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After taking on AppHaus responsibilities in Brisbane more than 18 months ago, DalRae Solutions is embracing the design approach with both arms wide open.
The IT consultancy became SAP’s first partner in Brisbane to join its global AppHaus Network last year, with it playing host to one of SAP’s global community of creative spaces for businesses to apply a “human-centred” design approach to experience design.
More than 18 months on from this, the consultancy’s founder, Chris Rae, said to ARN that taking on the approach has been “very satisfying”.
“It really sets about sitting down with customers and starting to solve problems that really needs to be solved,” he said. So, dealing with friction in process rather than, ‘We’re going to design an office and go and deliver.’
“It’s more about engaging with business users and practitioners about how they actually do the job.”
Rae’s embracement of AppHaus should be no surprise, as the self-proclaimed “ones and zeroes guy” and “real developer” said he is fascinated by business processes and has been fully aligned to SAP for over 10 years.
“We bleed more blue than SAP people,” he said. “We’re only SAP-aligned. We have relationships with all the hyperscalers, as SAP does those, but we only do SAP services.”
The process isn’t just about bringing in the tech experts, but bringing in different stakeholders from across a given business.
Using the example of an AppHaus project with an unnamed utilities organisation, Rae said it brought together IT workers in project management, finance, accounting, HR and “all the way through to the workers out on the on the trucks” to solve what ended up being a finance problem.
“It ultimately led to some huge improvements in the user experience and the quality of data they get back,” he said.
After being designated an AppHaus Network partner, Rae said it has worked out well for the consultancy, claiming to be a leader in the amount of AppHaus sessions that the business does.
In fact, Rae added that he starts every major engagement now with an AppHaus session, even if it’s about describing and understanding the issue at hand, rather than going head-first into the work.
“It’s been very different than I had expectations for of just where and how we use it,” he said.
Rae’s own thoughts on DalRae’s preference for SAP aren’t personal bluster either, as the consultancy was recognised for its work with CITIC Pacific Mining at the SAP Best Run Awards for 2024.
Its award-winning efforts were for an in-field application (IFA), building on work it did with a compliance documentation app, covering the contractor licence and certification process on mine sites.
“IFA takes over the process and handles the competency assessment to the mine site standards for existing licenced people to be able to operate that machine within the mine,” he said.
“This was a very manual process and disjointed in connection to HR systems. IFA solves this problem by connecting the record keeping and the HR systems together, all without having to remove the current PDF documents.”
The end result taps into SAP’s SuccessFactors system and SAP Business Technology Platform’s MDK, which Rae claimed is “relatively rare” in Australia and New Zealand.
He also claimed that the IFA “fundamentally changes” how in-field assessments are conducted, providing an efficient, accurate and environmentally friendly solution.