Jon Bobalik, director, IBU Insurance (Americas) for SAP Labs

Microsoft and SAP have answered the prayers of millions of business end users who wanted to leverage the power of SAP business applications through the intuitive interface of their Microsoft desktop.

Duet, a jointly-developed solution, enables business users to access SAP applications like time and expense management, budgeting, travel management, as well as business intelligence applications directly via Microsoft Office.

While many business users do a large percentage of their work within the Microsoft Office environment, SAP has historically been accessed through a separate application, requiring users to transition back and forth between Office and SAP in order to perform enterprise tasks.

Duet’s first release, announced in May and shipped in June, has brought new levels of ease-of-use to the areas of business intelligence and human resources. It promises users quicker access to enterprise applications, reduced chance for manual errors, increased process compliance and reduced cost.

“Duet is possible because of the underlying advances moving the entire SAP platform toward an enterprise service-oriented architecture,” said Jon Bobalik, director, IBU Insurance (Americas) for
SAP Labs. In fact, Bobalik notes, the move to a service-oriented architecture is speeding the timeline in which SAP and Microsoft will be able to expand and extend Duet’s functionality with the second release expected by year-end.

The co-development project that emerged from that longstanding partnership between SAP and Microsoft this summer, promises to revolutionize the way users interact with enterprise applications.

“We don‘t believe there is one silver bullet for all users, but within financial services the Microsoft user interface is key because all users are familiar and comfortable with it,” said Bobalik. “The impact this can have on the end user is much greater efficiency in terms of managing corporate processes and accessing enterprise level data.”

Microsoft Office and SAP’s enterprise-level business solutions have always been complimentary. With Duet, Microsoft Outlook contains SAP controls that appear as an easy-to-access panel on the Outlook screen.

“With over 60 percent of SAP installs on Windows, we are excited about the opportunity to service our mutual customers’ needs through the Duet connectivity,” said Dennis Maroney, industry manager, Worldwide Insurance, Microsoft Corporation. “This is another example of where our common vision with our partners for SOA leads to partner applications and solutions that can extend their value farther in the enterprise by seamlessly connecting with, and leveraging, our Office suite of products and our leading collaboration and productivity tools.”

Specifically, the business intelligence and human resources applications in Duet’s first release will primarily address issues such as budget monitoring, time management, organizational management and leave management.

For example, if users want to call SAP business intelligence reports for budget reporting purposes, they can set up a subscription to schedule that report to be delivered daily, weekly or monthly right into their Outlook inbox.

Users can also drill-down into the details of SAP business intelligence reports online. SAP’s role-based security ensures that enterprise-level data is only being accessed by those authorized to view it, and guarantees the reliable and secure transfer of that data to the information workers who need it. SAP alerts and notifications are also delivered directly to users through their Microsoft Outlook inboxes.

Users can also reap enterprise-level tracking benefits while using their Outlook calendars. Personal Outlook calendars are integrated with enterprise project, program management and accounting systems to allow users to report time and meetings to SAP software. Billable time, for example, can be reported directly to SAP enterprise systems from Outlook calendars.

This integration can also cut travel costs by helping a firm adhere to its corporate travel policy, and can improve sales processes by tracking client communications and contact updates.

Similarly, leave requests have become easier for both the end users and the managers overseeing leave policy. Leave requests entered into Outlook calendars can automatically be flowed through the corporate approval process giving users a simple way to set a leave request in motion. A response to a leave request would automatically be sent to the user’s Outlook inbox, and the user could easily view remaining vacation time through the Outlook calendar interface. For managers, the process that begins in a user’s Outlook calendar automatically complies with corporate procedures regarding leave, freeing them of some of the burdensome administrative tasks associated with managing company policy.

Interdepartmental communication is simplified in the Outlook contacts areas, where users can easily view up-to-date names of employees in different departments, along with roles, responsibilities and the organizational reporting structure.

Through SAP’s and Microsoft’s collaboration, Duet combines technology and business processes to bring new time savings and ease-of-use to the user experience. And it’s only the beginning. Key to Duet 1.0 is that it offers the first tools to allow end users in a variety of roles to begin to tap the power of the enterprise more efficiently. Expect more functionality in the coming months that will make an even wider array of processes easier and more seamless for end users.