Microsoft Duet and Winshuttle transactionSHUTTLE are both Office Business Applications (OBAs) - applications that enhance Office applications by providing access to the SAP enterprise system. Both products focus on improving the end-user experience while interacting with SAP. The two products are complementary and form an important part of an SAP customer's productivity stack. However, the two solutions do differ in several ways including:
Approach & Roadmap
The Duet approach is to roll-out a series of point-solution scenarios with tight integration between all Office applications and SAP - scenarios such as time-management, budget management, contract management, etc.
The Winshuttle approach is to provide a general solution for integration between Excel or Access and SAP, allowing customers to create their own scenarios with a simple record and map process.
Target User Base
Duet targets users who currently do not access SAP regularly, except through employee self-service or manager self-service portals.
Winshuttle targets users who are generally licensed as professional users of SAP, whether they are business users or IT users.
Data Focus
Duet scenarios are generally focused on single transaction data input or report extract into SAP.
Winshuttle scenarios are generally focused on creation and updates to large amounts of data via the SAP transactional engine.
Architecture
Duet uses the enterprise service oriented architecture (SOA) requiring SAP Netweaver-enabled web-services, latest versions of SAP and Office and the deployment of a Duet server.
Winshuttle software is installed on a user's desktop that uses the SAP RFC API to communicate with SAP. Winshuttle software works with all version of SAP since 4.6C and all version of office since Office 2000.
"With Winshuttle, you can import massive amounts of data directly from a spreadsheet, which is a format that employees know and understand. It's changed how we approach all kinds of SAP data” from mass changes to periodic data cleansing."
- Lynn Farrell, SAP HR and Payroll Manager, Southwark Council
"We're a victim of our own success. I'm adding another member to our team because of the sheer volume of data we're handling with transactionSHUTTLE. This solution has completely changed how we approach and manage many of our projects."
- Peter Hebert, manager of HR data management, RBC
"transactionSHUTTLE gives us the ability to do things we weren't able to do before. We have significantly reduced our manual data entry costs, reduced headcount, and minimized the burden on IT."
- Paul Cahill, Director of Information Technology, Hubbell Wiring Systems
"We have saved over $1 Million in avoided programming, reduced data entry workload costs and Service Level Agreement (SLA) costs."
- Chantal Gauvreau, Business Process Manager, SAP Center of Excellence, Canada Post
"Winshuttle offers the complete automation solution. It's easy-to-install, well-documented desktop software, with excellent technical support"
- Erin Stone, SAP FI/CO Senior Analyst, B. Braun
"Data entry is no longer an IT headache. Our users no longer blame our SAP system and instead fully embrace it."
- Rick Davis, Manager, Enterprise Systems
We now use the term "Winshuttling" to refer to any solution that makes our lives easier.
- Steve Walker, Manager of Supply Chain Systems, Under Armour