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Companies can increase the value they get from ERP systems, along with employees’ productivity, by deploying a “user experience platform” that makes ERP more intuitive.

ERP systems are much maligned for being difficult to use, and often for good reason. Complicated, unintuitive user interfaces that require employees to jump to different modules or systems to complete transactions not only impair productivity, but they can also lead to multimillion-dollar losses when companies find themselves forced to write off investments in those systems due to lackluster user adoption.

Even though ERP systems have a bad reputation among users, users’ expectations of enterprise software have risen dramatically. Easy-to-use consumer apps designed for mobile devices have made them less tolerant of kludgey ERP systems and hungry for a more consumer-like experience from the applications they use for work. They want enterprise applications that intuitively and seamlessly integrate with their roles and day-to-day responsibilities.

It is now possible for companies to improve adoption by outfitting ERP systems with a “user experience platform” that knows the individual user, their role, and the information they need on a real-time basis to make them more productive, according to Jaco Van Eeden, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Digital ERP practice. The user experience platform is an analytics-driven, dynamic user interface that wraps around the ERP system and provides employees with a single point of entry to it, other transactional systems, and collaboration tools.

Running on premise or in the cloud and built for mobile devices and desktops, the user experience platform uses analytics to proactively bring to users the priorities, data, and transactions related to their jobs in a single, easy-to-use interface, Van Eeden says. It can be tailored to specific roles and functions regardless of whether they exist inside or outside of an organization, such as customers, sales representatives, managers, vendors, buyers, technicians, or customer service agents.

“The purpose of the user experience platform is to make it easier for employees to do their work,” says Van Eeden. “The platform shows them the prioritized activities they need to perform on any given day, allows them to execute tasks within three clicks or less, and reminds them of compliance policies, business workflows, leading practices for their roles, and standard operating procedures.”

For example, a user experience platform designed for a procurement organization could guide procurement professionals step-by-step on cost effective and compliant ways to source raw materials. Because designers and developers build the procurement process, its policies and practices into the platform, it can highlight in real time materials that should be purchased together, correct quantities and shipment sizes, and recommended vendors, according to Van Eeden. It can also gather data from inventory management systems and use predictive analytics to determine when inventory levels are getting low and when purchase orders need to be placed.

“Identifying available or excess inventory, its location, and whether it can be moved to another manufacturing facility are extremely difficult tasks to execute in a traditional ERP system,” says Van Eeden. “Consequently, procurement professionals either spend hours tracking down that information, or they don’t do it at all, both of which lead to waste and inefficiency.”

How the User Experience Platform Works

Designers apply the principles of persona design and process design to build the user experience platform. For example, they study users’ jobs, including how they execute tasks and interact with existing systems, according to Van Eeden. Based on their observations of and discussions with users, designers come up with streamlined processes and common sense procedures for each role or persona; these processes are intended to bring the ease of use associated with many consumer applications to ERP systems.

Developers then build the processes, policies, and procedures into the new user interface typically using HTML5, JavaScript, and jQuery. The combination of programming languages allows the user experience platform to run on any device. Developers also integrate the user experience platform with a cloud-based architecture and an open-ended service oriented architecture (SOA). The SOA allows the user experience platform to bring together disparate systems. Pre-defined APIs and connectors let the user experience platform “call” back-end systems and databases (whether cloud-based or on premise), retrieve data from them, and ultimately populate the user interface with tasks and information.

When Users Benefit, the Enterprise Benefits

ERP systems aren’t known for simplicity, but the user experience platform holds the potential to change that perception. “The goal is to make the user interface so simple that employees can do their jobs without training,” says Van Eeden.

Making the ERP system’s user interface more intuitive and tailoring it for specific roles can go a long way toward promoting adoption. “Companies that have deployed the user experience platform in functions where adoption lagged have seen tremendous momentum because the platform helps employees work more effectively,” he says. “And because analytics, leading practices, standard operating procedures, and compliance policies are baked into it, the platform drives consistent behavior.”

The user experience platform also helps employees focus on “high value” problem-solving activities, adds Van Eeden. Take the example of a chemical manufacturer that deployed a user experience platform for its customer service organization. The user experience platform shows to customer service reps the orders that are off track globally; they no longer spend hours hunting down that information, and can more efficiently determine the reason a customer hasn’t received an order (for example, a shipment may be stuck in a port or documentation may be missing). The user experience platform also applies analytics to uncover patterns among problematic orders, such as shipments that repeatedly get hung up at a particular port. The manufacturer has since worked with the port to ease bottlenecks.

“User adoption can make or break an ERP implementation,” says Van Eeden. “Enterprises that get enough employees using the ERP system in a consistent manner, tend to derive greater value from it. What better way to promote adoption than to provide employees with a system that makes them more productive, is easier to use, and allows them to focus on higher value activities?”