SAP in 2022 increased exper­tise and resources attuned to prod­uct and ser­vice design, func­tion­al­i­ty, and usabil­i­ty. The moves includ­ed the appoint­ment of Arin Bhowmick as Chief Design Officer. 

After just a few months into the new role, Bhowmick described his com­pre­hen­sive design def­i­n­i­tion and reach as ​“a cross-sec­tion of sys­tem, process­es, frame­works, and user inter­faces com­ing togeth­er to help solve busi­ness out­comes,” address­ing improve­ments in SAP solu­tions that are already under­way and oth­ers still to come. He also empha­sized the increased impor­tance of chan­nels for cus­tomer feed­back, with direct calls to action for the ASUG community.

This is an edit­ed ver­sion of the com­plete con­ver­sa­tion con­duct­ed late last year. 

Ques­tion: Could you pro­vide some of the back­ground and cre­den­tials you bring to this role?

Answer: I’ve been a design prac­ti­tion­er and leader all my life, so I bring pro­fi­cien­cy, aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing in design, and a Master’s in human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion. I’ve spent pret­ty much my entire career on enter­prise appli­ca­tions. I spent my first 13 years at Ora­cle on the ERP side but also got to work on data­base sys­tems, data ware­hous­es, sys­tem admin­is­tra­tion expe­ri­ences, and cloud applications.

Beyond that, I worked in a small­er com­pa­ny called Progress Soft­ware and built a UX prac­tice from the ground up and a cen­ter of excel­lence. Lat­er, I was the chief design offi­cer at IBM for prod­ucts in the soft­ware port­fo­lio, from AI to data to apps, automa­tion, secu­ri­ty, and blockchain. 

Now at SAP, I am the chief design offi­cer. My goal is to make SAP known not just for great tech­nol­o­gy func­tion­al­i­ty but also great expe­ri­ences. To me, expe­ri­ences are more than just the UI or the UI in the prod­uct. I plan on lever­ag­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of design: a cross-sec­tion of sys­tems, process­es, frame­works, and user inter­faces com­ing togeth­er to help solve busi­ness out­comes. That’s what I’m after. 

Q: Is this a new role at SAP?

A: No, the role is not new. But my focus is more expan­sive than that of my predecessors. 

Q: Do the design ele­ments in your phi­los­o­phy inter­sect with the new SAP brand­ing ele­ments, and if so, can you explain that?

A: One hun­dred per­cent. When cus­tomers or prospects engage with our prod­ucts and ser­vices, they are look­ing at one SAP. So the brand lan­guage needs to be per­va­sive across all the touch points. In this con­text, we have a design sys­tem that also focus­es on design lan­guage. The design lan­guage should be used across the board — in dig­i­tal chan­nels and prod­ucts in print and media — so that there is imme­di­ate recog­ni­tion of SAP as a brand. Brand expres­sion is anoth­er part of how we show up for users, cus­tomers, and partners. 

One of the key inter­sec­tion points is between the design pro­fes­sion and brand­ing and mar­ket­ing. We’re close­ly aligned and work­ing togeth­er towards the same mission.

Q: Along the same lines, has design tak­en on more impor­tance and promi­nence at SAP, and, if so, how and why?

A: I would argue it has. I think that design has been in the company’s DNA for quite some time. But I want to ensure that we expand the def­i­n­i­tion, from just our prod­ucts to all cus­tomer touch­points. One of the key pri­or­i­ties for SAP at a cor­po­rate lev­el is user expe­ri­ence; with­in that, we have spe­cif­ic goals and missions.

My sim­pli­fied mis­sion is to build inclu­sive expe­ri­ences and prod­ucts that users love — not tol­er­ate, but tru­ly love. There’s a huge gulf here that we need to climb through. With the renewed focus on design, we have intro­duced new cen­ters of excel­lence with­in the design com­mu­ni­ty, inter­nal to SAP, so that we build our prod­ucts right and man­i­fest those inno­va­tions for the world to use. Things like design­ing for AI: how do we embed mean­ing­ful arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence into our prod­ucts? Plat­form expe­ri­ences: con­nect­ing the dots in our port­fo­lio, where the sum of the dif­fer­ent parts brought togeth­er yields even greater results. Inte­gra­tion becomes a key area. We gain user insights and research to push user-cen­tered and human-cen­tered design, not just through data col­lec­tion but by gen­er­at­ing insights through deep research that will affect the prod­uct roadmap.

We focus on acces­si­ble and inclu­sive expe­ri­ences, not just about acces­si­bil­i­ty as a com­po­nent of what we deliv­er, but by cre­at­ing inclu­sive expe­ri­ences that can be used world­wide by peo­ple with any back­ground and constraints. 

Q: And is the design com­mu­ni­ty larg­er, in terms of resources and scope, with­in the entire organization?

A: Yes. I don’t have the exact num­bers, but if you make a head-to-head com­par­i­son, I think design has grown at least 20%, if not more. We have new design­ers com­ing in and hir­ing peo­ple with the right skills. We hired great prac­ti­tion­ers from oth­er cloud and AI com­pa­nies that have done this in the past, so we have a dif­fer­ent lev­el of tal­ent in our busi­ness at this point of time. 

Q: In the com­men­tary that you wrote [for sap​.com], you dis­cussed the impor­tance of cus­tomer voice and involve­ment. Can you speak to that a lit­tle bit and if it’s pos­si­ble for ASUG mem­bers to get involved, or could they already be involved?

A: They prob­a­bly already are, so let me talk about the con­cept of voice of a cus­tomer, and in this con­text, voice of cus­tomer and voice of user. While I use them inter­change­ably, there are dif­fer­ent lev­els of gran­u­lar­i­ty. We want to build prod­ucts and ser­vices meant for users to get their jobs done. They’re using enter­prise appli­ca­tions and tools to make a liv­ing; it’s part of their exis­tence. So, our belief is that when we involve users in mak­ing the prod­uct, in the align­ment of the prob­lem we’re try­ing to solve, we gen­er­ate bet­ter out­comes. Users and cus­tomers become the North Star.

I’ve been here sev­en months or so. I’ve already seen a lot of forums where we inter­act with cus­tomers and users in dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties — even ASUG mem­bers, whether in the ini­tial brain­storm­ing phas­es, con­cep­tion, ideation, or all the way to validation.

We have some con­crete struc­tured venues as well. For exam­ple, we have an Exec­u­tive Advi­so­ry Board for SAP, and UX is a par­tic­u­lar track there. We also have a Cus­tomer Office that I set up in the design com­mu­ni­ty. This is the team that explic­it­ly works with cus­tomers to make sure that cus­tomers are aware of the UX strat­e­gy, the inno­va­tions that are being planned, and have a voice in how we move forward.

And the third part about the voice is about run­ning struc­tured user eval­u­a­tions and user usabil­i­ty tests, and gen­er­a­tive stud­ies with end users. This is where many ASUG mem­bers are involved because they are the tar­get users in some cases.

Q: What do you think cus­tomers think about in terms of SAP design strengths? And how do cus­tomers want SAP to improve?

A: It’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. I’m for­tu­nate to have had many inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers already start­ing with Sap­phire and with SAP men­tors who give tan­gi­ble, cred­i­ble feed­back on our prod­ucts and ser­vices. I see two com­mon threads.

One is that cus­tomers trust us if we do the right thing. They’ve been with us along the jour­ney for the last 50 years. They want to stay with us, so they believe we are try­ing to do the right things. That said, specif­i­cal­ly in design, one of our advan­tages is that we are enter­prise-grade. We care about how the soft­ware will be used in the con­text of work and the future of work. Our cus­tomers appre­ci­ate that we cre­ate glob­al, uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ences, that we build acces­si­bil­i­ty right into the prod­ucts, and that we build for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy so peo­ple can get their jobs done faster and smarter. That’s the good­ness I see cus­tomers real­ly ral­ly­ing around.

In terms of what we can do bet­ter as a design com­mu­ni­ty, the feed­back I get from cus­tomers is to con­tin­u­ous­ly improve the usabil­i­ty of our prod­ucts. You know, we have obvi­ous­ly built prod­ucts for a while. We also had acqui­si­tions that we’ve inte­grat­ed. There are inher­ent chal­lenges. The push from the cus­tomer side is how we build it togeth­er so it acts as a sin­gu­lar ecosys­tem of prod­ucts. That’s an area of work we need to get bet­ter at.

Q: You said that among your goals is to build prod­ucts that are loved. What does that look like?

A: I think that in this mar­ket, whether we like it or not, with the advent of cloud, we expect our users to dig­i­tal­ly dis­cov­er us, learn about us, try our prod­ucts, get the ben­e­fits ear­ly on, and start using it. So, we want to push toward dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences. This is what our future holds.

Enter­prise soft­ware is about pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. What can design and expe­ri­ence do to help users get their job done faster, more effi­cient­ly, and more effec­tive­ly? This is where embed­ding intel­li­gence, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, or lever­ag­ing automa­tion will help users get their jobs done is one area of focus.

Expec­ta­tions for the incom­ing gen­er­a­tion of users are slight­ly dif­fer­ent because these future work­ers are used to mobile devices. They’re used to not nec­es­sar­i­ly need­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and train­ing and such. There­fore, our focus for SAP design is on how to build expe­ri­ences for the next gen­er­a­tion. How do we ensure that we include con­sumer expe­ri­ences into our enter­prise software?

Just for the record, I don’t believe in a dif­fer­ence between ​‘enter­prise’ and ​‘con­sumer’ from a soft­ware per­spec­tive. The usage is dif­fer­ent. The intent of use is dif­fer­ent. But good design is good design. I want to bring great expe­ri­ence to enter­prise soft­ware. That’s our broad push, our design recipe for the future.

Q: When your teams are sell­ing enter­prise soft­ware, where, when, and how does design enter that conversation? 

A: For us, at the end of the day, what mat­ters is the end user, who they are, and if they are suc­cess­ful in using our prod­ucts. We real­ize that buy­ers make deci­sions, and that the busi­ness users are influ­encers. We inter­act at three lev­els. The first is engage­ment at three lev­els: with end users, with buy­ers such as the CIOs and CTOS, and with the admin­is­tra­tors who hold the key to the first-mile expe­ri­ence, around con­fig­ur­ing and pro­vi­sion­ing our soft­ware for appro­pri­ate use by end users. When you hit those three dif­fer­ent lev­els, you get the high­est lev­el of abstrac­tion on the busi­ness prob­lem and why a par­tic­u­lar cus­tomer wants the soft­ware. Next, how can our soft­ware be adapt­ed to the user’s needs? And the third is about users using the soft­ware to get their job done. 

Q: Who is most important?

A: Most impor­tant would be the end users because they are the ones who trans­act. I also see that in the cloud world, they have a lot of say in the choice of the soft­ware tool. I’m going to guess that if the end users are hap­py, every­one else will be.

Q: And if they’re not?

A: They are def­i­nite­ly going to speak up, yes.

Q: In August, there were announce­ments relat­ed to the user expe­ri­ence in SAP S4/HANA Cloud and there were design-relat­ed improve­ments. What along those lines will an ASUG com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber see?

A: One of the things you would have heard or read about in that announce­ment is we are push­ing this design lan­guage called ​“Hori­zon.” It’s part of the design sys­tem, so you can expect to see that across all our prod­ucts, whether it’s SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, Ari­ba, Con­cur, or Field­glass. It’s a com­mon thread across the board. You can also expect a bet­ter set of entry expe­ri­ences for our cus­tomers through SAP Start, which is the sin­gle entry point. We are try­ing to bring in the best and most cred­i­ble insights from each of our appli­ca­tions served upright when you log in so users can be more pro­duc­tive. You can expect to see more mobile expe­ri­ences that take advan­tage of the native capa­bil­i­ties of your devices to get the job done. Usabil­i­ty inno­va­tions and improve­ments in each prod­uct line are key themes. It’s not just about how it looks; it’s a lot about how it works. We will focus on the ​‘how it works part’ a lot more.

And in terms of tech­nol­o­gy, we have SAP UI5, which is our under­pin­ning of the tech stack, the foun­da­tion of the SAP design sys­tem. We want to make sure that we are play­ing ball, so to speak, with the oth­er rel­e­vant text stacks around us so that every prod­uct can use the same design pat­terns regard­less of the text stack. We want to move for­ward with cohe­sion, with cross-capa­bil­i­ties, so we can design once and deploy it across the board. You’ve heard a lit­tle bit about Microsoft Teams inte­gra­tion with Ford. You can expect to see that in oth­er prod­ucts. We want to apply the same design pat­tern across the board, so once you learn and use one, you can use it across the board.

Q: There’s also the strate­gic rela­tion­ship with Apple. Can you speak to that a lit­tle bit?

A: What I like about Apple is their atten­tion to detail. That’s some­thing we are get­ting as we part­ner with them. The part­ner­ship is two-way. We are the de fac­to ERP lead. We know the domain. We know the busi­ness prob­lem. If you can lever­age the Apple ecosys­tem around ways of work­ing, and how they build soft­ware into what we do, it’s a win-win. We are learn­ing a lot from Apple, and I’m hope­ful that Apple gets a lot from us as the lead­ing ERP soft­ware in the Apple ecosystem.

Q: You empha­sized design and a sense of inclu­siv­i­ty. Can you speak to that a lit­tle bit more?

A: If you look at the tagline for SAP — Help busi­ness­es run bet­ter and improve peo­ple’s lives — peo­ple are core to every­thing we do. We need to design for the dif­fer­ences in expec­ta­tions, capa­bil­i­ties, and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences that might exist across the world. So inclu­sive expe­ri­ences are real­ly about build­ing expe­ri­ences, know­ing the dif­fer­ences, and the inter­sec­tion of these dif­fer­ences. That’s where we’ll come up with break­through inno­va­tions for every­one to use. It’s not for a spe­cif­ic geog­ra­phy. It’s not for a spe­cif­ic seg­ment. We try to democ­ra­tize the world of inno­va­tion. Inclu­sive expe­ri­ence is also in terms of inclu­sive research. So instead of get­ting feed­back from just one seg­ment or indus­try, we are expand­ing feed­back world­wide with dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al norms, dif­fer­ent lev­els of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise, and dif­fer­ent lev­els of edu­ca­tion. If you can design for these inclu­sive char­ac­ter­is­tics, we can guar­an­tee that it is tru­ly going to be a glob­al product.

Inter­nal­ly, build­ing our prod­ucts with an inclu­sive mind­set plays a role. When we cre­ate project teams, for exam­ple, ide­al­ly, we are bring­ing cross-func­tion­al exper­tise from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives into the mak­ing of the product. 

Q: Are there any aspects between your work and the SAP sus­tain­abil­i­ty strategy?

A: Yes. This is a thing that’s evolv­ing. In my opin­ion, we care about sus­tain­abil­i­ty more than what I’ve seen from oth­er ven­dors. For exam­ple, we have a Chief Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Office with spe­cif­ic ways of engag­ing. They have a frame­work in place. They’re lead­ing the con­ver­sa­tion in Davos and in oth­er venues, too. Then, we have prod­ucts and soft­ware help­ing our cus­tomers achieve, mon­i­tor, and track sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

I think the chal­lenge for us as a design team is to fig­ure out how we, as design­ers, can affect sus­tain­abil­i­ty. What are the design prin­ci­ples for a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, regen­er­a­tive expe­ri­ence, expe­ri­en­tial frame­works, and such? I think it’s a mus­cle we’ll need to build. 

In talk­ing to cus­tomers and oth­er com­pa­nies look­ing into sus­tain­abil­i­ty, sus­tain­able design prin­ci­ples still need to be worked out. This is an area that is evolv­ing and very impor­tant for us. I need to cap­i­tal­ize on it from the design side.

Q: Any­thing else that you want to say direct­ly to the ASUG community?

A: The prod­ucts are as good as the usage and how much users know, use, and love it. The com­mu­ni­ty is cen­tral to how we build our prod­ucts. I wel­come the com­mu­ni­ty to share feed­back with the design com­mu­ni­ty. We serve the users. The user com­mu­ni­ty is a huge part of what we do. We will have dif­fer­ent touch­points going for­ward with ASUG as well in usabil­i­ty cen­ters, in test centers.

If there are oth­er ways we can get some more feed­back and some more engage­ment in help­ing improve our prod­ucts to serve users, I’m all in.

I thank the com­mu­ni­ty for trust­ing in us. I think they can expect design to engage more, to ask them for more and more feed­back and, hope­ful­ly, they’re open to that. And togeth­er, we can make a difference.