2020 has definitely been a year of change. A year of understanding. A year of needing to distance ourselves to stay safe. For all the crazy things people have had to endure in 2020, I wanted to take a look back over the past year and celebrate the successes and accomplishments we’ve had over the year in the Mindset Software Products space.
January 2020/Q1: Mindset decides to bring meaningful software products to market.
At the beginning of this year, Mindset made a decision to invest in creating and building software for our customers to use. As our customers trust in us to deliver amazing solutions, we wanted to help them measure how great those solutions were performing. Enter our first software focus of the year. Fiori App Analyzer.
Our Fiori App Analyzer product is something we’ve had a bit of focus on all of this year. We’re on our 4th release of the year with Fiori App Analyzer and I love how easily it can help our customers know how much their SAP end users are using SAP Fiori applications. Installed directly in the Fiori Launchpad, there is a tracking mechanism that gets attached to the Fiori Launchpad itself, and an administration application that shows you visual high level usage per application and also detailed table data on each user and each application being used.
This product has been very impactful and meaningful to us in the Mindset software space because it is the first software product we released this year, but also we believe in the value it can provide SAP customers in identifying what people are using and more importantly what they are NOT using and why.
As a free product, the Fiori App Analyzer is available to anyone who hosts applications in the Fiori Launchpad through a simple signup to download. To learn more about its features and how to download, please see it’s website here: https://mindsetstg.wpengine.com/mindset-sap-software/mindset-app-analyzer-for-sap-fiori-2/
Q2 2020: Software Product Co-Innovation
In Q2 of this year, a trusted client of ours came to us with a problem. COVID-19 was impacting their supply chain and they wanted a safer and more efficient way of checking transportation trucks into and out of facilities. Warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and raw materials storage locations were all using paper based check-in/out processes. During the initial ramp-up of COVID-19, it was unknown exactly how this process could work based on what was available at different locations. In working with a number of customers in the SAP transportation space in the last 2-3 years, we’ve observed anything from drive up terminals where a driver fills out his information on a clipboard, to small check-in waiting rooms where drivers go inside, wait in line, and fill out check-in paperwork.
Enter Mindset’s second software product SafeTransport. SafeTransport is a SaaS based product hosted by Mindset that captures check-in/check-out information for transportation drivers checking into facilities. No longer does a person have to get out of their truck to go into a waiting room or trade pieces of paper back and forth between clerk and driver. This is not only safer during this time, but a lot more efficient. It also provides real time reporting to who is on site at any given time in case of an emergency.
This has been the most meaningful software product we’ve created this year. In the wake of Covid, we were looking for ways to help our customers quickly in the best way we knew how. Creating great user experiences to solve real problems. By Co-Innovating we were able to spend time observing just as we would in a custom solutions project.
To learn more about SafeTransport, please visit our software product website here: https://mindsetstg.wpengine.com/mindset-sap-software/mindset-safe-transport/
Q3 2020: Voice of the Employee
Always in the backlog of the Fiori App Analyzer was a feedback mechanism. We wanted to give real end users of SAP a way to give meaningful feedback to IT teams. Up until now, we were looking to the Qualtrics acquisition to provide something like this within the SAP Fiori space. Short story shorter… tired of waiting, we built it into the same Fiori Launchpad extension we use for Fiori App Analyzer! With our Voice of the Employee tool, we let users rate the applications they’re using with a 5 point rating system. 5 = The best thing you’ve ever used in your software experience and 1 = The most terrible thing I’ve ever had to use as a tool to do my job. We also have the ability to capture comments from users (up to 128 characters) if they’d like to leave some feedback.
For an administrator or IT SAP support team, we have a detailed application. It visually shows ratings per application and/or ratings per user. It shows you the average rating of that application for all of the times it’s been rated when looking at the ratings per application. Additionally, you can switch this data-set to a table view to see each and every rating filterable by application, by rating, or any other field along with seeing any of the comments that were left.
This is an application that will continue to grow in 2021. Also, we have a backlog and feature set that will add to being able to get end users to engage easily with IT to provide feedback. We’re hoping with this in place, our SAP customers can easily see where their next User Experience project would have the most impact!
Look for more information on Voice of the Employee in the first quarter of 2021. However, for now, the base features are included in the Fiori App Analyzer!
Q4 2020: Another customer pain point
Between Q3 and all of Q4 of this year, we have started to focus on another pain point we’ve seen in the market. There’s not too much I can share until very early next year on this software product. However, what I can talk about is how we’re approaching it.
This product is also going to be within the Supply Chain space. Additionally, it focuses on the role of a Warehouse Manager. Think – warehouse managers being able to make decisions in real-time instead of re-actively as they have been. Further, we’ve seen many pain points over the years in the warehouse space. From what we’ve seen S/4HANA is still not solving them. We’re approaching this software product exactly the way we would with any of our projects.
1: Design Thinking sessions
2: Low/Res Prototype
3: High Res Prototype
4: Create initial user story backlog for development
5: Get feedback from real end users
6: Build/refine/iterate
7: GTM
With this process, we’re currently in Steps 5 and 6. This is where we are connecting with Supply Chain experts and users in the SAP industry. We’re getting feedback, and iterating on development in agile build sprints.
I’m very excited about this software product and we’ll have a lot more to share in very early 2021. Until then, if you’re a supply chain expert and/or have pain points within your warehouse please reach out to me. However, I’d be happy to run our solution by you to get feedback. The more input we receive the better it’s going to be.
In conclusion, that’s a wrap for 2020! Looking back over the year, we’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit in our first full year. I’m really proud of the things we’ve developed thus far. Additionally, the team that’s been able to focus on these things this year. I’m very excited for 2021 and can’t wait to show you all of the new things we’ll be announcing soon!
Happy Holidays to all!
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