Archives
Microsoft
Apr 21, 2011
SAP challenges that can be addressed by SharePoint integration
Companies that have implemented SAP face a few a common challenges that can be alleviated by a tight integration of SharePoint and SAP. This article gives some examples of such scenarios. Complex user interfaces Business processes supported by SAP require entering data into transactions that are generally quite complex and show a lot more fields and screens than are needed in the process. This problem can be solved to a large degree by exposing a simplified version of an SAP transaction on a SharePoint screen. This simplified page can contain all of the data fields required on one simple screen… Read more
Mar 4, 2011
Doing what we do best
Being from the Detroit area originally, there will always be a place in my heart for the motor city. Every now and then I come across something out of the motor city that appeals to that place. The Chrysler super bowl ad was one of those moments for me. See for yourself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc Besides rekindling some of the positive images of my roots, the other message that resonated with me was to focus on doing what you do best. We all know that a large part of being successful in both business and life is to weed through all… Read more
Dec 2, 2010
Winshuttle 10 and Enterprise Application Usability
I have been talking to several current and prospective customers about Winshuttle 10 and have found that with these products we have really managed to address a pervasive customer pain point. The customers’ interest in improving SAP usability and user experience is increasing driven by one major factor. As users continue to get exposed to iPhone and Facebook-like interfaces, their patience in dealing with the ERP user-interfaces is diminishing. Customers are also realizing that usability comes at a great cost to the enterprise, a cost which most businesses can ill-afford in this economy. The solution to improving SAP usability does… Read more
Nov 23, 2010
The application of the form – comparing form technologies
There are plenty of articles on the web that speak to the immense benefits to be had from implementing electronic forms over paper forms, and of course the merits of electronic over paper and manual are largely intuitive. Valuable metrics like turnaround time, reduced printing, filing and retrieval delay costs are all part of the formula on cost and return however one shouldn’t be too easily seduced into the idea of forms if it is not appropriate. Paper-based form processes have limitations Adobe in particular has put out a number of articles and ROI calculators that indicate that some of… Read more
Nov 18, 2010
Winshuttle’s NEW Business Value Assessment Version 2.0!!!
So let’s continue with our discussion about measuring SAP usability and focus on what we can learn from your SAP users, the transactions they are executing, and information about the volume and complexity of these transactions. Let’s call it … Business Value Assessment 2.0 or “BVA 2.0”. Let’s start with a couple of questions: Sure it helps to understand how my company is using SAP, the number of transactions, the volumes of screens and the fields processed. But what I really need to know is “What is my finance team’s SAP performance? Who are my SAP Finance transaction power users… Read more
Oct 28, 2010
Wug uh Wug uh Wug uh
Actually, now that I think about it, all those ‘uh’s should be aah!’s I just returned from the Winshuttle User Group (WUG) meeting in New Orleans. The gathering was a “Winshuttle product love-fest” as one colleague described it, but I like to think that I came away with some sense of purposeful idea generation on new features, improvements, and capabilities for future releases of the Winshuttle TRANSACTION and DIRECT products. The reason for the aah’s has to do with the discovery by many customers that there were a bunch of new capabilities implemented in products released in 2009/2010 that existing customers… Read more
Oct 8, 2010
The Support Report
Every day, Winshuttle Support handles issues from customers around the world. Here’s an update on what we’ve been up to… September marked the busiest month on record for the support team. We opened 634 cases in September versus 484 in August, and 488 in July. The previous high was 583 which occurred in March 2010. This number makes us wonder what are our customers are asking for help with. Some of the most common topics included installation inquiries and a number of questions around the newest version of Excel. As of the current version 10 release, we do not fully support MS Office 2010. It is on… Read more
Sep 24, 2010
Why MM17 isn’t the answer to your question!
For many years, MM17, MASS and other SAP transactions were the preferred method of making changes to data in production systems. I used to do it myself, when I was lucky enough to have access to them. Soon most security teams figure out this can be dangerous and take away 99% of users access to the transactions. For the uninitiated, MM17 allows mass maintenance of a field on many records to one value. Which can be useful if you want to block all of your materials before a product line change, but it isn’t a good way to make small scale changes. It is… Read more
Sep 10, 2010
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3, 4, Testing
With the new versions of all of our products coming out this month, the support department is adding some new hats to the stack that we wear. Testing is a vital part of the new product cycle. Our development team does a great job running the new software through its paces in the QA phase, but there is always another gate that the software has to get through before it makes it to customer computers. That gate is support team testing. In support team testing, we want to see what happens when the new software gets used in a more… Read more