Many utilities are transitioning from strictly “metering-oriented suppliers” of gas, water, and electricity to “customer-oriented full-service providers” with a diverse variety of services ranging from e-mobility and smart home solutions to fast data connections for private houses and even Industry 4.0.

Meeting the needs of the above industry requirements needed a modern IT infrastructure, ideally in the cloud in whole or in part, dynamically deployable applications, and seamless connectivity. Most utilities cannot make a complete transition to the cloud at this time, owing to the lack of a comprehensive, native cloud solution.

Time to know more about how the Utilities Industry can drive its pace of digital transformation with RISE with SAP’s business transformation as a service!

Let’s begin by unveiling the strategic priorities;

Strategic Priorities for the Utilities Industry:

• Build Customer Intimacy
• Support regulatory compliance and security
• Explore Build Customer Intimacy
• Build customer intimacy

This writing details the benefits of focusing on Driving Operations Excellence for the Utilities Industry.

What does driving operational excellence for the Utilities Industry mean?

Driving Operational excellence is becoming more crucial than ever in times of global crises to secure the security and sustainability of your supply chain. The utilities business confronted all of these challenges, including the move to renewables to combat climate change, the COVID-19 epidemic, and damaged supply chains caused by the Ukraine crisis.

The utilities Industry must embrace developing technologies and automation in order to generate value and enable growth. AI, machine learning (ML), and a virtual workforce will enhance workers, allowing them to be more productive on innovation and providing outstanding value to clients Simultaneously, AI and ML will aid in extending asset life, ensuring asset availability, and lowering asset expenses.

What impact does Drive operational excellence create for the Utilities Industry?

In order to analyze the impact created let us give brainstorm on two different scenarios and finally, identify the one with more efficiency;

Scenario 1:

Industry Best Practice: 

Imagine you’re triggering a work order(WO) manually, with the help of static preventive maintenance and probability of failure notes. Post which you have to schedule the respective WO and also verify the status of the onsite asset. Finally, you pay a visit to finalize maintenance work and submit the confirmation data manually.

Next-Gen Practice:

Here, by utilizing the assets in intelligent asset management, the asset’s health predictions are made using machine learning algorithms to trigger the WO, and then the appropriate resources are automatically allocated to complete the WO. Well, speaking of the confirmation you can do it remotely cause you get all the updates on your mobile itself.

Scenario 2:

Industry Best Practice: 

Imagine the scenario of building a project from the scratch,

• To begin with, the Project Management Team gathers all the information from varied sources, then begins to build the project framework.
• This has a humongous risk because the part of alarming risks is only intervened by the probability of the human project margin.
• Post which the PM team collaborates with project stakeholders and shares the same knowledge base.
• Another issue that can arise here is the budget sum-up of the project due to the lack of accurate values.

Next-Gen Practice:

• The project manager requests the financial KPIs for project X and its forecast and predictions versus the budget and project completion timeline to the copilot.
• The copilot then reports based on information from the project manager, 50 percent of the project is complete, but only 20 percent of the projected money has been spent.
• The project manager may now easily engage with the other contractors to rephase part of the work as well as source and schedule the appropriate manpower.
• The project manager gives a presentation to the board, displaying project facts, anomalies, and remedies that helped the project stay on track by detecting possible concerns early.

After looking into both scenarios, hope your answer is to choose the Next-Gen Practices to drive operational excellence for your industry.

Now let’s look into the tools offered by SAP to drive your operational excellence:

Intelligent tools of SAP to drive your operational excellence for Utilities Industry: 

• SAP Asset Intelligence Network – collects and tracks data on equipment utilization.
• SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud – used to schedule and execute maintenance tasks.
• SAP S/4HANA for spatial asset management – for business data and GIS data visualization.
• SAP Field Service Management – for field worker scheduling automation.
• SAP Asset Performance Management – for measuring, enhancing, and forecasting asset performance.
• SAP Service and Asset Manager – a mobile application management system.
• SEW’s SAP Self-Service Accelerator for Utilities – for giving self-service apps to clients.
• SAP Analytics Cloud – to provide insights for better decision-making.

Benefits offered to Utilities Industry by driving operational excellence: 

• Smart asset operations and maintenance will help you provide cost-effective, sustainable, and safe power generation.
• With a fully digital allocation of spare parts, jobs, and logistical services, you can enable smarter asset management.
• AI-powered optimization can boost job efficiency.
• Provide a comprehensive perspective and complete transparency of the controlled meter lifetime.
• Maintenance orders are only triggered when they are needed.
• On-time deployment of smart meters.

Outcome-Driven Values:

• 34% increase in predictive maintenance by improving energy reliability on intelligent grid circuits.
• 1.9x more projects completed on time and on budget.
• 20 to 50% Increase in the productivity of interventions on basic projects by improving resource allocation.
• 20% of FTE expenditures for maintenance are reduced.
• 15% to 20% reduction in preventive maintenance interventions.

To conclude, RISE with SAP can accelerate the pace of digital transformation and your transition to green energy, optimize the environmental impact, increase asset utilization, reduce waste, build sustainable products, and increase compliance.  The SAP S/4HANA digital core and improved business analytic tools offer game-changing capabilities for utilities as they strive for more business agility, greater customer-centricity, and new business models and revenue streams.

Own your tomorrow with a guided journey and outcome-driven practices of RISE with SAP, to know more about the industry-specific solution, do get in touch with us!