What Fiori means for SAP and its customers?

Frank Scavo, Strativa

This is the research byte that Frank Scavo, President of Sister Consulting Form Computer Economics, bases part of his work on research into our Stevia. Strativa provides independent software selection services as part of its management consulting services for organisations that assess legacy systems or wish to completely replace HCM, ERP, CRM, or any other enterprise system.

For the past several days, discussions have been raging on whether SAP should offer its new user app, called Fiori, to customers at no charge as part of its maintenance program. For those who are not completely familiar with Fiori or SAP’s technology stack, it becomes difficult to argue. This research byte presents some of the arguments that mostly have unrecognised factors. In addition, we’ll discuss what SAP should do in its best interest and what this means for its customers.

What is Fiori?
SAP Fiori is one type of app from which recently written by SAP. This app shows the most popular and used SAP functions like information lookup, workflow approval, self-service tasks, etc. These apps are especially easy to use on tablets, desktops, smartphones, etc.

Fiori is not just a new user interface but a whole set of cross-device applications. Through this, you can allow users to start a process on their desktop and continue it on their smartphone or tablet. SAP has been developing its Fiori app on its latest user interface framework named SAPUI5.

SAP lists three types of Fiori apps:
It is a transactional app that allows a user to transact on mobile devices as well as SAP desktops. Such as one app for creating leave on absence requests and another for approving its purchase order. Fact sheets reflect information on key business items in SAP. As such this fact-sheet app is for viewing the central purchase agreement. The App also allows the user to drill down into its related entities such as Items under Agreement, Vendor Contacts, and Terms. The analytical app allows the user to display complete business information, its key performance measures, and other information.

Currently, all the information related to the Fiori apps is available on the SAP website. SAP has released about 2 waves of Fiori apps so far and each has 25 apps with additional waves playing. It is important to note that Fiori will never be a comprehensive user interface for SAP. This is mainly because most SAP, and ERP processes cannot be done with Fiori. Not now nor ever in the future.

All SAP processes are very complex in design and do not lend themselves well to tablets or smartphones. As everyone knows, there are many more things you can do on Netflix than with the desktop version of the Netflix iPad or iPhone app. Just like taking a tedious SAP process and getting it to a point where you can deploy it on a smartphone, is quite difficult. It Is not an effort to develop by incorporating the user interface of Fiori SAP. SAP has released a product called Screen Person which allows users to customize the standard SAP screen to their liking. As such a user can delete fields or change the location of the field using Person without interest.

SAP customers are pushing pricing for Fiori:
The best source of information on Fiori’s pricing is the Diginomica post by SAP expert John Appleby. This post is working for Bluefin Solutions, an SAP partner. John Appleby notes that there is currently a one-time fee for Fiori, a $150 list price per user. Which gives the user access to current and future Fiori apps. It’s a nominal fee but Appleby says $150 per user can add up very easily. If a user needs to access one or two Fiori apps as quickly as possible, the $150 fee in companies with thousands of such users will soon become expensive.

Jarret Pazahanick, in a post by Appleby, alluded to a company that employs 80,000 employees in which it must pay $12 million to all its employees just to see pay stubs using Fiori. There are also some scenarios where the Fiori cost is easily justified such as the $150 fee per user with multiple Fiori apps while enabling salespeople is a no-brainer in such cases.

What are customers paying maintenance for?  Currently, SAP maintenance is only 22% of the original customer’s entire license fee, which means that the customer has essentially purchased the entire SAP product portfolio for the second time in just less than 5 years.

Customers view Fiori as an extension of the SAP product that already has a license available. Why should SAP pay more to license Fiori? All SAP customers around the world are now opposed to SAP charging Fiori’s policy. Reminds me of the customer movement against the forced march to higher level maintenance charges that took place at SAP a few years back. It also commemorates all of SAP’s struggles in 2011, along with charging methods for its SAP Net weaver gateway and mobility platform.

SAP’s policy appears to be more difficult for existing customers than for new customers. The region’s report indicates that whenever SAP is selling a new deal it always shows Fiori because it shows well. SAP usually bundles Fiori as part of the total deal when it comes to putting an offer together in one place.

However, if a customer wants to buy Fiori, that existing customer has to pay $150 per user. The exception, of course, is when a customer has something they want to buy from SAP. SAP then bundles the Fiori a customer is purchasing in the deal with the SAP products. In other words, we can say that you have to keep paying for Fiori until you are not willing to buy anything else from SAP.

Other vendors provide new functionality at no charge:
Some believe that SAP’s policy is no different from all other vendors. What sometimes happens is that some other vendors take a liberal approach to providing new types of functionality to existing customers. For example, Workday recently introduced a new comprehensive mobile and user interface support without charging their customers more for this new functionality. Something similar that Salesforce.com has done with its Salesforce1 platform is a new release of its Force.com platform at no extra charge.