7 differences between SAP Workforce Performance Builder and Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate and SAP Workforce Performance Builder (WPB) are both great for creating rapid e-learning content right?   I’ve used Adobe Captivate to create e-learning for well over two years now, and there is no denying it’s an excellent tool that creates amazing content, but (and its a BIG but) Captivate just can’t handle some of the things that SAP WPB can do.  Some of this stuff may be important to you, particularly if you’re a SAP customer about to start a new implementation, upgrade or some business as usual training.

So what are some of the key differences?   Here’s a few to get you started.

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1) If you want a total solution for SAP user training and documentation projects.  SAP WPB is an end to end solution for the whole project life-cycle covering content development, deployment, usage tracking and performance support.  It’s also the only technology owned by SAP themselves which makes it a strategic purchase for a lot of SAP customers.  Adobe Captivate is about generic content development. Which means you’re probably going to need some other software, or coding to deliver the other functionality you need.

2) SAP WPB has way more publishing options, and is more useful and relevant to a SAP project.  I’m talking about Business Process Procedures, Test Scripts, Training Guides,  numerous simulation modes etc etc.  Captivate does offer a few formats but nothing like the range of relevant content options within SAP WPB. I personally feel that the documentation output from Captivate just isn’t the sort of quality you’d expect or need for a SAP project.

3) More peace and harmony between your training developers and subject matter experts (SMEs). SAP WPB has been designed with your SAP project in mind.  With SAP WPB, SME’s create content using a simplified recording tool (Instant Producer), and pass this content to authors who use the full development workbench (Producer) to turn it into compelling content before passing it back to the SME (via Workflow if you get the Enterprise edition).   There are some interesting collaboration options available with Captivate for final approval, but these are geared more towards traditional e-learning development and there isn’t really anything that’s going to engage the SME all the way through the process.

4) Language translation capabilities. Qué? SAP’s customer list includes some pretty significant global companies, so as you’d expect SAP WPB has a pretty slick solution for the localisation and translation of content – into 40 plus languages.  Captivate also has some capability in this area, but it’s the ability to instantly translate your content at the click of a mouse that impresses me with SAP WPB.

5) Better management and deployment of content.   Security features like automatic version control, roll-back versions, check-in/out, can be useful if your project has many contributors producing hundreds of documents on an ever decreasing timeline.    SAP WPB also gives you reporting and basic learning management straight “out of the box”.  Whilst it’s not an all “bells and whistles” Learning Management System (LMS), it does have enough functionality to allow you organise your content into learning paths for your users and get you the results information you need. Captivate has limited content management, and no learning management functionality whatsoever which means you’ll need either forgo these, or else use something else for your project if you want to cover these bases.

6) “Integration, integration, integration…”  SAP WPB integrates with several other useful tools.  For example, with HP Quality Centre. Quality Assurance Scripts created by SAP WPB can be easily imported into HPQC for use during testing. SAP WPB can speed up the script generation phase enabling more time to be focused on critical system testing rather than developing scripts. Others include Aris, Nimbus and of course SAP Solution Manager. Captivate without his integration is weaker when it comes to usefulness on to an SAP Customer.

7) “Navigator”.  The SAP WPB Navigator is big differentiator between SAP WPB and every other tool out there on the market.  It provides what is referred to as “in application assistance” to the user for any application.  This is different to content which is  ”pulled / requested” by the user when they need assistance (although SAP WPB does this as well as part of the standard package).  Navigator works by “pushing / delivering”  content to the user when they are within the application. For example when there is a critical field within a process which must be completed in a certain way due to legal requirements, then Navigator can highlight the field and give guidance on how it should be completed.

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So there you have it.  Please feel free to get in touch with me at email me, or via my LinkedIn profile if you have any questions