Most organizations planning to train people on S/4HANA will default to SAP Enable Now. Solid product, but not ideal for larger, more complex training needs. In this article, we’re going to dive deeper into how training can be built to be more immersive, cost-effective, and sustainable over the life of your system.
- For SAP vendors and SIs, you’ll discover a complementary solution to drive better client outcomes and a partnership opportunity that will put you ahead of your competition for your next bid.
- For enterprises, you’ll discover a way to cut training costs for large-scale and complex use cases and unlock ROI for your S/4HANA system.
In addition, we’ll cap things off with specific examples of how some of our customers have benefited from using our simulation training platform.
Let’s get started.
The key problem with a screenshot tool approach
The deliverable output is, well…a screenshot. Static, hard to edit, and unable to keep with the pace of updates.
- End-users are interacting with pictures that can’t emulate the complex workflows of modern enterprise applications.
- Training is always a step behind the live system and updates require a ton of re-recording.
Takes an army of people to maintain training assets.
Why does that matter?
1 – Training material is not only for go-live – it’s for the life of your system.
You don’t just create training assets for go-live. Updates happen every few months. Regulations and compliance are changing faster than ever. As your system evolves, your training assets need to keep up. Your system will change with new fields, new transactions, new screen layouts, and your training has to reflect that.
With a screenshot approach, updating training is an exponentially increasing time sink. For every new release, training teams have to re-record process flows from scratch. Multiply that for hundreds of lessons…hundreds of processes, every single time the system is updated.
Imagine you need to change hundreds of rows on an Excel spreadsheet, but you’re forced to edit a screenshot of that spreadsheet. That would be comically inefficient! And that’s exactly what content developers have to deal with for every update.
2 – Training is never ready on time.
Knowing when to start building training assets is a moving target.
Wait too long and you won’t be able to complete them before go-live. Start too early, and screenshots will be out of date as reconfigurations, midway changes in processes and delays pile up.
Result: training isn’t ready on go-live date. Employees can’t be trained properly. At best, training is incomplete, outdated, and or doesn’t match the final version.
What if you had the flexibility to get a head start and create content early, say at the User Acceptance Testing phase? What if you could create lessons from a system still under development, knowing full well that any edits could be swiftly applied across lessons?
No more waiting for IT to hand off a sanitized version of the latest version.
No more rushing to create training materials as go-live closes in.
Because training can be created early in the project lifecycle, you can onboard users months ahead of time – giving employees a longer period to train and more time to build confidence and competency on your new system. This means faster adoption of your technology while shortening your migration.
3 – Business processes cut across multiple applications.
ERPs naturally cuts across functions including finance, supply chain management, customer service, etc.
A purchase order can link to a finance system which then links to an asset management system and so on.
How do you train people on processes like that with screenshots?
Because of the rigidity of screenshots, you’re forced to set up multiple sandboxes, create multiple simulations to cover all systems or create an integrated system for processes that cut across multiple applications.
Ideally, you’d want a genuine sandbox experience – minus the costs, time, and headache of setting up and maintaining training environments. A training experience that can emulate everyday scenarios – jumping from one application to another to complete transactions.
4 – You can’t translate lessons without rework.
A project the size of a S/4HANA migration often involves rollouts across different departments, territories, and countries. You’ll need your training material to be translated into the target language.
Translating instructions is no issue – any authoring tool can do that. But what about the input data? And what about the text on the UI?
Because screenshots are static images, it’s impossible to translate the user interface without a second application version in the target language. You need to re-record from the start, essentially doubling the work. And now triple that a third language and so on. Not to mention the time and costs spent setting up expensive training systems with frustrating data refreshes.
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Introducing Assima – the most immersive and cost-effective training platform for S/4HANA (or any enterprise application!)
Powered by a patented technology, Assima creates hyper-realistic and editable clones of any system – not screenshots.
It provides the safest and most realistic training experience for end-users and exponentially reduces time and costs to maintain training assets.
This isn’t a picture. Users can click, scroll, type into fields, just like they would in the real system.
Why choose Assima for your S/4HANA project?
Empower thousands of employees with hands-on experience – anywhere, anytime.
Because our solution gives users a safe environment that looks and feels like your live system, employees can practice, make mistakes, and build confidence – becoming proficient in record time.
Moreover, Assima is the only solution that can deliver a true-to-life training experience for complex business procedures running across multiple applications via a single simulation.
Maintain training assets exponentially faster
Update training with unprecedented speed and ease throughout the life of your system. Assima is the world’s only solution that can translate, anonymize and update training assets without re-recording, from a single application version. Because updating simulations with Assima is so flexible, your training stays in lockstep with development and lessons can be delivered months before go-live – increasing business agility, user adoption, and reducing rework and training costs.
Build continuous learning journeys with a solution that covers your entire user adoption lifecycle.
Assima offers a holistic product suite that reduces training costs and drives efficiency before and after go-live. Easily create, maintain and deliver immersive, self-paced training and process documentation with our Simulation Training Platform.
We also offer performance support with our Digital Adoption Platform to help your organization improve productivity, increase adoption and improve data quality.
How Assima customers have seen tangible results from hyper-realistic simulations
Minimizing content development time, IT interventions, and rework for training assets can make massive impacts on the total cost of ownership of your business applications. Whether you’re looking to maximize learning outcomes before go-live or drive adoption after go-live for your S/4HANA system, Assima is a platform that cuts costs and drives efficiency as your learning needs evolve with new compliance, new processes, maintenance, upskilling, re-organization, etc.
When ASML (a leading Dutch manufacturer of chip-making machines and the world’s largest supplier of photolithography systems ), began using Assima, they saw a 50% increase in content development speed. By having the flexibility to create content before go-live, they were able to increase business agility.
A major Canadian bank began using Assima when they realized they needed a solution to make sure thousands of employees were prepared to work with their new SAP system from day one while accommodating major changes in working practices.
Using Assima allowed this Canadian bank to save $3,000,000 compared to developing, deploying, supporting, and refreshing a traditional training client. Due to its unique multi-lingual capabilities, Assima also allowed this company to drastically cut costs for translating training to ensure a consistent training experience – playing a central role in the success of this major training program.
Interested in experiencing how Assima can help you realize the full potential of your enterprise software?
Interested in experiencing how Assima can help you realize the full potential of your enterprise software?
- For SAP providers – select “I’m interested in becoming an Assima Partner. Complete the form and we’ll be in touch straight away to explain the next step.
- For Enterprises – select “I’d like to book a call”. You’ll get free expert advice tailored to your use cases and industry. Join companies who use Assima like Airbnb, Bank of America, Toyota, and more.