Bourne Digital launches SAP user experience design centre in Melbourne

German enterprise software giant SAP has launched an AppHaus in Melbourne in partnership with local consultancy Bourne Digital.

Melbourne has joined an exclusive international list with the launch of the Bourne Digital Experience Design Centre – a SAP ‘AppHaus’ co-innovation centre where customers can come together with engineers and solution providers to co-design the end-user experience. Of ten present locations worldwide, it’s just the second in the Asia Pacific, and the first in the region to run by a SAP network partner.

Established in Melbourne in 2015, and with an additional outlet in Sydney, user experience (UX) design consultancy Bourne Digital provides a range of services with a focus on agile digital product design and development, serving clients in the financial services, retail, logistics and utilities sectors in areas such as user research, design thinking, prototyping, architecture, testing and validation, and managed services. 

Recently named a SAP Partner Award winner for innovation at the SAP Partner Kickoff  meetings (where Accenture and Deloitte claimed two titles apiece for the Asia Pacific region), Bourne Digital was founded by managing director Selim Ahmed, who previously served as head of mobile and UX solutions for SAP in Australia and New Zealand. Prior to SAP, Ahmed spent 12 years between Deloitte, BearingPoint and PwC, the latter where he was the founding director of the firm’s national digital consulting practice.

Now Ahmed joins just a handful of others in guiding a partner-operated AppHaus for the German enterprise software giant, which last year clocked global revenues of nearly AU$40 billion. Since unveiling the concept in Heidelberg in 2013, SAP has added four more locations, including the sole previous Asia Pacific outlet in Korea, while another five current AppHaus hubs are run by partners – covering Austria, Spain, the US, and Canada. 

Located at the iconic pre-federation Bennelong Building a short hop from Flinders Street Station, the Bourne Digital Experience Design Centre has already been supporting clients with digital transformations, including Newcrest Mining, with the collaboration using machine learning to produce an app which simplifies maintenance requests for the some 20,000-plus assets of what is one of the largest gold-miners in the world.

“The Bourne Digital Experience Design Centre brings together the right environment and expertise to deliver innovative solutions to real business problems putting the user experience at the heart of the process,” Newcrest’s chief information & digital officer Gavin Wood told ARN. “Human-centred design has already helped us achieve rapid and effective innovation – we are looking forward to seeing where this takes us next.”

“By bringing together business experts, designers, developers, customers, and users in a creative environment like the Bourne Digital Experience Design Centre, there’s no limit to the innovation we can help our customers achieve,” said SAP A/NZ managing director Damien Bueno, with Ahmed adding; “We are really honoured to be the first SAP AppHaus Network member in the Asia Pacific and Japan region and are excited about the growth and innovation this will bring to Melbourne.”

Related: EY continues technology consulting push with Plaut IT acquisition.