SAP for UTILITIES
2015 CUSTOMER RESEARCH REPORT
“Achieving the ultimate state of readiness”
Independently Produced & Curated by: The Eventful Group
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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INTRODUCTION
The Eventful Group, producers and curators of the SAP for Utilities North American Conference, recently
conducted an extensive research project with multiple utility industry ecosystem stakeholders. From
analysts and media pundits, to SAP visionaries and respected solution providers, thought-leaders from
multiple areas were invited to share their insights.
Armed with these findings, The Eventful Group then embarked on a multi-city tour, sitting down face-toface with nearly 100 customers from an extensive list of utility organizations who use SAP to run their
businesses better. With the ultimate goal of understanding these individuals’ greatest business and
technology challenges, the attendees—who were made up from a diverse mix of IT professionals and the
business counterparts they support—discussed their issues in open forums and highlighted the pains and
obstacles they face within the SAP ERP and Industry Solution space.
The discussions generated incredibly positive and passionate feedback, and while nearly all participants
agreed that SAP delivers huge value to their organizations, as with any enterprise-wide software solution,
there were numerous queries about things SAP could do to make their utility solution offerings even
better.
It is worth noting that as you address the following Hot Topic issues, try and consider more than just what
the issue is (i.e. “My UI is confusing and problematic” or “Mobility is a big challenge to undertake”), but
rather reflect on what these issues mean in terms of the larger inspiration for what can be accomplished in
the North American utilities space. That is the story we will aim to tell at this year’s SAP for Utilities
conference—how can you achieve the ultimate state of readiness?—via in-depth interactive panels, handson workshops, real-life case studies and SAP presentations. Our thoughtfully curated speaker line-up will
include SAP experts, business leaders, international and regional customer case studies, cutting-edge
implementation partners, and thought-leading industry analysts.
The viewpoints and topics that follow in this independent research document reflect the issues that
customers were most enthusiastic about and are stacked in no particular order.
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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2015 HOT TOPICS
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Change Management
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The User Experience
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Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
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The Journey to Becoming Predictive
-Analytics
-Reporting
-Big Data
-Financials & SAP Simple Finance
-Procurement & Spend Analytics
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Human Capital Management (HCM) & the Employee Experience
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SAP S/4HANA & the Cloud
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360° View of the Customer
-Multichannel & the Digital Strategy
-Connecting the Field to the Customer
-Improving the Efficiency of the Call Center
-The Internet of Things (IoT) & The Smarter Consumer
-Billing
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Organizational Alignment & the IT/OT Convergence
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Safety, Regulatory Management & Compliance
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Mobility
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The Future of the Grid, Distributive Energy & Renewables
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Implementations & Upgrades
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SAP Roadmap & Project Prioritization
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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Change Management
As utility organizations continue to evolve while the business landscape shifts, make no mistake about it—
the topic of change management will be a massive issue of discussion. A myriad of factors, be it employee
turnover, technology adoption, governmental regulatory mandates, costs, implementation timelines, or
internal KPI pressures (all issues, mind you, that make an appearance at later parts in this report!), are
concerns for utilities everywhere. But they all have one thing in common—change management. Utility
organizations want to know what works! Best practices for on-boarding, adopting, nurturing, and ensuring
the continued ‘success of change’ are desperately needed.
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Dealing with a “what’s in it for me?” attitude
Methods for changing the engrained habits of staff with years of experience who are “set in their
ways”
How providing clear up- and down-stream communication of “why” the processes are in place can
influence usage and accuracy of data quality
Which approaches work best? What are the major factors in achieving significant adoption and
staying on track in terms of top-down approaches and strong leadership?
Obtaining the buy-in for future vision and its potential outcome of change
How much should be invested in change as a percentage of the overall project?
How organizations have retained critical information and managed knowledge gaps, which could be
potentially lost via talent churn and an aging workforce
Coping with SAP’s evolving system and training needs—upgrades, new developments, and design
changes
Creating a paradigm where “building the vision” starts with senior management and trickles down
Ways to approach the employee who is adverse to change and still set them up for success
Knowing that active managerial engagement is paramount to overall buy-in
How to cope with organizational and divisional teams that are “silo’d”
Creating a culture of “sustained sponsorship”
Setting realistic expectations and building an infrastructure to support it
The User Experience
Utility professionals already have enough on their plate when trying to organize successful operations. As
such, they have an overwhelming need to improve user productivity and satisfaction by simplifying the user
interaction and experience. Many organizations are interested in moving away from intimidating, confusing
and cluttered screens, often driven by employee expectation levels that have already been set by industryleading consumer user experiences such as Apple, Amazon or Google. In an ideal world, success in this
arena enables utilities to provide necessary blended information to the user which enables them to execute
their roles more effectively and efficiently. Increased user uptake and adoption will then allow for more
agile and speedier training programs and ultimately ensure quality data, whether the source is the call
center, the field or the office.
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How can you offer an unsurpassed customer experience if your end users and employees don’t
have one?
Showcase the current options available within SAP, but give context too – what makes sense for my
organization?
Now that they are included, how do you exploit SAP Fiori and Personas to get max benefit?
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Why does Fiori offer so many apps, but so few apply to many utility’s needs?
Providing an overview of third party customizable options to achieve user experience satisfaction
Understanding which tool could work best to meet your business requirements and calculate what
the cost comparisons are for each of them
Find out from organizations already using these technologies—hear how they have benefitted the
business, created a seamless interface, reached their business case, and lessons learned
Blending the right information for your workforce, enabling them to carry out their role
effectively—from billing information for CSRs in a call center to Maintenance Engineers in the field
completing work orders.
How you can tailor the experience to an individual’s specific role?
Can the right training overcome usability complaints?
How to maximize what you already have
Is there a way to make SAP “invisible”, i.e. so your users don’t know it’s SAP they’re using?
How to avoid a poor user experience as a result of a poor implementation; can key consultants
offer suggestions?
Understanding R&D: “rip-off and duplicate”. Sarcastic, yes, but there is value in taking a cue from
organizations with incredibly successful user experience stories
Simplicity. Simplicity. Simplicity!
How to get SAP to guide you, not the other way around
Chicken or the egg? Which comes first? Great UX success from a customer standpoint or thoughtprovoking UX best practices from SAP?
What are the benefits of establishing security roles for different individuals?
How to achieve right UX for the right role in the right environment
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
As utilities are a massively asset intensive industry—from power lines to pipelines—asset management is a
significant area of interest and, in some cases, concern. What are the options available to avoid costly
environmental disasters, keep the lights on during extreme weather/storms and deal with introducing new
technology, while combatting with an aging infrastructure?
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The view from SAP—what are the plans in the PM area?
Understanding the implications of ISO 55000
Coping with emergency performance metrics for outage management systems (OMS)
Achieving the perfect solution: an intelligent system that monitors condition, maintenance,
operational, and cost performance of equipment
How to ensure the quality of your master data—managing the processes, executing high level work
management, and asset management
How to successfully provide reporting of your end to end asset lifecycle—can HANA help with this?
Reducing downtime during outages, communicating both internally (to remote workers) and
externally (to your customers) while improving safety all around
More info about ESRI/GIS integrations – how they benefitted organizations in the industry
How does your organization define an asset? Where do you draw a line for what is and isn’t?
What is SAP’s direction for GEO.e?
Perhaps the biggest question, as the EAM utilities space surrounds a wealth of processes and
methods, many of which haven’t changed for decades! How do you capture this institutional
knowledge and align your tenured workforce with new technology initiatives?
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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The Journey to Becoming Predictive
Utilities are massive enterprises managing an extensive base of customers and assets, and they have
immediate needs to manage this base to achieve optimal outcomes around such parameters as costs,
efficiency, and accuracy. Furthermore, utilities operate in a highly regulated environment, and must meet
the reporting demands from constantly changing government regulators who demand continual
improvement in business performance, outcomes, environmental benchmarks, and safety concerns. This is
an environment of "big data" that keeps getting bigger and it demands high analytical and reporting
requirements.
Furthermore, in an age where knowing something before you even realize you need to know it, predictive
analytics are becoming valuable sources of insight for monitoring asset health, scheduling preventive
maintenance, capitalizing on future trends, and making accurate financial forecasts.
Analytics
Much can be said about the process of data analysis, but one thing is for certain—it’s no longer just looking
at a spreadsheet and crunching a few numbers. In today’s utility world, business depends on data, and the
gathering and the quality of that data is the absolute first need for any of this to matter.
Once you have the analytical data, it is necessary to get it to the users who need it at all levels of the
organization. It is not always straightforward to present the information derived from analytics of complex
data to a wide user base with widely differing comprehension, skills and needs, yet this is exactly what
must be achieved to make that information useful to the business.
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Best practices for getting the underlying raw data into SAP. Different paths for different data—for
example, smart meters with auto upload or manual entry from the field
Ensuring the quality of the data through timely validation and auditing
New methods for field data collection like voice recognition
How groups have integrated unstructured data like call center conversations and social media
interactions into a usable format
How can becoming predictive help assess incoming customer communications to expedite
resolution and other use cases for scoring
How to make your “data model” into an “info model”
The data is all there, but finding it is the challenge—creating data and reporting/analytical
environments that bring the data together, and make it clear and accessible to all user levels
BI is a constant challenge; i.e. processing times, managing the systems, etc.
Dashboards need to visually depict the correct information, in the right way, for the right people
Coping with the requirements of business executives who want dashboards ASAP, but managing
expectations as translating the data into a usable format can be very time consuming.
As a counter argument, if the analytics and numbers are accurate and you can guarantee that, then
is becoming predictive really necessary?
Reporting
For many utilities, just getting reports out of the system is an immediate priority, with the potential of
tapping the promise of "big data" analytics still in the future. So what can SAP deliver now to assist these
utilities?
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What is SAP’s overall reporting strategy? How do all the tools piece together?
What does the IS-U solution provide with respect to reporting? Does it include "standard"
reporting/analysis? Does it have performance limitations, given the large size of customer
databases? What is the IS-U reporting user interface and are there dashboards available?
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When is it appropriate to use BW?
What are the BI rapid deployment solution options? Is there BI in the cloud/OnDemand option?
What does reporting look like on HANA?
How to battle the user community’s general lack of knowledge to pull complex reports. Is it too
hard for the casual user?
Why can’t dashboards for simple metrics that get assessed often be easier to create?
HANA can speed up your reporting process, but can it safeguard against quality issues?
Ensuring that there isn't disconnect between the different departments running similar reports and
that the same results are found regardless of the source.
Big Data
With so many sources, whether data comes from smart meters, CRM data, comprehensive discrete lifecycle
asset management numbers, needs driven by ever-more rigorous regulatory reporting requirements, or
customer demands and efficiency drivers, utilities are being pushed to turn their massive data files (their
"big data") into usable information that can drive decisions and outcomes for the business, shareholders,
customers, and regulators. As data volumes increase exponentially and demands from all sides of the
business grow, utilities need to tap into this often previously unassessed treasure trove of statistical insight.
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How do you avoid being data rich and insight poor? Does “one source of truth” really matter?
What role does a team focused on data governance play in this process?
Best practices for migrating to a new system
How to turn the transactional and operational data in your systems into information that will allow
for better business decisions.
What to do about excessively large amounts of “big data”, which more and more utilities are
experiencing in the last calendar year
Analytics with HANA; what is SAP’s vision for this space?
Customers are interested in use cases of HANA—what an organization’s movement to HANA looks
like, what the logical “on ramps” to HANA are, the likely timeframes. How is HANA licensed?
Storage capacity issues—how much data can you really have?
What will be the impact of the emergence of the data specialist? The data scientist? Roles such as
"Head of Data" or "Chief Digital Officer" are becoming more common. What will be the skillsets to
support these roles?
What is the overall SAP data roadmap?
Financials & SAP Simple Finance
It’s easy for some to argue that this is all that matters—the money. Profits, cost tracking, unexpected
expenses, and internal KPI metrics. For a utility organization, getting simpler around how they manage,
track, and report on financials is a heated debate.
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How can SAP Simple Finance aid the modern utility’s financial transformation?
How to combat the lack of knowledge on basic financial principles?
Coping with the problem of making detailed notes against line items
How to make year-end and month-end closing seamless, smooth, and above all—faster!
Budgets and how to manage them better—how can SAP help organizations avoid the end-of-year
spend frenzy?
What options does SAP offer in the FI space for risk-based budgeting or real-time tracking?
Procurement & Spend Analytics
As utilities continue to evolve and look for better ways to maximize working capital, especially when
assessing suppliers and projects, the total number of vendors can be quite daunting. To optimize
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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efficiencies, utilities need to track high volumes of suppliers for spend analytics in conjunction with
managing the vast supplier network. Organizations are seeking ways to get smarter about their
procurement processes.
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What are best practices in procurement and spend analytics in the utility ecosystem?
How SAP Ariba has been implemented, and what the common challenges are for using it to drive
procurement optimization
What are the latest advancements in procure-to-pay functionality and how can the Ariba Business
Network be best leveraged for greater efficiency, to cut costs and drive bottom-line profitability?
How mobility can be leveraged to fast track requisitions, approvals and purchase orders
What utilities are succeeding in this space and have achieved working capital optimization?
How can these efforts aid your overall journey to becoming predictive?
Human Capital Management (HCM) & the Employee
Experience
It seems so obvious, but many utility organizations have lost sight of their most valuable resource—their
employees. As we enter an era where there are up to four generations working at once now, utilities have
had to find new ways to tap into their employees skills and talents, while dealing with an ever-changing
business environment full of technology—some of which didn’t even exist a year ago! Considering all these
pressures, how do you create a work environment where employees feel valued, want to do their job well
and, above all else, have fun?
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What role does SAP SuccessFactors play in the HR and HCM space? How can it be used to improve
the employee experience? Are there security concerns with employee info in the cloud?
What’s the easiest way to streamline the hiring process and ensure you always have a talent pool
ready to be tapped when needed?
What are other organizations doing to ensure proper onboarding of employees to safeguard that
they are trained for the right roles and requirements?
It’s a fact of life, but what do you do to improve the termination process for problematic folks?
Why don’t more organizations have a clear path for succession planning?
As turnover continues to affect all utilities, what do you do to capture institutional knowledge
transfer and get that info into the hands of the people who are stepping up?
What is management’s role in all this? How do we convince management that there is value in
having meaningful relationships and daily engagement with their direct reports?
Developing plans for HR talent development as it differs for IT vs. processes that haven’t changed
for decades (managing a substation for example)
How to deal with churn as a culture
Many organizations are staffing down and responsibilities are increasing for those still in the mix—
how do you make the overworked crowd feel valued?
What is the role of outsourcing and contractors and how can that help create a healthy employee
environment?
Does a yearly orientation make sense, as a refresher for all employees? How do you handle this
when many utilities have multiple sites and locations?
Is their value in creating a Subject Matter Expert (SME) development program?
What’s the connection to UX? Does a good UX mean a happier employee? Doesn’t that in turn
mean a happier customer?
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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What have other utilities done to improve new technology adoption?
How do you deal with an aging workforce?
What are organizations doing to ensure ROI for newly trained employees to prevent them walking
out the door in a competitive landscape and using those new skills to market themselves?
SAP S/4HANA & the Cloud
Cloud computing, and specifically SAP’s next-gen business suite S/4HANA, provides a significant
opportunity to reduce overall costs to a business, allowing more to be achieved with less. Many discussion
attendees talked about how to find clarity with this complex issue, especially around the areas of data,
governance and security. Organizations are looking to gain a better understanding of “cloud” and SAP
HANA and what it can offer them, as well as considering the more practical sides of its implementation and
maintenance.
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Understand the value proposition of SAP cloud offerings and S/4HANA, and hear from
organizations who have successfully proven their business cases for a move to the cloud
How you can prepare your infrastructure for the cloud? A step-by-step process is needed.
The standards SAP recommends for cloud implementations
How the cloud project should be approached
Insights into Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a
Service (SaaS)—the differences and business cases
What are the security concerns associated with cloud services? What is the organization liable for
should a major breach occur? Can SAP aid in the prevention of such occurrences?
What you need to take into consideration by putting sensitive data in the cloud
What you can do to mitigate risks and authentication concerns
Cyber terrorist attacks are getting more and more targeted, not to mention smarter—what is SAP
doing to ensure their cloud offerings can stand up to the latest threats
What are the economics of the cloud?
Is regulatory treatment different once you go this route?
What are the benefits of HANA Sidecar?
360° View of the Customer
Utility customers, accustomed to the experiences of offerings like Apple and Amazon, or search engines like
Google, are demanding real-time information and accessibility to that information through more channels
of communication than ever before. Dissatisfied utilities customers have shown that they will vote with
their feet, move to another supplier and they’re not shy to share their experience on social media.
The concerns shared by utility organizations focus on how to live up to these expectations, providing 24/7
real time information, and monitoring and responding to analytics gained via customer behavior. Utilities
are now faced with a far more “connected” and smarter customer that demands a level of transparency
like never before. So, how do you achieve the holistic view of your customer base, give them what they
want and when, and still maintain business as usual?
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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Multichannel & The Digital Strategy
With so many avenues to reach your customer in this technologically advanced age, what makes sense for
one utility doesn’t necessarily make sense for another. However, there are some outlets that deserve
consideration, whether it’s bulking up your social media presence, offering more self-serve options via your
website, or rolling out an improved bill payment app for smartphones.
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With so many options available, how do you decide what makes sense and will drive customer
satisfaction up?
There is still a population of customers who don’t want this type of interaction—how do you
continue to accommodate them?
What data can be gleaned from these types of interactions and how can it be used for predictive
scoring?
How do you integrate your full complement of offerings into a website that’s still responsive?
What security concerns are there in this space?
Does the potential for data mining exist?
It’s all about meeting the customer where they want to be met while creating a consistent
experience across all your available touchpoints.
Where do you draw the line for what support you provide? For example, is it necessary to offer
support for every app you feature?
What organizations have implemented social media initiatives to effectively manage their crisis
response program (i.e. natural disasters or other large-scale accidents)
Connecting the Field to the Customer
When something goes wrong in the customer’s world—a power line goes down or there’s a gas leak on
your block—utilities are starting to realize that even though the customer communicates via the web or
directly with a CSR, it’s ultimately the field crew they see doing the work. Yet, too often, the field isn’t
connected to the customer the way they should be. It’s time for that to change.
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How do you empower you field workers and tech’s to interface with the customer and allow them
to offer the timely information a customer needs in a moment of concern?
What role do mobility solutions play in this space, to guarantee that the CSR is able to accurately
know what the field is doing and why? And vice versa—the field should be in the loop with what
the CSR team is doing as well.
How can field resource management be used to keep the customer better informed?
Improving the Efficiency of the Call Center
No matter what solutions and self-serve options you offer, there is always going to be a need for your
customers to interface with a real, live human being. The call center, for good or bad, is here to stay. So
what are leading utility organizations doing to empower their CSRs to deliver an exceptional customer
experience and how are they being run more efficiently?
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Battling with system design issues is a daily struggle—for many, the UX is not intuitive enough
It bears repeating: a better CSR user experience translates to better customer experience
Call resolution in one call is often hampered by the design process within SAP
If scoring is activated, are there “super screens” that can be trigger based on incoming issues per
customer (i.e. if your bill is due tomorrow or there is a power outage in your neighborhood)
How can SAP aid in the process of autocorrecting customer data?
Training CSRs to better deal with the customer who is unable or unwilling to change
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The Internet of Things (IoT) & the Smarter Consumer
As technology changes, so does the consumer. With everything from smart homes, to electric vehicles,
WeMo switches and Nest thermostats, customers are taking control of the energy they use—and in some
cases generate!—and it’s all connected in the cloud.
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How can utilities profit from this new shift in consumer preference. If the consumer is getting
smarter, shouldn’t the utility?
What role does distributive generation play as more and more consumers are creating their own
power right at home, like solar and wind?
This shift is enabling customers with the real-time information required to take control of their
electric consumption and reduce usage during peak times
Billing
As much of today’s utility billing processes are automated, it shouldn’t be complicated…but it is. Nobody
likes paying bills, but how do you create a culture within your customer base that pays bills on time, while
creating a billing team that handles exceptions and problem bills quickly?
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Understand what role bill theme and presentation plays in consumer psychology
How to easily deal with problematic and delinquent accounts
Making the process of disconnect and reconnect easier
Is a specialized provider for bill printing a sensible option?
What tools does SAP offer to improve this process? Are their best practices for exceptions?
How can you connect this vital information to non-SAP systems and ensure process integration?
Organizational Alignment & the IT/OT Convergence
It’s easy to say the business doesn’t get IT and vice versa. The IT/OT divide has become a serious issue
across the utilities space as traditional silos separating the two sides are becoming harder to crack and job
scope and responsibility is becoming more territorial. The larger issue rests with an organizational desire to
better connect the IT and OT sides, so that despite their varied areas of authority and accountability,
there’s a connection, integration and alignment between their business processes.
The increasing amount of highly actionable data from assets, machines, smart devices, mobile workers and
operational processes across multiple rapidly advancing platforms means that utilities are no longer able to
separate information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT)—it’s converging as The Internet of
Things (IoT) continues to connect it all in the cloud. How do we get these two sides talking so their
initiatives are aligned? It starts with removing the barriers, which have traditionally existed between IT and
the operational business and it offers significant benefits to the enterprise as business processes tap into
multiple data streams to achieve unprecedented automated results.
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How to align operational areas against overall business goals within the “industrial internet”
Reducing costs through efficiency gains and optimization of operational processes, asset
maintenance and field workforce management
How other utilities have developed a “single source of truth” across their business processes
Imagine if your organization could provide an accessible view of the real-time information in the
right format, to the right person, at the right time, enabling your users to make the best possible
decision
Collaboration is key and it's not always happening at the front end
© THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015
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What are the potential cost reductions from this convergence?
How to connect the operational world to SAP
Why does the OT/business world traditionally deal with exceptions rather than act predictively?
Trust and credibility is lacking. How do you combat this?
Do you need an additional department to bridge the gap? A Center of Excellent (C.O.E.)?
Dealing with the loss of functional teams
Is farming out your IT operation the answer?
Finding talent that knows both sides is crucial. Some would argue that all your SMEs should come
from the business side
Educating the business to better understand what IT can—and can’t—provide
What gains from automated processes can you reap as a result of this convergence?
How to manage contractors and the security concerns that result when they play a role in
connecting your IT and OT worlds
Collaborative roadmaps to work through customizations would be useful—does SAP offer this?
You need your SMEs and champions to help with process on both sides
At the end of the day, which side really owns SAP?
Does this convergence complicate the dilemmas of SCADA or make it easier to grasp?
It’s hard to keep business and IT aligned with a consistent S.O.P. when changes happen daily
Safety, Regulatory Management & Compliance
Mistakes, accidents – they happen. The key is being prepared and diligent in your work routines to ensure
they don’t happen as often or at all. As one of the number one concerns voiced by the community when
asked to put themselves in their organization’s CEO’s shoes, safety is a hot topic. But a larger question has
arisen—is public perception more important than actually being safe? More importantly, in conjunction
with the aforementioned, what are best practices for adhering to constantly changing federal and
regulatory stipulations to ensure safety and compliance?
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What are leading utilities doing to lessen risks by performing thorough assessments, whether it be
communicating safe work practices or testing for proper emissions levels?
How can predictive analytics be leveraged to prevent tragedies from happening?
Utilizing strategies of risk management to ensure safety—who’s doing this well?
Seeing the big picture is key, but sometimes the complexity of SAP hinders that view
When it comes to safety regulations, there needs to be dedicated standards of reasonableness
because standards change too often
Best practices are needed for who has met safety training requirements and who hasn’t
Safety and regulatory compliance needs to be baked into all your processes so that it just
happens—how do you achieve this?
Mobility
In order to successfully harness mobility means utility organizations must overcome a myriad of issues,
both from an internal and external point of view. As everyone has a mobile device and uses it every day, it
should be easy—right? That’s not always the case. Mobility is a hot topic for many utilities but there is still
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uncertainty on getting a project off the ground, deciding on the best tools to use, and managing the
solution once it’s live.
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Hear from user case study companies who have demonstrated cost comparison vs. cost benefits
Putting the project management team in place while ensuring your mobility solutions fit into the
business and IT plans; coping with “new toy syndrome”
How to consistently align the business drivers with the solutions, as “mobility drives business
change”
Understanding the questions that need answering at project conception. Hear from those who
have chosen their vendors and consultants and how they evaluated selection.
What does native, hybrid, and HTML5 mean to you and what are their respective merits in meeting
your business requirements, thus ensuring the right choice in developing a coherent mobile
strategy
Understanding the road ahead with a clear and transparent SAP mobility landscape
Ensuring effective integration of your mobile strategy with your existing systems
What are the security implications to your business? Ensuring your mobile data is secure in apps,
the best way of authenticating users, device management strategies—especially with BYOD
organizations.
The Future of the Grid, Distributive Energy & Renewables
The grid is changing at an alarming rate as it is becoming more and more apparent to many utility
organizations that they are not controlling it in the same way they once did. With the advent of more
options in the renewables space and the ease with which customers are adopting these new selfgeneration options, the grid is becoming something that customers and utilities co-manage.
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Hear from the leading organization on how they have benefitted from their AMI and Smart Grid
programs
How does the influx of new energy from customers who generate their own power—be it wind or
solar—affect the grid and the rates at which a utility monetizes that power?
How can we plan for sustainability now?
What does this influx of customer generated power mean for the water energy nexus?
How can utilities and customers come together on this issue now to help plan for future
efficiencies?
Are utilities leaving money on the table by not diversifying their generation portfolios?
How can utilities plan for the growing demand of electric and hybrid vehicles?
Implementations & Upgrades
Customers are eager for SAP to provide information on how you evaluate the options, the vendors, and
implementation partners to align your technology with the aims of the business, while calculating the ROI
on future investments. With so many available options out there, it can be confusing about the best route
to take.
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Everyone has heard a story about an SAP implementation gone awry and hearing those stories about what
worked—and didn’t!—would be appreciated by utilities in the market to implement.
Implementations
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Selling internally to gain commitment, creating “cheerleaders” to generate support
What are the right questions to ask your future implementation partners to assess their capabilities
and ensure they are right for you?
Managing your contract negotiations and structuring your contracts for the short- and long-term.
Putting in place the right project teams from all of the necessary departments—making sure you
capture the knowledge within the business after the implementation partner has left the building
Planning for sustainable business processes and a successful culture
Creating business alignment and generating management support to build the business case
Overcoming fears of the system in the workforce at all levels from shop floor to management
How providing clear up- and down-stream communications about “why” processes are in place can
significantly improve adoption and data quality
Successfully integrating with partner utilities, especially around planning and scheduling
Before diving into your next implementation, know the costs. Know the time involved.
Upgrades
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Going through an upgrade with minimal disruption to the business—can it be done?
Project planning for upgrades—planning the best option for your business aims
Upgrading without comprising quality and not blowing out the budget
How to effectively and efficiently test upgrades – including regression testing and the role of a
“Center of Excellence” (C.O.E.) during this process
The benefits of testing an upgrade in a disposable sandbox environment prior to implementing
Communicating the upgrades down and up the line of business to achieve maximum benefits
The SAP Utility Roadmap & Project Prioritization
Organizations are looking for the bigger picture from SAP in order to build a technical and investment
roadmap for their own purposes. They need accurate knowledge of what’s coming up so that they know
what to invest in, what will need replacing/upgrading, and what projects make sense to pursue when
budgeting for the next fiscal year.
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What trends does SAP see as shaping their future product offerings?
Solutions SAP is currently working on in the labs
Understanding the different enhancement packs you have already purchased to maximize your
investment
Hear what SAP intends to do with its recent acquisitions. What other kinds of acquisitions are down
the pipeline?
The tools SAP will be retiring in the next few years and when will that happen
A consolidated product support roadmap including third party tools/offerings
Understanding the system landscape strategy
Planning with limited resources would be aided by roadmap insight from SAP
Knowing the difference between SAP AEs who offer business counsel vs. selling counsel
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CONCLUSION
The challenges, key questions and hot topics facing the SAP Utilities community have been uncovered and
listed above. This research report will act as a blueprint and by leveraging the deep, collective insight found
in the above report, a solid foundation will emerge and inform the utility community as it comes together
over the next nine months to cooperatively build the SAP for Utilities North American Conference being
held in Huntington Beach, CA, in September 2015.
It is important to note that the storytellers offering up their experiences in California will be a mix of
business process owners, leaders, manager and users of technology, as well as the IT groups that support
them. The SAP Utilities community is at its most powerful when service providers, practitioners and
technologists collaborate to define the best path forward toward industry leading best practices.
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