2022 marks my 20th year at SAP Fieldglass. I joined the Fieldglass family when we were a small but mighty startup, and I knew I had struck gold. When we were a team of 50, everyone pitched in no matter the task, difficulty, or time we knew it would take. We just did it, no questions asked. When our users needed something, we got close to them, talked to them, and followed their journey and watched them use our product. We got inside their heads. We learned quite a lot from our users and continue to do so. With hard work, teamwork, and smarts we built an amazing product supported by exceptional individuals for the world’s best customers and user community. Our goal is to have the world’s best, most intuitive and user-friendly external talent procurement and management tool available. It doesn’t get any better than that…or does it?

The Importance of User Insights

UX is an approach that allows users to navigate our applications without confusion and with ease, providing a smooth experience of SAP Fieldglass solutions. It combines elements of design, psychology, research, technology and business to provide the best experience for the user. UX sits at the sweet spot between technology, people and business. Understanding the end user by building empathy through conversations and user research, understanding the business goals by highlighting each feature’s value and use, and understanding technology so we can use the best tools to create effective and efficient designs for our end users.

Our continuous collaboration has taken on many forms through the years and most recently, through our SAP Fieldglass UXC. This UX advocacy program is designed to give our customers, partners, suppliers, and internal employee users a direct link to SAP Fieldglass UX leadership and to the design team. Together, we have built a strong community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about improving the SAP Fieldglass UX and UI. Collectively, we all want to simplify the desktop and mobile applications, find ways to make it more progressive and intuitive – especially for the infrequent user, and incorporate new trends like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our common goal is to give the user what they need when they need it and to advise and guide them through a visually pleasing, and dare we say, enjoyable application experience.

A Culture of Continuous Improvement

Our UXC meets at least five times per year. They challenge us to explore new ways to stretch our application and expertise. The 200 + engaged individuals from 90 companies have influenced several key UX enhancements in our desktop and mobile applications. They get sneak peeks at upcoming releases, take advantage of opportunities to promote themselves and their work, get first dibs on usability studies and beta tests, and share best practices with each other and with our User Experience Team.

We’re leading the industry with this program. Establishing this sort of constant collaboration with our users is imperative: our success and the strength of our relationships is dependent on the success, loyalty, and growth of our user base. Staying close to our customers, co-innovating with them, and understanding their journey helps us improve their entire experience. How do you engage with your customers? How do you improve their user experience?

Follow me, Kelly Moran for more customer and user experience insights.

For information about our latest UX/UI enhancements, check out these blog posts: SAP Fieldglass VMS: UI Design Transformation and SAP Fieldglass VMS: Graphical Views for a Better UI. For more SAP community blogs visit https://blogs.sap.com/tags/67838200100800006957/ and for relevant Q&A visit https://answers.sap.com/tags/67838200100800006957.