2. 1. Key trends and issues
2. Alloy software by IBM and SAP solution overview
3. Why choose Alloy?
Agenda
3. People Have Different Roles
Within Organizations
Sample roles: payroll administrator,
customer service representative
Area expert with defined tasks
Conducts repetitive, structured
transactional work
Uses single or a few enterprise applications
Interface of choice: SAP Portal, SAP GUI
Business
User
Task
Worker
SAP
“Power User”
Typical
Lotus Notes User
Sample roles: business manager, sales
representative, HR manager
Knowledge worker or people manager
Manages exceptions and coordinates
activities & resources
Synthesizes many sources of information
Interface of choice: e-mail, desktop
productivity tools
4. More workers in decision
making roles – need better
access to business
information
Need transparency to improve
compliance with policies
Business users have a low
tolerance for complicated
interfaces
Working on many activities
concurrently – new tasks must
fit in, not slow everything
down
Business Users are Disconnected From
Enterprise Information and Processes
5. SAP UI Strategy: UIs That Fits The Way The
User Works
Visibility to orders and issues
Shorter purchasing cycles
Easier to work with than your
competitors
Access and Visibility
Reduced overhead
More accurate data, more quickly
Easier to predict and adjust
supplies and services
Simpler Processes
Easy to process information as
you work
Reduced training costs
Easy access to critical information
More Users, Better Fit
6. SAP Helps IT to Empower Every User
Increasing productivity and performance
Enterprise
Portal
Business
Client
Alloy
Forms
SAP
BusinessObjects
Enterprise
Search
Mobile External
Portal
Custom
7. Moving from it interrupts their workflow and introduces opportunities for distraction.
Business User’s Inbox is a Catalyst
for Productivity
Instant
Messaging
E-mail,
Calendar,
Contacts
Documents,
Presentations,
Spreadsheets
Social
networking –
blogs, mashups,
activities
Personal
content
library
Feeds,
My Widgets,
Live Text
Collaborative and
business applications
11. Familiar Working Environment
Provide business users with easy access
to key enterprise processes and
information
Workflow Decision Management
Out of the Box Workflows
Travel Management
Leave Management
Reports Management
12. Workflow Decisions Management
Manage SAP Workflow decision steps in Lotus Notes
Bring decision steps from
workflow to Lotus Notes
Simple configuration-no
customization needed; no
changes to existing
workflows
Transparently supports
multiple decision options
Extensive customization
options for specific
requirements
Generic template for any
user interaction approval
workflows scenarios
18. Building Alloy Workflow Approval
IMG and
Custom Handlers
Configure IBM
Lotus Domino
Server with
the application id
and bound type
created in step 2
Step 1 Step 2
Configure
SAP
Backend
Configure
IBM Lotus
Domino
Server
The IBM
Lotus Domino
configuration
generates a user
role on SAP
Alloy Add-on.
Assign user to
this role.
Step 3
Configure
SAP
Alloy Add-on
Magnify and enrich
the decision UI
with
additional
information in the
decision body
and the Alloy
sidebar
Opt: Step 4
Magnify
Decision UI
IBM Lotus
Domino Server
IBM Lotus
Domino Designer
SAP
Business
Workflow
SAP
Backend
SAP
Alloy Add-on
19. Travel Management
Request, review and approve trip details quickly
Schedule and approve trip
requests
Links to key information, e.g.
travel and expense policies
Link to collaboration tools to
discuss and resolve quickly
Ensure data consistency and
compliance
20. Leave management
Manage vacation from your Lotus Notes calendar
Schedule and approve leave
requests
Links to key information, e.g.
vacation policies
Link to collaboration tools to
discuss and resolve quickly
Ensure data consistency and
compliance
21. Reports Management
Give users information to make good decisions
Easy access to BI, ERP and
line of business reports
Self service subscription and
personalization
Forward or access reports
off-line
Links to related reports and
information
22. Reports Management
Give users information to make good decisions
Step 1 Step 2
Open
Reports
Catalog
Select
Report
Step 3
Personalize
Report
Step 4
Schedule &
Run Report
View
Report
Step 5
23. Benefits of Decision Steps & Reports in Lotus
Notes
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Purchasing
Approval
Leave
Approval
Travel
Approval
Sales
Quote
Approval
Invoice
Approval
Processing Time Before Alloy
Processing Time After Alloy
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Purchasing
Approval
Leave
Approval
Travel
Approval
Sales Quote
Approval
Invoice
Approval
Processing Cost Before Alloy
Processing Cost After Alloy
Process Compliance
Quick Decision Making
Integration
High User Adoption
Simplification & Efficiency
24. Rapid Deployment
Alloy can be rapidly deployed without
extensive customization to support key
business processes.
Simple but Robust Architecture
Intuitive Design
25. IBM Lotus
Notes Client
IBM Lotus
Notes Client
IBM Lotus Domino
Mail Servers
IBM Lotus Domino
Mail Servers
AlloyTM
Software by IBM and SAPAlloyTM
Software by IBM and SAP
SAP
Business Suite
SAP
Business Suite
SAP
NetWeaver
Business
Warehouse
SAP
NetWeaver
Business
Warehouse
IBM Lotus
Domino
Alloy Add-on
IBM Lotus
Domino
Alloy Add-on
IBM Lotus
Domino Server
IBM Lotus
Domino Server
SAP NetWeaver
Application Server
(J2EE)
SAP NetWeaver
Application Server
(J2EE)
SAP Alloy Add-onSAP Alloy Add-on
Alloy 1.0 Architecture
Straightforward Deployment
26. Intuitive Design
Build on what Notes users know and expect
Side bar adjusts to
current user context
Simple action buttons
for decision maker
Embedded directly
into calendar, e-mail
One-click
collaboration
27. Extensibility
Companies can easily extend Alloy to
integrate additional business functionality
in SAP software with Lotus Notes.
Workflow configuration
Custom integration
28. Workflow Integration
Transparently expose workflow decisions in Lotus Notes
Configure which workflow
decisions to expose in Alloy
Add further SAP information
by using ABAP workbench
Modify the decision user
interface in Domino Designer
Integrate additional helpful
information into the sidebar
29. Custom Integration
Bring contextual information to facilitate better decisions
Bring contextual information
from SAP Business Suite
Use standard customization
tools like Lotus Notes
Designer, Lotus Script, SAP
Implementation Guide
Integrate additional helpful
information into the sidebar
Customize email and
document forms to fit your
needs
30. Agenda
1. Key trends and issues
2. Alloy software by IBM and SAP solution overview
3. Why choose Alloy?
33. Customer Support for Alloy
“We expect the new Alloy software from IBM
and SAP to help us drive down IT
management costs and boost productivity by
allowing employees easy access to SAP
reports, procurement, data and product
lifecycle management tools directly from
their Lotus Notes e-mail,”
Colgate-Palmolive.
“Alloy will enable our senior management
immediate access to critical information
residing in SAP system directly from Lotus
Notes. This will enable them to improve the
quality and timeliness of their decisions,
leading to superior business outcomes for
Alra Foods.”
Arla Foods
34. Why NOW?
Just Completed ERP Upgrade?
Alloy is a great way to extend the benefit of the upgrade to business users.
About to roll out new workflows?
With Alloy, bring decision steps in the workflows right into Lotus Notes
Upgrading Lotus Notes?
Leverage sidebar and Sametime integration with Alloy
Business is dissatisfied with usability issues?
Hide the complexity from end users and bring SAP processes and information
right into the application users live in-Lotus Note
Hidden cost of custom integration eating away at your budget?
Alloy is strategic offering from SAP and IBM and is the platform of choice for
integrating Lotus software and SAP software with lowest TCO possible.
36. Software Requirements for Alloy 1.0
IBM Lotus Notes Client Release 8.02
IBM Domino Server Release 8.02
SAP ERP SAP ERP 6.0 SPS 14 running on NetWeaver 7.0 SPS17
with the Enterprise Service Architecture (ESA) Add-on:
ECC-SE 602 or higher
SAP BW (optional) BW (Business Warehouse) 3.5 – SP 23 or
BW (Business Warehouse) 7.0 - SPS 17
Alloy Server Software - SAP Alloy Add-on 1.0 running on NetWeaver 7.0 SPS17
Java and
- IBM Lotus Notes Alloy Add-on 1.0 running on an 8.02
Domino Server
The operating systems of the SAP Business Suite software and the IBM Domino Mail Servers are
not restricted but the Alloy software requires the following:
IBM Lotus Notes Client - MS Windows XP (Professional editions) or
- MS Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise editions)
IBM Lotus Notes Alloy Add-on - MS Windows 2003 Server (32 bit) (Standard, Enterprise)
SAP Alloy Add-on All NetWeaver 7.0 java stack platform constellations.
For example:
- AIX with MaxDB or
- IBM zLinux with DB2 or
- MS Windows X86_64 with MS SQL or
- MS Windows X86_64 with MaxDB or
- AIX with Oracle 9.2
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Notes de l'éditeur
There are two types of workers: task worker and business users.
Task users do fairly repetitive and well defined task. For example, HR administrator, Payroll administrator, Customer Service Representative are task works doing well defined repetitive task. This users are SAP ‘Power Users’ using one of the SAP UI designed for task workers.
A business user is somebody like you or me, who spends the majority of their time on unstructured, non-repetitive activities. These activities are often related to creating something new (a strategy, a plan, some analysis), problem solving, event management, or collaboration. Typically, both structured and unstructured processes and information serve as inputs, and therefore context from the enterprise systems are required. Business users spend most of their time in personal productivity and communication applications like Lotus Notes.
To maximize your investment in Enterprise applications, both task works and business users should have access to processes and information in Enterprise applications. However, business users are disconnected from enterprise information and processes as the UI for Enterprise applications is generally designed for task workers and thus too complex for casual needs of business users.
As organization flatten, more and more business users have decision making roles and need better access to the information. As economic condition change, organization processes change and business user need easy access to changes to comply with changing policies.
While the access to enterprise application becomes more and more critical, business users are strapped for time and don’t have the luxury to learn yet another UI to use Enterprise applications. Changes are that if the processes and data from enterprise applications are not made available to users in their personal productivity and communication applications, business users will continue ignoring business processes and information and make sub-optimal decisions and not follow policies leading to sub-optional business outcomes, costing the organization additional time and money, and slowly but continuously eating away organization’s efficiency and competitiveness in the marketplace.
Poor UIs have a very broad impact. Consider the idea of a single UI. How many people would find it ‘ideal’?
Probably a group of users internally. But partners? No. They will try to find a way around the software – usually by calling you and clogging your support line. Customers? Unlikely. They are more likely to switch to a vendor who makes things easier for them. Even many people internally would face huge challenges. Think about the fork lift driver in your warehouse for example. Can he even look at a computer screen while he’s driving? No.
But with interfaces that fit into their work environment, everything changes. If the fork lift driver has a voice interface. If the partners have simple on-line forms. If customers can track their orders over the Web. If sales and support staff have mobile access. If more people inside the enterprise can access reports or take care of their approvals without leaving their email system. Then things are a lot better. Software that’s easy to work with makes your enterprise easy to work with, and makes the work itself easier.
Visually, here we can see how those technologies and innovations can bring all of the users in your world closer, and help them to work together.
So, you can give the fork lift driver a voice interface. Give business users good information. Give your partners simple on-line forms. Let customers can track their orders over the Web. Give sales and support staff mobile access. Let more people inside the enterprise can access reports or take care of their approvals without leaving their email system. You can make things better, make your enterprise easier to work with, and make the work itself easier.
Let’s talk about the needs of business users…
Business users live in their personal productive applications like Lotus Notes. Just like iGoogle and MyYahoo for consumer web, business users use Lotus Notes as their personal portal to increase their business productivity. Business users expect easy access to people, processes and information from Lotus Notes.
The organizations that don’t provide access to people, processes and data to the business users in one user interface are risking the efficiency, responsiveness and productivity of their business users leading to sub-optimal business outcomes for the organization.
To make people, processes and information available from one user interface for companies using SAP and Lotus Notes, we have created Alloy software by IBM and SAP. With Alloy software, business users can easily access SAP software and information from within the IBM Lotus Notes environment, both online and offline.
Alloy is jointly developed, designed and supported by IBM and SAP.
For business users, Alloy software provides access to SAP applications from familiar Lotus Notes environment. As we will see, Alloy software is also easy to deploy and easy to extend.
Alloy software is both an application with out of the box functionality and a framework to bring decision steps in any SAP business processes into Lotus Notes
As mentioned before, time strapped business users asked to do more with less have very little patience for learning new UI. Business users spend majority of their time in Lotus Notes and over years have grown familiar with Lotus Notes UI and have developed ‘muscle memory’ for working in Lotus Notes.
With Alloy software, our goal is to bring SAP applications to Lotus Notes user in their familiar environment and make consuming SAP application from Lotus Notes as simple as using native Lotus Notes features.
In addition to out-of-the-box Leave and Travel Management functionality we will talk about later, Alloy software allows you to bring decision steps from SAP business processes into Lotus Notes. For example, you can bring decision steps from recruitment process, hiring process, purchasing process, etc in Lotus Notes.
In addition to decision steps, you can bring contextual information in sidebar and by leveraging Lotus Notes collaborative capabilities, you can really make it easy for business users to make better decisions without having to hunt for additional information and people in different applications,
.
With Alloy, you are leveraging core strength of SAP in managing business logic and core strength of Lotus Notes in collaboration and personal productivity. As usual, the workflow runs in SAP and when a decision is needed, a special email is created with all the relevant and contextual information, along with decision options and delivered to appropriate manager’s inbox. Manager reviews the information and clicks on appropriate button (Approve/Reject/etc) and workflow continues in SAP as usual till another decision point is reached or process is completed. If another decision point is reached, another special email is sent to appropriate manager’s inbox.
Let’s look at some examples……
What workflows can you bring to Lotus Notes with Alloy? Any workflow that runs of SAP Business Workflow engine, and involves decision task that needs user interaction.
Some examples of workflow are Purchasing, leave, invoice, travel, marketing funds, and shopping cart.
Here is an example of Purchasing Order Workflow. Instead of end user having to log into multiple systems to get all the information needed to make a purchasing approval decisions, with Alloy, you can bring it all together in Lotus Notes.
Instead of business users having to spend 15 to 20 minutes collecting all the information from different system, business user can now make decisions in few minutes. Multiple the time saving over 1000s of such interaction every month, Alloy can cut down lots of unproductive time from business user’s day.
In addition to time saving, business user is more prone to act on approvals instead of putting it off to end of week as it is so much easier for the manager to make a decision. This speeds up the workflow and thus your business, giving you a competitive edge over slower moving competitors.
Here is an example of Sales Approval Workflow. In addition to what we saw in Purchasing Workflow, here we see how SameTime can be used to collaborate with people to help make better decisions by leveraging Lotus Notes integration with Lotus Sametime.
Another example. Here we are looking at Hiring Approval and the contextual information in this case is the candidate’s resume.
Bring decision steps in Lotus Notes with Alloy is pretty straight forward as well. The basic configuration takes about an hour. Depending on your needs, it probably will take few days to bring contextual information in the sidebar per workflow.
Now, let’s talk about the Out Of The Box Workflows
First workflow is Travel Management.
Business users have to deal with travel with from time to time. Alloy software makes it easy to manage travel from Lotus Notes by integrating Lotus Notes Calendar with travel request approval process in SAP. Employees can schedule trip requests through Lotus Notes and their managers can also approve or reject the requests in Lotus Notes.
Second workflow is Leave Management.
Just like Travel Management, Leave Management is a hassle all business users and managers need to go through. Alloy software makes it easy to manage leave from Lotus Notes by integrating Lotus Notes Calendar with leave request process in SAP. Business user can block their calendar and initiate Leave Request at the same time. Managers can approve/reject Leave Request right from Lotus Notes email.
Also, using SameTime integration with Lotus Notes, a manager can instantly chat with employee to get additional information needed to make decisions.
In addition to Workflows, Alloy also brings BI, ERP and line of business reports in Lotus Notes.
Business users need easy access to reports to make more informed decisions. For example, a sales manager needs access to pipeline report to better manage his sales team. All managers need access to budget reports to better manage the budget. As we all know, getting access to reports in the organization is generally a multi week affair requiring opening help desk ticket and working with ‘business analyst’ to explain the data needed, etc, etc!!
Our goal with Alloy software is to make the business reports accessible to Lotus Notes users with no more then few clicks of the mouse!
Alloy software brings all the reports user has access to (based on his role) right into Lotus Notes. Business users can view the catalog of reports they have access to, personalize the reports they want and schedule them to run every day, week or month. The reports can be accessed even if the user is off-line. For example, VP of Sales can select pipeline report, budget report, revenue report, etc. and schedule them to run on Monday every week. The reports get delivered right in his Lotus Notes Inbox and VP of sales can start his week better informed by reviewing the report with his Monday morning coffee and thus be empowered to make better decision during the work week.
If a useful report is shared, organization benefits as more managers can make more informed decisions. Alloy makes it very easy to share the report with co-workers while making sure each user sees the data the user is entitled to based on his or her role.
With Alloy, accessing SAP reports from Lotus Notes is very easy. Business user browses the reports from report catalog in Lotus Notes, selects the report(s) the user is interested in, personalize the reports by setting parameters and schedule the report. Reports are delivered to user’s inbox and also easily accessible from Reports View.
To summarize, by bringing decision steps in Lotus Notes with Alloy, you have direct impact on processing cost and time for the workflows. In addition to direct impact, Alloy also helps you achieve process compliance, improve and speed up decision making, improve user adoption and simplify the day to day interactions with enterprise software for business users.
Just like business users, IT resources are strapped for time and resources. With Alloy, our goal is to make it easy to deploy Alloy on top of your SAP and IBM Lotus Notes stack with least amount of disruption to your production environment and to your business user’s experience.
Alloy leverages your existing investment in SAP and Lotus Notes and is easy to deploy on top of your existing stack (with right pre-requisites). Alloy is architected to make it easy for your developers and ISVs to add additional functionality to handle your organization’s unique processes.
The system requirements to run Alloy 1.0 are Notes and Domino v8.02, and SAP Business Suite 6.0.
(For detail requirements, please refer to PAM)
As mentioned before, our goal with Alloy is to make end user experience with Alloy as close as to using native Lotus Notes application as possible.
The user interface of Alloy software is embedded into Lotus Notes using design patterns Lotus Notes users are familiar with. Thus, Lotus Notes users can use Alloy software intuitively, with very little or no training at all.
For example, to make decisions on requests submitted by the employee, all manager has to do is press Approve/Reject button. All the contextual information to make decision can be made available to business user in familiar Lotus Notes side-bar. Requesting leave automatically creates relevant calendar entry in Lotus Notes calendar.
Each enterprise is unique with some unique business processes. To serve their business user community effectively, organization will generally want to bring this business critical processes in to IBM Lotus Notes and bring relevant contextual information to Lotus Notes sidebar to optimize the decision making and business outcomes.
Alloy software is designed to be extensible from groups up. The same tools used by our developers to create out of the box features process integration discussed before are available to IT and ISV developers to bring additional processes to Lotus Notes to serve the unique needs of organization and industry.
As discussed before, in addition to out-of-the-box Leave and Travel Management, Alloy software allows you to bring decision steps in SAP business processes. For example, you can bring decision steps in recruitment process, hiring process, etc. Decision steps in SAP business processes can be bought into Lotus Notes with standard configuration.
To make process decisions, business users need access to contextual information to improve decision making. For example, to approve travel request, manager needs to know how much money is left in travel budget and what is the current travel policy. Alloy software allows you to bring the contextual information from SAP application to Lotus Notes side bar by customization. Customization can be done using standard tools like Lotus Notes Designer, Lotusscript and the workbench for the ABAP™ programming language.
The contextual information can be displayed in sidebar as any HTML element like graph, table, text, link, etc.
