Simulating Enterprise Systems

A while back, Michael gave a great presentation on using asset libraries in rapidly visualizing all sorts of projects, from the very small to the very large. It was a great presentation, and we’ve spent a lot of time building our own, and our clients’ asset libraries to great success. But as we’ve gained more and more experience with enterprise systems, like Oracle, SAP, Dynamics, and others, it seems that our approach has gotten much more nuanced. It’s great when you have a whole bunch of pre-made assets and can just drag a ton of pre-made master assets on to a template in the iRise workspace and have a highly functional page in minutes—and that does happen some of the time. But honestly, mostly it does not.

Why?—because enterprise system configuration visualizations are, of course, requirements-specific. And for large projects, chances are you likely don’t have the time or budget to configure every text widget on the page, and make sure every table is data-driven and has meaningful data in the datasheets. Nor, for that matter, would you need to in most cases. So sometimes those highly configurable masters are a pain in the neck. They take way more time than you have, and all you really need is, say, one tab out of 5 to work for your requirements, because the rest is standard.

So the reality is that most of the time, enterprise system visualizations are unique to individual implementations, and are necessarily a hybrid of highly configurable assets and screen shots. The value your visualization consultant offers is in knowing what to simulate, when, why, and HOW. So many companies want to make their implementations and augmentations a matter of a B.A. pulling in your already-created assets. But they will save tons of time and money by having a custom approach for large-scale systems visualization.

We find that, quite, often, an SAP or a PeopleSoft visualization project just happens to require the very sections that the asset library creation didn’t yet get to, or that an asset library uses version 6 of something when the project now requires version 7.

The key to successful large-scale systems visualization is threefold. First, create flexible assets for your asset libraries that don’t necessarily require too much work to make usable. Or simply make a robust version and a simple version when possible. Second, when creating assets, don’t neglect the little stuff—take the time to create button and form element styles and rollovers as much as you do the functionality. Those visual components can be the biggest time suck with something like SAP, for example. And finally, learn when to use screen shots and when not to. We’ve created some of our most compelling visualizations in a few hours for programs like People Soft. Companies won’t always use the simulation for usability testing, so keep what you’re doing flexible. And remember that MOST of time, your visualization will be a hybrid of quick and dirty on the one hand, and highly configured on the other.

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First, create flexible assets for your asset libraries that don’t necessarily require too much work to make usable.