. That's the measure.

The challenge

A large private research university had been running the same packaged SAP user interface for eleven years. The menu-heavy screens worked, in the sense that transactions could be completed, but they were not designed around how people actually did their jobs.

High-traffic workflows like procurement, employee lookup, time entry, and asset tracking required navigating a series of menus and jumping between transactions to gather context. More than 10,000 active SAP users dealt with this daily. The Employee Business Systems team wanted to redesign those screens around real work patterns, not force users to adapt to a rigid ERP interface.

A parallel problem existed on the warehouse and operations side. Staff tracking physical assets were using handheld scanners tethered to SAP transactions that did not translate well to mobile use.

What we did

The engagement started with a Design Thinking workshop in 2018 that brought together the team and end users to surface the real friction points before any design was produced. That workshop set the direction for a co-development model: Mindset architects and developers working alongside the university's own EBS developers to build and refine the applications together.

The first major build was a set of roughly 40 Employee Display and Employee Lookup enhancements, delivered in five two-week sprints after a one-week Sprint Zero. The work focused on reducing keystrokes, surfacing the right data in context, and making common transactions completable without hunting through menus.

A second design thinking workshop defined the offline asset-tracking solution before a line of code was written. The result was a set of offline-capable Fiori apps running on Android devices, replacing the handheld scanners that had previously been the only option for asset tracking in the field.

A DevOps roadmap engagement followed, building a plan to unify front-end Fiori development with SAP backend practices so the university's own team could sustain and grow the application portfolio.

The outcomes

The redesigned Fiori apps went live across more than 10,000 active SAP users. The university's own project managers described the procurement workflow as much more intuitive, and the new apps required no training, a direct contrast to the original SAP transactions.

The offline asset-tracking apps replaced handheld scanners with modern Android devices running purpose-built Fiori apps, giving field staff a tool that matched how they actually worked. The DevOps roadmap gave the internal team a clear path to sustain and build on the application portfolio themselves.

The engagement covered employee display, offline mobile, and DevOps, each phase building on what came before.

If we built this today

Concept · not delivered scope

No menus. Just ask and go.

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.

This team spent eleven years living inside menu-heavy SAP screens, so the modern move is to let people get the same procurement, lookup, and time-entry work done by just saying what they need.

The data product

Cloud ERP Intelligence

Grounds the co-pilot in the real organization, who reports to whom, which cost centers and assets belong where, so a lookup or a request resolves to the correct person and record. The SAP Knowledge Graph keeps the business meaning straight.

Intelligent Application on SAP Business Data Cloud

The Joule agent

Employee Self-Service Co-pilot

Reads who the user is, their role, and the high-traffic tasks they run most (employee lookup, time entry, asset tracking, purchase requests), then drafts the action from a plain-language ask instead of a screen path. The person confirms before anything posts.

SAP S/4HANA, SAP Fiori, Joule · PROPOSE · Training hours per task (target: zero) and time to complete a high-traffic transaction

The Fiori app

Joule in the Fiori launchpad

Instead of a custom tile per transaction, Joule sits across the launchpad and takes a request like 'submit my time for last week' or 'find this employee', then opens the right app pre-filled. The same tasks, fewer keystrokes, no screen to learn.

Embedded in the Fiori launchpad

We would still mine the real, everyday transaction paths in SAP Signavio first, map the old apps against the new estate in SAP LeanIX, and let our MIND accelerators carry the custom Fiori work forward instead of rebuilding it from scratch.

The Joule Agent Factory Process intelligence

What we built

  • ~40 enhancements, 1-week Sprint Zero plus five 2-week sprints

    Employee Display and Lookup apps

    Roughly 40 Fiori enhancements delivered in five two-week sprints to improve employee data lookup and display for procurement and HR workflows.

  • No training required, versus the original SAP transactions

    Procurement Fiori app

    A redesigned purchasing workflow built around how procurement staff actually work, replacing menu-driven SAP transactions with a tile-based Fiori experience.

  • Deployed across 10,000+ active SAP users

    Time entry Fiori app

    A simplified time entry application reducing keystrokes for a high-frequency workflow used across a large, diverse user base.

  • Handheld scanners replaced with purpose-built offline mobile apps

    Offline asset-tracking Fiori apps

    Offline-capable Fiori apps for Android, replacing handheld scanners and giving field staff a mobile tool designed around how asset tracking actually happens.

  • User research validated before any development started

    Design Thinking workshops

    Two facilitated workshops, one to set the UX direction at the start and a second to define the offline asset-tracking solution before development began.

  • Internal team equipped to sustain the Fiori portfolio

    DevOps roadmap

    A roadmap engagement combining front-end Fiori development practices with SAP backend DevOps to give the internal team a sustainable path forward.