Accounting Fiori Apps - Neptune Partner Apps developed by Propel UX

About

Propel UX is an SAP certified App Development partner and a leading Neptune implementation partner in North America. Propel has developed a suite of 26 Accounting apps built using Neptune Software. Our Apps are certified by SAP ICC and are listed on SAP App Store. These Apps are delivered as transports and can be customized to suit customers' requirements.

Our Design Philosophy

SAP GUI is still the most widely used SAP UI technology despite being famously user unfriendly. The GUI continues to get used simply because it gets the job done. Users tolerate the lack of usability to achieve business outcomes. As UX designers, we’re acutely aware of this trade-off. Our design philosophy does not sacrifice business outcomes for a modern user interface.

We firmly believe that superior usability requires both a modern user interface (form) and apps that deliver business outcomes (function). Visually appealing apps that don’t deliver business outcomes are of no value. For this reason, we use ‘Design Thinking’ framework extensively to develop Fiori apps.

Case for Accounting Use Cases

While most of our customers pick logistics use cases as a starting point to build Fiori Apps, it was clear to us that accounting use cases needed modernisation and simplification just as much as logistics use cases. After all, the accounting module is still the most widely implemented module in SAP.

Accounting users, while smaller in number, use SAP more intensively. If usage were measured by time spent using apps rather than the number of users, accounting users will top the list of user groups targeted for Fiori app roll-outs.

Once we concluded that accounting use cases needed Fiori apps with superior usability, we analysed standard accounting Fiori apps to determine how they stack up in terms of usability. The first thing we learned was that there are no accounting apps available on non-HANA DB SAP systems.

All accounting Fiori apps require S4 Finance to be implemented. S4 HANA migration project is a non-trivial exercise and often times customers find it difficult to build a business case. Even assuming that migration to S4 HANA will eventually occur, the question on our minds was how good are standard Fiori apps on S4. We analyzed standard S4 Finance Fiori apps (version 1809) to determine their usability. We were disappointed with them. Some of the reasons are listed below.

Some of the most widely used transactions in accounting did not have Fiori apps for them. For instance, there was no app for reversing an accounting document nor was there an app for listing parked documents and posting them.The second problem was that some of the standard ‘Fiori’ apps were not built using UI5. They were merely transactions rendered using SAP GUI for HTML. These apps behaved exactly the same way as GUI transactions, the only difference was their Fiori themed appearance. The third issue was more fundamental. The apps were not user friendly. Some of the apps looked busy, some of them did not load as fast as we expected them to and some lacked the usability features that we expected from ‘Fiori’ design. Sometimes, there were multiple apps for a single transaction in SAP. Post Logistics Invoice (MIRO) had one app for simplified posting and another one for complex posting.

It was clear to us that some of the common accounting use cases needed Fiori apps built for them. And the time to get them built was now. These apps would blend form with function consistent with our design philosophy. Superior usability also meant that approval apps are best delivered as mobile apps. It also meant that we had to build apps for widely used custom transactions in SAP.

One of the most widely used custom transactions is the journal upload program. A journal upload program creates accounting documents using data from an Excel / Text file. Custom built journal upload programs are often clunky and are not built with user experience in mind. The journal upload program made it to our list simply because of its wide usage.

Our apps also needed process coverage. This meant that we needed factsheet apps for master data, transaction apps for posting and analytical apps for reporting.

App Listing

Please check out Upload GL Document – Park app video.

Neptune customers can pick and choose from the list the apps listed above. We can develop apps for customer specific use cases as well. These apps are architected the same way as apps on the Neptune App store. Each app can be copied and modified to suit customer specific needs.

System Requirements

Neptune UX platform / Planet 8 needs to be installedRequires SAP UI5 version 1.60 and upwards Apps are built to be installed on Neptune Launchpad. Installation on Fiori Launchpad will require minimal rework.

App Screenshots