A water heating and treatment manufacturer redesigned its SAP purchase-requisition approvals with Design Thinking, targeting same-day sign-off

A publicly traded manufacturer of water heating and treatment equipment ran its purchase-requisition approval process inside SAP ECC. On average, getting a PR approved took anywhere from three to nine days, a range that told its own story about how inconsistent and friction-filled the process had become.

Approvers were not proactively notified when PRs needed their attention. They would often find out only when a requester escalated. SAP's built-in delegation feature for absent approvers was not being used, so when an approver was traveling, PRs sat idle. Executives and plant managers were frequently away from their desks and did not know approvals were waiting.

To make a decision on a PR, an approver had to pull data from multiple ERP transactions and stitch it together with information from email attachments. Some departments had started buying without going through the approval process at all, because the process was slower than the work required.

Depending on the dollar value and the requester's role, a single PR might need sign-off from a supervisor plus two executives. The process was not broken in an obvious way, but it was consistently slow.

Mindset ran a structured SAP UX Design Thinking engagement from strategy through delivery, working across every phase of the process.

The Discover phase included interviews with the CIO, the Director of Enterprise Applications, procurement process owners, and end users across plant operations, IT, and accounting. That research built a clear persona and a full user journey, making explicit where the process broke down and why.

The Design phase produced rapid prototypes of a Fiori approval experience, tested continuously with real users. The core design introduced a graphical indicator showing each PR's standing against a set of approval guard rails, reducing the manual analysis an approver had to do before making a call. Inline attachment viewing put the supporting documentation directly in the approval screen instead of requiring a separate email check.

The Deliver phase produced high-resolution prototypes reviewed live with end users, validated before any production work began.

The manufacturer chose to move the proof-of-concept prototype directly into production. Mindset configured SSO and the Fiori Client and shipped several enhancements to complete the deployment.

The Design Thinking process delivered a fully understood business problem, a tested solution design, and a prototype that was proven with real users before any production work began. That thoroughness gave the manufacturer confidence to move directly from prototype to production deployment.

With the new Fiori experience live, the company moved toward its target of same-day approvals, a shift from the 3-to-9-day baseline. Approvers had the context they needed to act in one screen. The guard-rail indicator reduced deliberation time, and inline attachments removed the need to switch between SAP and email.

The engagement also served as a springboard. It expanded into additional co-innovation work on mobile client capabilities, with the research and design rigor from the Design Thinking phase carrying forward into subsequent work.