Mobility and SAP for Utilities

As signposted in the first day's keynotes, mobility was a recurring topic during the 2011 SAP for Utilities conference in San Antonio. Deloitte's Lee Ditmar and Mark White presented a well rehearsed message (and super slick Keynote deck) about going beyond the "veneer" of mobility to offer new operating models and services—plus including other information workers in addition to field teams alone. Again, this sounds terrific but highly aspirational; we'll be giving further thought to practical, real world examples that utilities would actually consider implementing. In fact, we'll be doing this next week at Sonoma County Water Agency, as part of our Fleet Management project.

Other notable take-aways: Mark's advocacy of single task-oriented mobile apps that deliver obvious results is another valuable best practice. And we also liked their characterization of descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics—a good framework in which to think about data and actionable behavior in the workplace.

Conveniently enough, Adolf Alesch from IBM closed the loop on some of this theory later on in the conference with his presentation on Mobility Moments℠. He gave a great example of a mobile app that would enable a field team to photograph a transformer, for example, and connect the image and related GIS data to the SAP Asset Master in order to get real-time maintenance records. This "augmented reality" scenario combines a utility's system of record with its system of engagement to generate greater efficiency and better customer service.

GIS and SAP for utilities - MTEMC and Aquarion Water

Building on last year's great presentation by the City of San Diego, the 2011 SAP for utilities conference included several new examples of GIS' positive impact on utilities' operations and customer service. Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Cooperative (MTEMC) spoke about their integration of GIS and SAP EAM, in which they use GIS for design and SAP for orders, accounting, Compatible Units, and materials. This configuration allows engineers to work more efficiently by staying in GIS instead of switching frequently between the two applications.

MTEMC focused on automating work orders and pick-lists for construction projects; automating fixed asset and expense accounting for GIS-generated projects; and standardizing order create, time and cost collection, and project accounting. By starting with these core elements—for example, two work order templates to cover simple jobs and complex projects‐MTEMC was able to eliminate data chasing and deliver automated, real-time views of inventory. Amidst all of the technical explanations and ambitious goals, Chip Pinion gave a little reality check by noting that, "Linemen want to be linemen, they don't want to work on computers."

Another good example of GIS and SAP was presented by Mark Fois from Aquarion Water, which uses GIS to note critical customers that can be seriously impacted by scheduled maintenance and unplanned events, such as main breaks. Aquarion uses GIS to map designated customers, such as schools, hospitals, and toxic chemical-producing businesses such as hair salons, and keeps this data fresh by contacting customers annually and updating records when move-ins and move-outs occur.

2011 SAP for Utilities Conference

HPC America will be attending the 2011 SAP for Utilities conference in San Antonio, Texas on September 18-20. If you'd like to meet with us to discuss implementation and enhancement of your SAP IS-U/FERC module or any other issue concerning SAP for utilities, please give us a call to set up an appointment.

We'll also have some updated information to share about our latest solution for utilities on SAP, HPC Utility Financials Accelerator, which goes beyond the capabilities of the FERC module that we originally created, which SAP acquired from us in 1996. HPC UFA is in production at four utilities across the U.S., and was certified by SAP in 2010 as powered by the NetWeaver technology platform.

Learn more about our development of the SAP IS-U/FERC module and HPC Utility Financials Accelerator.