extensive customer-focused research report
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 PAGE | 0 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 PAGE | 1 2015 HOT TOPICS Change Management The User Experience Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) The Journey to Becoming Predictive -Analytics -Reporting -Big Data -Financials & SAP Simple Finance -Procurement & Spend Analytics Human Capital Management (HCM) & the Employee Experience SAP S/4HANA & the Cloud 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 Organizational Alignment & the IT/OT Convergence Safety, Regulatory Management & Compliance Mobility The Future of the Grid, Distributive Energy & Renewables Implementations & Upgrades SAP Roadmap & Project Prioritization © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 2 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. 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. 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? © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 3 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? 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 PAGE | 4 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. 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? 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? © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 5 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. 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. 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 PAGE | 6 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. 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? 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 PAGE | 7 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. 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 PAGE | 8 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. 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. 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? 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 © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 9 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. 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? 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. 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 PAGE | 10 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? 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 © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 11 uncertainty on getting a project off the ground, deciding on the best tools to use, and managing the solution once it’s live. 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. 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. © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 12 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 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 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. 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 © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 13 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. © THE EVENTFUL GROUP PTY LTD 2015 PAGE | 14
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