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Designing UI for the Voice Era

The world of web design is incredibly dynamic. Every year, new trends and opportunities emerge, primarily driven by the arrival of modern technology.

In recent years, we’ve seen various updates to the web design landscape, such as the arrival of AR and VR solutions for making mixed media. Video content has increased in quality, while the demand for inclusivity and usability has transformed the way that we build everything from websites to apps.

Yet, for the most part, web design trends have continued to focus on the visual.

When we hear the word “interface,” we often think of the graphical user interface – the ultimate way to connect users with sites. However, now we have a new, more natural way for customers to interact with their digital tools… The era of voice is here.

Designing for the Age of Voice

The technology sector has made incredible progress in the development of things like Automated Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding.

Thanks to updates in the way that machines process and understand human language, voice recognition accuracy is now at 90% and above. More than ever before, users can speak to a smart assistant, speaker, or phone-based application, and get the results that they’re looking for without error.

The simplicity of communicating with technology via voice means that users have adopted this technology at an incredible pace. Half of all searches will be made with voice by the end of this year.

We’re standing on the edge of a fundamental shift in the way that we interact with computers and critical tools. As designers and developers, we need to be ready to embrace this new medium.

With that in mind, here’s what designers need to think about when designing for voice UI.

1. Decide How to Experiment with Voice

There are various steps involved in making a website more “conversational.” One of the first steps for any designer or developer is to think about the kind of voice-based interactions they’re going to enable for an app or website.

For instance, rather than embedding voice technology into a website, you might decide to create a separate Amazon Alexa “Skill” for devices like the Echo. Companies like Capital One have already invested in this technology so that users can ask their smart speaker about their balance, rather than opening a laptop and logging into the site.

To determine what kind of voice experiences you should be creating for your client, work with them on a customer journey map. Using this map of interactions that the customer has with your client on a regular basis, you can highlight areas where voice interactions might fit into the user flow.

For instance, if customers are constantly asking questions about a brand or its service, an FAQ page that’s equipped with a bot that can respond to voice queries could be an excellent choice.

UI design should always solve problems. Examining the frictions and frustrations that your client’s end-users encounter during their journey will help you to decide which direction to take with your voice UI experience.

2. Examine the Anatomy of Voice Commands

Before designers can create a dialog flow for their voice UI, they need to understand how voice commands work. The key to success in a successful design for voice is understanding the objective of the interaction. A voice consists of three crucial factors for designers to consider:

Intent: Intent represents the subject and context of the voice command. A high utility interaction involves a request for a specific task. For instance, your users might request that your app gives them a list of five-star hotels in a specific area. Designing for these requests is often straightforward because what the voice algorithm needs to do is clear. However, low-utility requests can be harder to decipher, such as “hotels near me,” because there’s less specificity for the bot to work with.
Utterance: Utterance refers to how a user phrases a command. For instance, in the case of looking for five-star hotels in Amsterdam, the customer might say “show me hotels,” or they might ask for “places to stay”. Designers must consider every variation of an utterance for their voice command UI.
Optional variables: This refers to the extra filters that your voice UI needs to be aware of. In the case of five-star hotels in Amsterdam, the descriptor “five stars” is optional. The optional input needs to overwrite default values and bring more detail to the search.

SideChef, for instance, is a voice-activated recipe app that offers narrated guidance to users and allows customers to search for recipes based on their specific needs. The app comes with a wide range of variables built-in, allowing users to customize their searches according to descriptors like “vegetarian” or “quick” meals.

3. Learn How to Prototype with Dialog Flows

Learning how to leverage a complex UI strategy like VUI takes time and practice. Prototyping designers will often have to think like scriptwriters, designing various dialog flows to suit the different needs of customers, and the numerous interactions they might face.

Dialog flows will outline:

Keywords that lead to the interaction
Branches that represent where the conversation might lead
Example dialogs for the user and the voice assistant.

Practicing your dialog flows with scripts that illustrate the back-and-forth between the voice assistant and user will help designers and developers to understand the various nuances that can appear in a customer to robot interaction.

Remember, while a crucial part of good voice UI design is keeping the communication conversational and straightforward, you will need to ensure that there is a dialog flow in place for every discussion that may occur between end-users and their apps, website, or digital tools. Users don’t want to feel overloaded and overwhelmed, but they need to ensure that they can complete their tasks too.

Consider the voice-based game RuneScape: One Piercing Note, for instance.

The developers behind this app allowed players to speak with other in-game characters and use commands like “pull the lever” or “open the chest.” In designing the playable components of the game, the designers needed to think about every possible interaction that a player might have with different parts of the story while ensuring that users didn’t stray off track.

A Few Tips for Voice UI Design

Voice UI design can be very complex, mainly if you’ve never created something using voice as your only input before. However, once you get used to creating dialog flows, the whole process starts to feel a lot easier.

As you’re designing, remember to:

Always confirm when a task is complete: When designing a checkout flow for an eCommerce page, one of the most crucial screens for a designer is the confirmation page. It shows the customer that the transaction has successfully been completed and stops them from worrying whether they’ve done the right thing. The same concept applies to Voice UI design. If your client’s end-user asks a voice-activated app to book an appointment with their therapist, for instance, they want to know that the appointment has been successfully booked and added to their calendar. Determine how you’re going to deliver the peace of mind your customers need.
Create a strong strategy for errors: Designers and developers are still in the very early stages of experimentation with voice UI. This means that there’s a good chance that something could go wrong with your applications and tools from time to time. Having a strong error strategy in place is crucial. Always design a dialog flow scenario that allows the assistant to respond if they don’t understand a request, or don’t hear anything at all. You can also implement analytics into these situations to identify misinterpretations and improve usability in the future.
Add extra layers of security: Various Voice UI solutions like Google Assistant and Alexa can now recognize individual voices. This is a kind of biometric security that’s similar to face or touch ID. As voice recognition continues to improve, it’s essential to ensure that you’re adhering to the latest guidelines in security. Additional authentication may be required for some companies. For instance, passwords, face recognition, or fingerprints might be needed for things that require payments and transactions. For instance, the Duer voice assistant uses face recognition to both approve payments, and make meal recommendations based on previous purchases.

Are You Ready for the Voice UI Revolution?

Voice-based user interfaces are here to stay.

In the years to come, the chances are that developers and designers will need to learn how to use voice more consistently as part of their interface strategies.

The good news is that although voice takes some getting used to as a design tool, it’s easy enough to make sure that your projects are moving in the right direction. Just like any other kind of design, implementing voice means thinking about whether the interactions and experiences that you’re delivering to end-users are seamless, effective, and valuable.

Succeeding in voice UI isn’t just about adding the capacity for voice into your designs. It’s a matter of learning how to make user’s lives easier with the power of voice.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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13 août 2021/par Service comm.

Getting Started With Inclusive Web Design

Actualités, Actualités

A key part of designing successful websites for clients is making sure that as many end-users as possible can access and enjoy that site.

So, what if you discovered that around 1 billion people couldn’t enjoy your designs? Even if those people manage to click on a link and visit the website that you create, they might not be able to understand what’s being sold or navigate to the checkout page.

According to statistics from the World Bank, there are 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide. That’s 15% of the total population of the globe.

Despite this, many designers fail to consider customers with differing abilities when creating an engaging app or website. Unless your client explicitly tells you that they’re supporting customers with disabilities, you might even not think about those users at all.

Learning how to embrace the concept of inclusive web design means that you deliver better results to your clients; the more customers your clients can reach, the more praise and positive reviews your designs will get.

So, how do you introduce accessibility in your design choices?

What Is Website Accessibility?

In broad terms, inclusivity refers to activities or behaviors that empower marginalized people in society. Designing for inclusivity means making your content more accessible to anyone dealing with a mental or physical issue that may make it harder for them to use a traditional site.

Ultimately, accessibility is one of the main goals of an inclusive design strategy. When you make websites or applications more accessible, you tweak aspects of your UI and code to make the site as approachable and usable as possible to people with certain limitations.

According to the Web Accessibility Initiative, many modern sites and web tools are designed without the needs of those with disabilities in mind. This creates accessibility barriers that make websites almost impossible for some people to use.

Here are just some of the different types of disability that can affect the way end-users interact with a website or app:

Cognitive issues: Affecting understanding and making it harder to navigate sites;
Auditory issues: Preventing customers from listening to videos and audio content;
Neurological issues: Making certain terms and actions more difficult on your site;
Physical issues: Making it hard to swipe or tap certain tools;
Speech problems: A common issue with voice UI designs;
Visual issues: Preventing a positive experience on highly visual sites.

Web accessibility can also be about making life easier for people who encounter problems in particular situations. For instance, those with muscular problems might have a harder time using buttons and links on a small screen.

So, how do you make your designs more accessible?

Know Your Audience

There’s more to inclusive web design than making your fonts a little bigger and hoping for the best. To deliver a truly accessible experience, you need to know the people and groups that your client is targeting. Spending some time going through your customer’s user personas and asking them questions about those with a disability can help you make informed decisions.

For instance, the Microsoft Inclusive Design toolkit asks designers to recognize exclusion, examining the parts of their website that might be inaccessible, and learn from diversity.

Before designing anything, ask yourself whether you can:

Address any unique needs, like sight issues or hearing problems;
Replace traditional solutions with something more unique. For instance, rather than relying on colors to highlight a portion of text, could you use font-weight instead? This might be ideal for someone with color blindness;
Create something that appeals to both customers with and without disabilities.

Design a Clean and Clear Layout

Any website design should be focused on clarity first.

Whether you’re designing for inclusivity or not, the aim should be to deliver as much of a simple and straightforward experience as possible, avoiding any web design sins along the way.

For instance, no-one likes a messy design full of unreasonable navigational signs. You need a site full of understandable links, buttons that are easy to click on any screen, and large fonts that are easy to read.

Whenever you’re creating a new element for a website or app, ask yourself how you can make life easier for customers from all backgrounds. For instance, Parramatta park uses excellent contrast, clear fonts, and ideal element sizing to ensure that its website feels as easy to use as possible for customers.

Notice how the buttons are clear and easy to press. The colors are bright and engaging on any screen, and the navigation is simple to follow too. Remember, when you’re designing an inclusive prototype:

Test navigation options and ensure they’re easy to use;
Don’t overcrowd the screen, remember that less is more when reducing cognitive load;
Make sure that your design remains easy to use on any screen.

Simplify Language

The visual elements on an inclusive website need to be as simple and easy to understand as possible. However, it’s important not to forget about the way that you handle the written word too.

Using simple terms instead of complex industry jargon can make a massive difference to those with reading issues. There’s also typography to think about, from the color and contrast of your words against your chosen background to the font’s clarity.

Remember, suboptimal design with both imagery and language affects those without disabilities too. Following basic rules for simplicity delivers a better experience for anyone that visits your site.

Make sure you:

Underline, bold, or re-size links for visual contrast;
Enforce proper line spacing with around 1.5x the font size;
Enable consistent paragraph spacing;
Use simple language to reduce cognitive load;
Describe abbreviations when using them;
Use clearly-worded headings to structure content logically;

Look at the design choices for text on the Nomensa website, for instance. Plenty of white space makes content easier to read. Simple words are understandable and engaging. Even the font choice mimics the logo while offering readability.

Optimize Web Design Colors

Inclusive web design trends will come and go. However, color and contrast will always be essential to your decisions.

By making sure that your design elements meet the minimum color contrast ratios defined by the WCAG means that you’re supporting readability for visually-impaired users and improving experiences for customers that aren’t visually impaired as well.

For designers who need extra help in this area, tools like Stark help measure color contrast. This tool also offers a range of other tools intended to support accessibility too.

Remember, the minimum ratio you need to access will depend on the element that you’re designing. The WCAG recommends the following guidelines:

3:1 ratio for graphical objects (charts);
3:1 ratio for focus, active states, and hover;
3:1 ratio for clickable items and form components.

While you’re working on your color contrast strategies with apps like Stark, make sure that you consider the needs of users with color blindness too. 4.5% of the world doesn’t see color the same way as everyone else. If you’re finding it difficult to achieve the right contrast while sticking to your customer’s brand guidelines, try underlining and bolding elements too.

Consider Video and Audio Elements

Finally, these days, more companies are opting to embed video and audio content into their sites. These visual and auditory tools can offer useful information about a brand and what it does. However, you could struggle to deliver vital information to some customers through video and audio alone.

Captions for video content could be essential for those with hearing loss. You may need to think about adding transcripts to pre-recorded videos that people with hearing impairments can access. These transcripts and captions are also helpful for anyone who doesn’t have access to audio on smartphones or computers.

Transcripts can also help those with visual impairments by giving a text-to-speech tool something to describe to your user. That way, everyone gains useful information. Look at this captioned video from the University of Washington, for instance. It ensures that everyone can understand what’s going on in the content. If you add transcripts to your website pages for clients, you could also help them benefit from improved SEO too. Transcripts deliver more keyword-ranking opportunities than videos and podcasts on their own.

Design for Accessibility First

For designers to excel at delivering truly inclusive UI environments, they need to become as good at creating websites for people with disabilities as they are at creating interfaces for people like themselves. As designers, we try to be as inclusive as possible, but it’s easy to get caught up thinking about making a website easier to use for us.

If you can step into the shoes of someone that isn’t like you, and think about uncommon needs first, then you may find that you deliver a stronger, more engaging experience for every user.

For instance, rather than designing a website for someone with the same visual needs as you, then thinking about making tweaks for those with color blindness or vision issues, think about the needs of those with disabilities first.

You can learn more about putting uncommon needs first by checking out Vasilis Van Gemert’s blog post on the “Method of Crisis.”

Accessibility is Good for Business

Inclusive web design, or designing for accessibility, is all about maximizing the potential audience that your clients can earn. Whatever situation end-users find themselves in, you should ensure that you’re taking advantage of inclusive design.

If you can prove to your clients that you can deliver for all customers’ needs, you can unlock a much larger audience and many more opportunities.

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15 mars 2021/par Service comm.

12 Tips to Improve Your Web Design Skills in 2021

Actualités, Actualités

There are many reasons you might be wanting to improve your design skills this year. Perhaps you have extra time on your hands and want to put it to good use. Or maybe you’re new to web design and finding that there’s a lot you still don’t know how to do. It could also be that you recognize that the web is changing, and your skills could use some refreshing to keep up.

Whatever the reason, there are many ways to level up your web design skills in 2021. Here are 12 ideas to get you started:

Tip 1: Niche Down If You Haven’t Already

Jack-of-all-trades designers might be able to say “yes” to everyone. However, they’re going to be stretched very thin as they attempt to strengthen every skill needed to keep up with demand.

It’s much easier to become a trusted designer and to improve your skills if you have a smaller and more specific skill set to develop.

Just keep in mind that niching down doesn’t necessarily mean focusing on a particular industry. For instance, you might choose to be a UX designer instead of a web designer. Or you might specialize in designing ecommerce websites instead of monetized blogs. Just find something that you’re passionate about and will be good at doing, and zero-in on the skills needed for it.

Tip 2: Play Around in the Sandbox

Local development environments are useful for staging websites, doing redesigns, and testing updates safely away from live sites. But you can also use them for experimenting with new design techniques, trends, templates, plugins, and more.

Local by Flywheel is the one I prefer to use:

Here’s a good exercise to start with:

Take a website you like — something you’ve looked at in awe and couldn’t imagine ever building on your own. Then, put yourself to the test. See if you can recreate it in your sandbox.

Don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t figure it out right away. Consult your resources and give yourself time to make sense of what’s going on and implement it with the available skills and tools.

Tip 3: Redesign One of Your First Projects

There’s always a clear evolution in a designer’s skill set, from the day they begin designing to the present day. And that’s a good thing. If your work doesn’t improve or change with time, then you’re going to have a lot of catching up to do when the stagnation begins to hurt your business.

Want to see how much progress you’ve made so far? Revisit one of your first projects and look at it with fresh eyes. I bet you’ll see a big change in how you design today from how you designed that site then.

Now, ask yourself what you would do differently. And then, go to your sandbox and do the redesign.

Tip 4: Work on a Passion Project

A friend of mine is taking a UX design course and needed some users to run through a prototype he created for the class. He could create anything he wanted, so he designed an app related to his other love: Music.

While he could’ve easily thrown together some carbon copy of Spotify or SoundCloud, he came up with a completely new concept. And it was really impressive, to the point where I urged him to put it into production and see if he could list it in the app stores.

I think it’s when we’re really passionate about something that we’re willing to push past our limits. So, carve out some time to tackle that passion project you’ve been toying around with and see where it takes you.

Tip 5: Share Your Designs on Dribbble and Ask for Feedback

One of the reasons UX designers do user testing is how valuable users’ raw input is. While it would be nice to think that design is a completely subjective matter, that isn’t really the case when usability becomes compromised due to design choices.

Understanding what users like and dislike is an important part of taking your design skills to the next level. And a good way to do that is to share your designs on Dribbble.

Here’s an example of UI8 asking for feedback:

Tip 6: Create a Design Toolbox

I’m a huge fan of automation and shortcuts powering things behind the scenes in business.

After all, one of the reasons you become a web designer is so you can design, right? When you’re bogged down with administrative and logistical tasks, that’s time spent away from doing what you enjoy.

One way in which you can streamline your backend processes is by putting together a design toolbox. Your preferred CMS. Flexible templates or apps you use from project to project. Website testing tools. And so on.

As you do this, it’ll force you to examine how you build websites. Are you really working as efficiently as possible? Are there newer apps or systems that’ll help you design better sites? And as you improve your design toolbox, you’ll improve your design skills.

Tip 7: Subscribe to Your Favorite Blogs

I have a hard time recommending this one, only because I’m reluctant to sign up for yet another newsletter. That said, I do see the value in subscribing to some blog newsletters as I don’t always remember to revisit their websites and check out the latest content.

What I’d suggest you do is pick one or two design blogs that have a good variety of content and publish regularly. And then pick one small business or freelance blog.

WebdesignerDepot, of course, is a good one to start with as it comes at a good frequency, recommends great reads from all around the web, and is fluff-free:

I’d also recommend signing up for one that’s focused on your niche as well as one for business.

As a freelancer, I’d vote for the Freelancers’ Union newsletter. There’s always something timely and useful in there.

Tip 8: Listen to a Podcast

I just adopted a second dog, so I’ve spent a lot more time on walks while house-training her. At first, I was stressed about it because it was time spent away from work. However, I started to fill that time with podcasts and found that it helped me work better for the rest of the day.

One reason is that I’ve been listening to work-related podcasts, which are always chock full of helpful tips. Another reason is that it gives my eyes a rest from looking at the screen so that when I come back 15 or so minutes later, I feel refreshed and ready to go.

Rebekah Carter has a good set of web design podcast recommendations to get you started.

Tip 9: Take a Free Online Design Course

There’s an overabundance of information online. If you want to brush up on CSS, there are hundreds of YouTube courses that cover it. If you want to learn how to use a new WordPress plugin, you’ll find dozens of great tutorials across various online course platforms, YouTube channels, and even people’s blogs.

There’s no need to go back to school to become a better designer. Here are five places where you’re bound to find free courses for web designers.

Tip 10: Read a Book on Design Principles or Theory

It’s easy to lose sight of design principles when your clients are clamoring for a website that will make them a lot of money, get them a lot of readers, and so on. Sure, you can design a UI and UX that works, but do you remember why the design choices you made are effective?

Choose a book — just one to start — that’ll help you reconnect with the roots of good web design. Not only will you get a good refresher on web design principles or design theory, but you might learn something brand new.

Here are some of my favorite books for web designers:

Tip 11: Find Your People

Now more than ever, finding a community of like-minded web designers, developers, or freelancers is important. It’s not just about having a group of people to vent to when clients drive you nuts (though that’s great, too).

It’s about finding a group that brings something new to the table and enriches your understanding of web design and what it means to be a web designer.

If you’re on Facebook or LinkedIn, start there. There are tons of web design and freelance groups that have productive discussions every day. If you prefer to meet up with local designers and developers, check out Meetup.

You may be surprised by how many groups there are and the kinds of meetups they have planned.

Tip 12: Attend a Virtual Conference

Did any of you attend a design conference last year? I did. I virtually attended Adobe MAX — from the comfort of my home, in my pajamas, for three days.

I scheduled my assignments around the sessions I wanted to attend and didn’t have to pick one over the other (i.e., “Do I make money or do I learn something new?”).

Some of the sessions showed us how to do more with Adobe’s tools, while some of them featured design and business leaders who shared personal insights on how to work more effectively. It was a great way to shake up my normal routine and to get a ton of information about the future of web design in a short period of time.

Which of These Tips Will You Use to Improve Your Design Skills?

Like I said before, there’s a lot you can do to improve your design skills. Just be careful not to overdo it.

Pick one or two things on this list to start with. If you have more time in your schedule and you’re excited about what you’ve learned so far, add a couple more.

Just take it slowly. Your brain will only be able to absorb so much at once. Plus, the last thing you want is to burn yourself out on skills training and not have the energy to complete your work.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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24 février 2021/par Service comm.

Display the Latest News on Your Site With Mediastack

Actualités, Actualités

What an extraordinary year 2020 has been for the news! From the ongoing coronavirus crisis, to a turbulent US election, to the unrelenting march of Bitcoin, this year like no other we’ve been glued to our phones micro-analyzing every tidbit of news.

Which makes this the perfect time for mediastack, an awesome REST API that allows you to embed a customizable news feed, sourced from the world’s top news agencies, and updated by the minute, right on your site.

Integrating Global News with Your Site

News is the beating pulse of so many global industries. From political decisions that affect stock prices, to natural disasters that interrupt goods and services, to the whims of celebrities who overnight transform brands from unknown to must-have.

Whether you’re building a site for a non-profit in Louisiana that cares deeply about both Washington politics, and hurricanes in the Caribbean; or you’re building an app for a golf course in Halkidiki that’s focused on both local news, and golf around the world; delivering real-time news content to those users elevates UX.

Tightly integrating the news with your site makes it a hub for users hungry for that very news. The only limit is your creativity.

Display Up-to-Date News on Your Site

When news breaks around the world the top networks scramble to catch up; they simply can’t maintain correspondents in every town and city in the world, and so they rely on affiliates. mediastack pulls in news from over 7,500 different sources in over 50 countries worldwide, giving you access to exactly the same affiliates frequently used by big news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, BBC, or ABC.

When it’s one of the big players in news that breaks a story first, mediastack still has you covered because as will as covering smaller, lesser-known sources mediastack delivers real-time news from CBS, Sky News, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, USA Today, and a host of trusted names across the industry.

If your site targets users that are only interested in certain types of story — like sports, or Hollywood celebrities — then you can even pull in stories from ESPN, TMZ, or Fox News.

Get Started Quickly with mediastack

Getting started with mediastack couldn’t be simpler, and there’s a free plan that’s more than enough to prototype your project.

Full documentation is provided with code examples for PHP, Python, jQuery, Go, and Ruby. To start integrating all you need to do is register for a free access key.

Once you have your free access key, you connect to the API, then customize the results you receive with simple parameters. You can specify the types of news, the precise sources (including omitting sources), languages, countries, and most importantly your keywords.

For example here’s how you’d request science news from CNN, but not TMZ:

https://api.mediastack.com/v1/news
?access_key=[ INSERT YOUR ACCESS KEY HERE ]
&categories=science
&sources=cnn,-tmz

Let’s say you want to display Spanish language crypto news on your site, it couldn’t be easier:

https://api.mediastack.com/v1/news
?access_key=[ INSERT YOUR ACCESS KEY HERE ]
&categories=business,technology
&languages=es
&search=crypto,bitcoin,btc,xrp,ripple,etherium,altcoin

The API sends back simple JSON data that’s easy to run through. Each news item includes the author, title, description, url, source, image, category, language, country, and a published_at timestamp that records when the story was posted.

Once the feed is setup, sit back and relax. It’s all automated from now on.

The Best Source of News for Your Website

mediastack is delivered by apilayer, quite rightly one of the most trusted names in APIs, and is capable of handling millions of requests simultaneously.

Fast, updated by the minute, highly customizable, reliable, and sourced from the biggest names in the news industry, mediastack is an amazing API.

There’s a free-forever plan that allows you to use the API without charge, for up to 500 API calls per month, that’s perfect for trying it out.

For commercial use, plans start at just $19.99/month, and can handle up to 250,000 calls per month. Commercial plans also include HTTPS encryption, live news delivery, access to historical data, and — should you ever need it — technical support.

Head over to mediastack today, to prepare your site for whatever events 2021 throws at us.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of mediastack –]

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16 décembre 2020/par Service comm.

Agromousquetaires adopte SAP TM pour sa nouvelle filiale transport

Actualités, ERP & Applications, SAP, Supply-Chain

Dans le cadre de son plan A2P 2020, Agromousquetaires a créé une société dédiée à la logistique. AgroM Transport s’appuie sur SAP TM 9.5 pour assurer la planification et l’exécution des opérations de transport. Une solution mise en place par itelligence.

Agromousquetaires est le pôle agroalimentaire du groupe Mousquetaires. Avec 4,03 milliards d’euros de chiffre d’affaires annuel, 11.000 collaborateurs, 19.700 partenaires agricoles, 62 usines en France et 10 filières, Agromousquetaires est un poids lourd du secteur. La société est en effet le leader français des marques de distributeur, mais aussi le 4e groupe agroalimentaire et le 1er armateur de pêche de l’Hexagone.

Dans le cadre de son plan Agro Performance Plus 2020 (A2P 2020), Agromousquetaires souhaite réduire ses coûts de production au travers de l’innovation. La société passe d’un réseau de PME à une logique de filière, plus efficace. L’un des volets de ce plan prévoit la mise en place d’un pôle logistique dédié.

Le choix de SAP TM et itelligence

En avril 2017, Agromousquetaires a décidé de transférer l’activité logistique de ses filières bœuf et porc vers une nouvelle société, AgroM Transport. Avec comme date butoir le premier janvier 2019.

L’utilisation de SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) est rapidement apparue comme une évidence pour le groupe. Car le SI d’AgroM Transport mise sur d’autres solutions SAP pour la comptabilité, la finance, le contrôle de gestion et les achats non marchands. Le choix de SAP TM va donc dans le sens d’une cohérence du SI de la nouvelle entreprise.

L’intégrateur itelligence a été choisi pour sa taille rassurante (plus de 7900 consultants présents dans 27 pays) et sa connaissance étendue des solutions SAP (activité 100 % SAP et 30 ans d’expertise). Il a su également convaincre avec sa méthodologie pragmatique, consistant à proposer une solution fonctionnelle le plus tôt possible. Les utilisateurs ont ainsi pu faire remonter leurs recommandations rapidement, l’objectif étant de bâtir une offre de transport moderne : cartographie, diagrammes de Gantt, échanges informatisés avec les partenaires transporteurs, suivi des camions, etc.

Un planning serré

Le projet a démarré en septembre 2017, le pilote devant impérativement être achevé un an plus tard, pour une mise en production le premier janvier 2019. Dans la pratique, le prototype de la solution SAP TM 9.5 a été mis en fonction en mai 2018, avec une phase de stabilisation se terminant en septembre 2018, puis un déploiement progressif jusqu’à la fin de l’année. SAP TM se charge de la planification et de l’exécution des opérations de transport, la gestion des données de base (fournisseurs, clients, articles…) et de la facturation étant prise en charge par S/4HANA Finance.

Le premier janvier 2019, la société AgroM Transport a été lancée avec 331 collaborateurs transférés, 331 cartes grises, 135 transporteurs partenaires, 17 sites gérés et 12 entrepôts frigorifiques. 130.000 ordres de fret sont prévus sur l’année, pour un chiffre d’affaires estimé à 72 millions d’euros. Une grosse volumétrie que SAP TM a su prendre en charge.

Une deuxième phase déjà démarrée

Les enjeux sont atteints à 100 % sur de nombreux critères :

mise en place d’un plan de transport efficace ;
optimisation du réseau de transport ;
exploitation centralisée ;
cartographie, GIS et diagrammes de Gantt ;
communication avec les partenaires par voie électronique ;
intégration avec l’ERP SAP…

Le tout pour un budget maitrisé.

À ce jour, Agromousquetaires n’a migré que deux de ses filières vers la nouvelle société. Une seconde phase programmée sur deux ans est toutefois annoncée. À terme, le choix de SAP TM permettra également de faire remonter des informations vers les outils de Business Intelligence (BI) d’Agromousquetaires.

The post Agromousquetaires adopte SAP TM pour sa nouvelle filiale transport appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

19 octobre 2020/par Service comm.