Build: design me a project

by | 14 December 2017

Among SAP's portfolio of 6,000 applications there are some nuggets worth discovering.

I'm going to tell you about a UFO in the SAP world: build. It is a tool that allows the development of applications for SAP UI5/Fiori with a "Design Thinking" method.

For those of you who don't know, Design Thinking is an iterative development process that puts the user experience at the centre of the creation process.

According to Jean-Pierre Leac, " Design Thinking is simply the term used to designate all the methods and tools that help, when faced with a problem or an innovation project, to apply the same approach as a designer would. It is an approach to innovation and its management which aims to be a synthesis between analytical and intuitive thinking. It relies heavily on a co-creative process involving feedback from the end user .

How does build work?

  • Via a website, no thick client buildinstallation
  • An account can be created instantly on the internet
  • Freemium: 100% of the features are available for free with 5 active projects simultaneously
  • build Allows you to create more or less complex pages with Photos, Tables, Graphics (figure a)
  • The tool allows you to create navigations between pages graphically without writing code (figure b)
  • The result is a Responsive Design application: PC, Tablet, Mobile
  • Source data can come from multiple Excel Files, or a connection to Hana Cloud Platform

Figure a

 

Figure b

 

What are the stages of development?(figure c)

  • Define the scope with the business team
  • Research the key elements to be measured and displayed
  • Create "Persona" that carry the "Pain Points".
  • Move from a "problem" approach to the search for solutions, make a "story board", brainstorm
  • Build the prototype, creating the layout and graphics via pencil and paper
  • Load the page scan, build the navigation from one block to another, validate the correct functioning
  • Implement the application by building the pages from the paper templates and connecting the data sources
  • Test the application with the help of the business that can connect to the platform
  • Deploy the application on Hana Cloud Platform

 

Figure c

What are the build properties that make it a customer-centric application design tool?

  • A group of users, connected via build, co-designate the application and provide feedback via the collaborative tools integrated into the build platform(figure d)
  • Page editor accessible to the trade (figure e)
  • The design of the pages, as well as the navigation between each page, are in the hands of the end customer who can validate them before calling on IT.
  • Real data can be loaded with a flat file to design the application without having to make connections to the database.

 

Figure d

 

 

Figure e

 

To conclude, the only way to have a complete opinion on this application is to carry out a project from start to finish; which we have not had the chance to do to date. The level of completion of build therefore remains an unknown. What is certain is that the direction taken by SAP via this type of application is the right one and breaks with the very technophile image of the editor.

The application is available via the link: https: //www.build.me

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Jérôme Blanc

After graduating from the Ecole Centrale d'Électronique, Jérôme specialised in SAP BI technologies. Before founding Bilink, Jérôme spent several years in London and Chicago with a company specialising in SAP BI solutions. Jérôme wishes to bring to our firm the best practices that he was able to appreciate during his experiences abroad while ensuring that our own values are respected. Jérôme's role today is to guarantee the smooth running of our clients' BI transformation projects
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