Ready for Extended ECM for SAP Solutions 16?
Think back to the days when working on a computer involved exiting completely out of one program before you could open up another. (Or, if you don’t remember those days, feel pity for those of us who do.)
For everyone who owns a computer, tablet, and/or smartphone, those days seem so far back (or non-existent), and yet enterprises relive them every day. While workers may not need to completely shut down one program to open another, they do have to switch between programs to find content. Are they looking for that vendor contract? Employee tax form? Email from a customer? Those may be all stored within separate systems that are not accessible through SAP®. OpenText®’s Extended ECM changes all of that.
There’s no doubt that technology has made us more productive than ever. It almost makes you wonder, can we be even more productive? Multifunctional machines, cloud computing, software that seems to do everything and clean the kitchen sink, too…What’s left that hasn’t been done?
The answer: lots. And OpenText®, a world leader in enterprise content management (ECM), has just released Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions 16 as part of their Suite 16 solution. This solution will let you connect your content with your SAP® applications to provide your workers with the information they need, when they need it.
In other words, your employees can stop spending time logging in and out of programs to search for information and instead can start increasing their own productivity. Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions 16 will help.
We’ve taken some time and examined this exciting new release in detail. Here’s what it means for you.
CONNECTED WORKSPACES
While the concept of business workspaces is not entirely new, the introduction of connected business workspaces in Extended ECM 16 is very compelling. Connected workspaces can go far beyond system boundaries. For the first time, you can now create a true 360-degree view of information that will lead to better collaboration with virtually everyone you interact with: customers, suppliers, business partners, and employees.
What does that look like? Let’s say you have three workspaces in your SAP® solution: Customer, Opportunity, and Sales. Your sales team successfully sells your service or product to a prospect, so that prospect has now become a customer and the sale is recorded. With connected workspaces, the information gathered on the prospect in the Opportunity workspace is automatically referenced to the Customer workspace. Furthermore, the information collected on the sale is also connected to the Customer workspace.
Ultimately, it means that having that full view of information will not only save your employees time, but it will also help you make smarter decisions by making the relevant information immediately accessible.
HTML 5-BASED SMART USER INTERFACE (UI)
Smart UI and its UI widgets are HTML 5 based, which makes it great for defining role-based user interfaces. Integrating with other leading applications such as SAP® and SAP®’s new Fiori user interface are also now possibilities. Both of these features can significantly reduce the time an employee spends on locating information and validating its accuracy. You know the ultimate benefit, then: More efficient business processes and increased productivity.
INCREASE ADOPTION ACROSS YOUR COMPANY
From the dozens of successful Extended ECM projects we’ve implemented, we’ve found that the adoption of Extended ECM business workspaces within an organization can often be slow and limited to a few key business processes. Up to this point, every business workspace needed some development work to make full use of Extended ECM. That of course meant that projects needed more time and money, two things few organizations have these days. Now, the introduction of the generic property provider concept will significantly reduce development and instead allow you to configure much of the functionality yourself. In the end, it’ll bring you closer to simplification and broader adoption of business processes using Extended ECM for SAP®. You likely understand the ultimate benefit here, too: better collaboration among various teams, which can lead to faster innovation cycles.
ROUNDING IT ALL UP
No one likes switching in and out of different programs to search for information. Although you may have had no choice years ago, when that was all that was available, times have changed. And it’s about time your organization changed, too. Extended ECM for SAP®, as part of the new SUITE 16, will provide you with more flexibility and allow you to go all cloud, hybrid or on-premise with your digital platform. Your workers will be able to find the information they need when they need it, without worrying about duplication or inaccuracy. In the end, you’ll be able to do much more with less. And who doesn’t want that?
InfoSpire is a consulting company focused on enterprise content management for SAP®. That’s what we do. That’s where our expertise is. That means we use our expertise together with best practices to help enterprises take control of their content and information and design a way to weave it intelligently into SAP® business processes and make it easily accessible. What does that mean for your company? That’s easy to answer: increased decision-making ability, stronger compliance practices, faster response times, increased accuracy, and more efficient business processes.
For general information on OpenText® and OpenText® Release 16, visit http://www.opentext.com/16
