Introduction

Manage your people, money, customers, suppliers – even your entire business – in the cloud with the most comprehensive cloud computing portfolio on the market. Seamlessly integrate with your on-premise solutions, maximize agility, and eliminate the need for major IT investments.

SAP OnDemand solution portfolio is ready for adoption in the Utilities industry. Significant changes in the industry require finding new ways to reduce cost in IT operation and adopt applications more quickly and easily for the business. All of this, combined with appealing consumer-like front-ends and out-of-the-box mobile device integration, this is where SAP’s OnDemand portfolio can help drive innovation and agility for your business at lower operations and implementation cost.

IUC Conference 2013

At the International SAP Conference for Utilities in Copenhagen we will showcase examples how Utilities companies can leverage SAP OnDemand solutions as an addition to their existing OnPremise landscape. SAP OnDemand solutions integrate seamlessly with existing back-end applications such as SAP ERP, SAP CRM and other application backbones.

You can see how to leverage and integrate with today’s social media world as an innovative channel to you consumers. Embed the interaction into an end-to-end business process and make this interaction valuable to your business.

Integrating external partners or service providers into your business processes through OnDemand solutions can help onboarding partners more efficiently and reduce IT costs dramatically. See how such scenarios could be implemented with SAP Business ByDesign and/or SAP Customer OnDemand solutions.

Extend your business network through SAP’s Cloud Solutions provided by the ARIBA NETWORK. Learn how to leverage your existing investments, connect seamlessly to the cloud-based network and optimize your supplier relationships. Learn how the ARIBA NETWORK can help you improving your business and optimize your supplier relationships and processes.

Whether it is innovative scenarios like social media integration to give your customer service a new face or implementing service management processes in a more agile way or changing the way how to find and interact with your suppliers, SAP OnDemand solutions can help drive your business innovation faster and more cost-efficient.

Please come and visit us in Copenhagen for live demos, interesting talks and lecture presentations. The lecture on “SAP Cloud Offering for Utilities” will be held on Friday. There will be a dedicated demo pod and live theatre presentations, where we will show innovative scenarios from our SAP OnDemand solution portfolio.

• Lecture Title:           SAP Cloud Offering for Utilities
• Date:                     Friday, April 19th 2013, 12:00 – 12:40 PM

Looking forward to seeing you in Copenhagen....

Imagination is more important than knowledge, as knowledge is limited, imagination I can draw from.  Albert Einstein

The reason I like this quote is because we tend to downplay imagination, especially in the business environment.  We focus on quarterly results, drive more efficiency, increase or decrease [fill in appropriate measure here].  I am not suggesting we cannot do those things, I am suggesting that sometimes we get lost in doing them to the point where we miss an opportunity to improve, the company and ourselves.

This can show up in asking how we can do this better, or, maybe more important, should we be doing this at all?  I have reviewed hundreds of business cases over my career and a majority of them make sense on paper.  Once you start to validate assumptions in those cases you find out that there is not much of a case at all.  How could this be?  Very intelligent people put it together, meticulously checked all the facts and figures and could show exceptional results.  Except, in all that calculating, they forgot to ask the actual people for whom the product was supposed to serve.  Most people would tell you that it didn’t address their needs, was not usable or did not solve the problem at hand.  There was no one asking the right questions at the beginning.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  Henry Ford

Ever since man invented fire, there was someone looking to improve it, make it do something else or use it in some innovative way.  Design Thinking takes this to a new level by bringing together a group of people from different work and life experiences to solve a challenge.  Through a guided methodology, the team tries to understand the problem at hand first before creating solutions.  We interview people who have experience with the challenge to get their perspectives and consolidate the research.  We develop and converge ideas then tear them apart to form new ones, better ones that go right to the point if we missed the mark the first time.  We continue to iterate and validate these ideas with interested parties, take their input, revise and create again until a workable prototype emerges that everyone agrees on.

If you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough.

Another Einstein quote I like as every idea should be able to be explained easily, in a brief conversation for just about anyone to grasp.  This is the goal of every Design Thinking workshop.  Simple, hopefully elegant, solutions that can be implemented to address the challenge at hand is the goal.  The methodology, pictured below, is simple but challenging.  Straightforward yet can lead you into new insights that might just enhance or completely change what you are doing.  This is a mindset, one that can change the way you, and those around, will look at your work and environment.

We will be running a much abbreviated version of a Design Thinking workshop during the International Utilities Conference in Copenhagen, April 17-19.  See this link for registration:International SAP Conference for Utilities - T.A. Cook  This workshop will be four, very packed, hours where attendees will actively engage with each other and develop new ideas for a challenge facing the utilities industry today, something that has probably never been done before.

Should you attend?  Only if you want to be challenged, draw on your life and work experiences, learn from other attendees, are interested in solving a major issue, want to gain deeper insight or want to engage in creating something that just might be useful to you and your company.

For those who cannot attend, there will be a very brief live theater presentation on Design Thinking on Thursday at 15:45 at the conference. Either way, I encourage you to look into Design Thinking as a way to change the way you approach work today.  SAP has taken many customers through this process already to gain valuable insight to address challenges they are currently facing. Would you like to be the next one?

We read a lot, word documents, power points, pdfs and so on. At the office desk, we stare at a large computer screen connected to the company network. Then we leave and keep reading, the same documents. More and more this happens  on a tablet and less on a laptop. Just look around while you travel, in meeting rooms or at home. With an app on a tablet, it’s easier and faster, like opening a book.

We want to read the slides from the meetings the missed, we need to prepare and then actually would like to present from the mobile device. And usually there are several documents we have to go through over the next days. So how can we get these files to the tablet? Easy and quick is expected. Sending by e-mail or converting to PDFs and all kinds of import routines is not accepted. On the mobile device, we want to access documents similar as in a file system, of course with a nice user interface.

Now put yourself in the shoes of corporate IT. And you realize, you might be out of control at that point. If this was the company PC, IT could provide the document access and management to a large degree. With tablets, this is harder to enforce. Simply because there are several apps available, for free, that allow users to exactly do this, easy and fast. They can ‘drop’ files and pick them up on their mobile device, read them, present them, share them. The users do not care a lot how exactly the files are transferred to their mobile devices and where they are stored in the meantime. Here is IT’s problem. How can you stop employees dropping all kinds of corporate documents in unknown places?

So IT simply needs to provide this function, the users need it and want it, or they get it somewhere else. In this way, it is managed how company documents are synchronized and distributed to mobile devices on a large scale. And yes, SAP has a solution for this called ‘SAP Mobile Documents’. It has desktop clients for Win and Mac, mobile clients for Apple and HTML5 with presentation and sharing functions. Run it on premise or in the cloud and pay as you go.

Learn more at Mobile Content Management | Enterprise Mobility Management | SAP Mobile Documents | SAP

or explore our mobile solutions at the International Utilities Conference from April 17^th to 19^th in Copenhagen,  meet Sharon, Rory or myself at the SAP mobile booth.

Cheers,

Robert

Having worked with many utilities over a timespan of more than 15 years, I find that utilities indeed have made great strides in better communicating with their customers. For example, Utilities have invested in improving call center performance and effectiveness, collaboration in key account teams, or perfected the customer invoice with the most helpful information.  SAP has been happy to develop business solutions that contributed greatly to this success. And we can be sure that it will always be worthwhile to invest in optimizing internal departments to the best outcome for the customer as perceived by the utility. (BTW, we used to call this Customer Relationship Management, CRM).

Motivated by this success and other factors like smart grid investments or the eternal quest to lower cost-to-serve, competitive as well as traditional regulated utilities find themselves expanding their product & services portfolio. And I think many of us agreed that after all now is the time when utility services and energy are becoming more and more important in people’s lives on so many levels. After all, now is the time when people are more receptive to technological changes than ever before, helped by better consumer devices and a generational shift. After all, now is definitely the time when people should be interested having a smart meter installed, signing up for the new and improved rate, energy-efficiency program or home service, right?

But why do most customers still NOT CARE about the utility’s products and services?
And what does the customer actually want?

Duh! You might say in true Homer Simpson fashion. There are numerous studies on what customers want. True and I have read some of them, too. But then again are these studies really the major basis to derive conclusions from? Most of them typically ask a small subset of potential or actual customers often hypothetical questions which I would assume not 100% of the interviewed understand. Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that I have a better method on how to conduct studies.

I am saying that utilities need to start listening much better to actual customers and actual prospects. Listen to what they are actually saying on the most granular level. We need to process feedback of "everybody" on an individual basis in very short time intervals. And we need to identify and predict behavior patterns based on the big data stream of customer communications.  It is true that studies, focus groups and business consultants are a great help to devise a communication strategy. This helps us decide how to prioritize funding and activities. However, they do not provide the ongoing input needed to run a successful campaign for products & services and in general what the utility would like the customer to hear and understand. It is not sufficient to reach out to customers and wait “in the ivory tower” for customers to bite. Then analyze the outcome only.

To succeed you need to become a real-time customer engagement company. Its mantra shall be: 

1. Listen to the customer voice at all times.
2. Give every customer relevant personalized answers they actually care about.
3. Communicate consistently in ways the customer prefers (and not the utility). 

Coupled with the technological advances that made consumer electronics mainstream with all generations, we now have the perfect situation
where customers have an open ear and a loud voice that utilities need to listen and respond to.

We at SAP have been working on extending “good-old CRM” with something new we call “SAP 360 Customer”. Within “SAP 360 Customer” we have
developed a number of solutions that will help you become this super-responsive, fast, multi-channel customer engagement company that people will love to listen to and happy to interact with. As a result, Utilities can design products & services that customers appreciate hearing about. Customers and utilities will
better listen and understand each other. They will talk on the customer’s preferred channel at the customer’s preferred point in time. Therefore, it is indeed the right time to engage in this endeavor given the fact that customers love technology to communicate.The generational shift has helped as well. SAP
can help you join in this conversation with your customers for the mutual benefit of customers and the utility.

“SAP 360 Customer” has not come overnight and we are not done working on it.  These solutions are new and improved. For example, they are built on great technological advances like SAP HANA that delivers speed and the intelligence or the SAP Mobile Platform which delivers information to any mobile device at lowest cost. 

Globally, thousands of companies and individuals are extending what people can do with their own devices at their own time and speed. Within
this ocean of consumer apps more and more also deal with the utility’s business. For example, these apps find better ways to help customers understand
usage vs. cost, align budgets or explain complex issues like invoices or how energy-efficiency, electro-mobility or renewable energies much better than
anybody else did before.

But how will the utility best use its limited budget to communicate to customers using these ever-increasing number of consumer apps?

Well, we have thought about that as well with our new SAP Utilities Multi-Channel Foundation for customer engagement. Since it is the time where the consumer determines how information is to be delivered, you need to be equipped with a foundation that lets you cost-effectively expose information from your SAP and other IT systems to the world of consumer apps avoiding the pitfall of building the same interfaces over and over again.

Finally, I would like to give you just one concrete example of what “SAP 360 Customer” can do for you?

Just imagine you are planning a large infrastructure project that will inconvenience many people (sounds familiar?). With the new SAP solution for Social
Media Analytics you can monitor customer reaction in real-time, identify advocates and critics that have emerged in the communities. Today, we are
already scanning 90 million sources daily for you to explore.  Now, you have the means to educate yourself what is important to people in the communities and regions to ensure proper planning and execution of the project. You are firing on all cylinders, reaching out to customers via mobile, web and social media without the need to hire more staff or use overtime. Your call center and other departments are fully prepared to give personalized most current information to every caller and contact. You can even teach your good old utility bill some new tricks. And with SAP’s new mobile app for Utilities self-service, customers will let you know about issues right away, so you can follow up more quickly than you ever could before. (Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsCnl6ybWJc )

Do you agree or do you think I am way off here?
What do you think how to best engage with your customers?
What are your challenges, what has worked or not worked for you so far?

I would love to hear from you. Join me at the International Utilities Conference in Copenhagen at the presentation “SAP 360 Customer” on Thursday,
February 18 at 1:45 pm or the roundtable “Engaging with the 21st Century Consumer” at 5:00 pm. Our booth “Multi-channel Customer Engagement” is open on both conference days April 18 and 19.
Otherwise, please leave a comment.

My last word: Unlike stated before, I truly believe customers do care a lot about the utility’s services. As humans we crave comfort and convenience. And this is what utilities deliver to my house at all times in the form of electricity, gas, water etc. I have to admit that I do complain, for example when the power is out. But from now on, utilities will respond to my complaint on my preferred communication channel. At the moment an app on my Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone would suffice. Then, the utility will let me know instantly when service is coming back and I can plan my day accordingly. And maybe then they will even apologize for the inconvenience.

Don’t look now, but EVs may be here to stay and Tesla Motors appears to be leading the way…

Tesla Motors recently announced that it had sold 4,750 new units in the first quarter 2013, which exceeded their target of 4,500.  Oh and by the way, they achieved the company’s first ever operating profit.  This is pretty incredible news.  Despite the potential demise of rival Fisker and disappointing sales for the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, it seems that Tesla is bucking the trend, and starting to look like they are for real, and more importantly here to stay.

Tesla continues to announce new programs that seem to be having a positive impact on removing barriers to would be EV customers.  For example, they also recently announced a multi-year lease option as well as a no hassle, unconditional 8 year battery warranty.  And with Tesla’s more than adequate battery range (more than 200 miles for the 60 KW and 265 miles for their 85KW), what other objections could a prospective buyer still have? 

The car is quite elegant, powerful and desirable to say the least.  And, even the auto critics have been kind, as the Model S received Motor Trend’s Car of the Year for 2013.  Perhaps the only still unresolved issue that comes up is the awkward trade in process as Tesla really doesn’t have a traditional network of dealers equipped to take trade-ins.  They do have a partnership with Auto Nation, but to date, most Tesla buyers have complained this process is not realistic as the trade in values offered are not reasonable.

Despite subpar sales from other EV makers, their sales are finally starting to show some signs of improving.  Although Fisker appears to be doomed, Nissan announced a price reduction in the Leaf recently, and improved sales rapidly followed.  BMW, Mercedes, VW, Ford and others are getting ready to launch new EVs that should add to the competition as well.  As buyers become more educated about the virtues and debunk the myths about EVs, we could see a real revolution in this market. 

Granted, EVs by experts’ accounts are still decades away from outpacing internal combustion engines (if ever), but it does appear finally that this time around, they are not going away as they have in the past.  The irony is that the one company that appears to be stealing the show isn’t really a traditional “car” company, but looks more like a high tech instead.

Another interesting fact is that EVs seem to be going more mainstream.  In the past, it seemed anyone driving an EV was a “Hollywood type” or “tree-hugger”.  Certainly those convinced that climate change is real are some of Tesla’s biggest fans.  But consider that the argument for EVs can also be a nationalist one as well, especially for Americans. 

Tesla truly is the only purely American car company assembling all of its cars in the USA.  And, remember if an American buys a Tesla, chances are 100% of the “fuel” used to power that car is derived from US made electricity using most likely US mined natural or renewable resources, whether it be coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar or hydro power.  That means essentially this is truly an American car using American energy to power it for the lifetime of the car.  Sounds pretty patriotic. 

And, in countries like India and China, the EV revolution could catch on much easier.  Many auto buyers are consumers that previously have never owned a car.  So, there are not as many pre-conceived notions of what a car should be.  Plus, many drivers are nearly 100% urban drivers and do not have the ‘range anxiety” issues nearly as bad as most Americans.

In America, the EV culture is slowly creeping across all party lines.  This bi-partisan movement seems apparent when you consider which states offer rebates to consumers for purchasing an EV.  Most people are aware there is a $7,500 Federal tax rebate for the citizen who buys an EV…And of course states like California, Illinois and Colorado offer additional rebates.  But, did you know which state offers the largest rebate?  Would you believe West Virginia?  Yes, that’s right West Virginia offers an additional $7,500 tax credit to a new EV buyer.  And other seemingly “red states” do as well.  Georgia and Utah also offer sizable rebates.  This seems logical once you consider that West Virginia stands to sell more coal if the demand for US electricity jumps thanks to thousands of new EV owners. 

Tesla started from scratch with a totally new design and business model.  So far, it seems like they are getting it right.  After watching the new documentary on National Geographic Channel recently recounting the decade of the 80s and being touted as “the decade that made us”, I am reminded of another unconventional entrepreneur and technology company that started a bit slow, and then eventually exploded with growth to now become, only a few decades later, the world’s largest market cap company, Apple.

Could Tesla become the next Apple?  Stranger things have happened…and if you talk to the roughly 10,000 Tesla owners they all seem to have the same passion as the early Mac disciples.  It is these early adopters that could make believers of the masses…and we all know in our new connected world, things can go viral pretty fast.

Time will tell, but it doesn’t sound that crazy at all when you consider the humble beginnings of Apple and compare them to the Tesla story so far.  Tesla’s biggest problem might not be finding new customers, but building cars fast enough. 

I have been going to Sapphire since 1994, and each year it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and more interesting with the announcements and adoptions of new technologies, For anyone that has never attended this conference, I highly recommend to try, just for the experience.  This year Sapphire will be hosting an Energy Forum Day – Wednesday May 15 – for the energy sector companies, including Utilities, Oil  & Gas and Mining. I highly encourage everyone to come on by and hear how Energy and Natural resource companies are adopting these new technologies to become more efficient and competitive. Now,  I’ll share the top 10 reasons I am looking forward to the conferences and also mention some alternatives for your consideration.

1.       Learn What SAP’s vision is to support the changing landscape of Utilities, Oil & Gas and Mining companies at the Energy Forum Day Understand the development roadmap to incorporate new innovative technologies such as in-memory computing, cloud computing, mobility and social media to help energy companies optimize their efficiencies.

2.       Hear from Best Run Energy Companies how they are adopting new technologies to redesign their business processes to become more competitive and increase profitability.

3.       Understand how Big Data and In-Memory computing is changing the way we process data, access new sources of data and impact business as we know it today. Listen to innovative use cases on how energy companies are leveraging this new technology.

4.       Join SAP and the National Basketball Association (NBA) in Packaging Food for the Food for Orphans Organization.  60 million Orphans Go to Bed Hungry Every Night.  Volunteer as little as 30 minutes of your time with SAP and NBA Player Legends to Make a Difference on Monday, May 13 at Sapphire NOW in Florida Ballroom, Lower Level, Hilton Orlando Orange County Convention Center. This unique event will support Food for Orphans by helping pack 285,000 meals-- an entire truckload, destined for orphans around the world. 

5.       Transform Your Business to Achieve Prudent and Sustainable Operations - Energy companies are transforming their business as the lines blur between themselves and adjacent industries. Find out how to integrate operations more closely across the value chain: with trading partners, suppliers, venture partners, governments, and communities.

6.       Reduce Commodity Risk with Commodity Trading and Risk Management-- Price volatility of commodities has surged in the past few years. Learn why companies like yours must learn to better manage commodity uncertainty, which is identified as one of the top three business risks, or jeopardize overall business.

7.       Use Situational Awareness to Identify and Resolve Problems. Explores the use of intuitive visual displays for situational intelligence. Learn how these displays incorporate information and applications needed to identify problem areas, determine root causes, and take rapid remedial action to correct problems.

8.       Use Predictive Analytics to Reap New Opportunities--Learn how current market forces are changing the business landscape by offering new opportunities in data mining and predictive analytics. Explore ways that today’s insights are transforming the use of these strategies.

9.       Improve Usability and Achieve Operational Integrity with Visual Tools -Gain a fundamentally new experience in interacting with the SAP Business Suite using the SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Access application. Discover how combining 3D CAD engineering designs with integrated business data gives users across the enterprise a completely new experience when searching for product and related information.

10.    Network With Your Peers--Collaborate and network with the entire SAP ecosystem in one location.  Take advantage of forum keynotes, theater presentations, microforums, demos, and networking activities focused on your business needs.  Learn about the latest trends, solutions, technologies, and services from SAP and our partners. Meet with SAP customers, experts, and thought leaders who understand your business challenges and can help you run like never before.

Revolution is U.S. television series that takes place in a post- apocalyptic dystopian future. A new technology is developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to disarm opponents in the battlefield. The technology is capable of nullifying electricity systems and self-multiplying.

After being deployed as a weapon, it quickly spreads out of control and disables all the electricity systems on Earth in a single day. In a world without electricity, governments collapse along with the public order, and many areas are taken over by warlords and militias.

The story falls into a genre of fiction where the present day suddenly becomes a frightening new place for its inhabitants to navigate. However, is the premise so far-fetched? Could a new technology be deployed that would spread out of control, playing havoc with, and wrecking electrical infrastructure?

Actually, such a technology does exist and is being deployed as you read this essay. It is called renewable energy and it is having a devastating effect on the electrical transmission and distribution systems across the planet.

It takes the form of wind or solar energy either produced from commercial scale farms or by consumers themselves. This is gaining in importance as a significant part of the overall energy mix. For example, China has doubled its installed wind power capacity every year for the past five, and is on pace this year to supplant the United States as the world's largest market for new installations.

Moreover, researchers from Harvard University and Beijing's Tsinghua University suggest that the Chinese wind power industry is far from its peak potential. According to their meteorological and financial modeling, reported in the journal Science, there is enough strong wind in China to profitably satisfy all of the country's electricity demand until at least 2030.

Unlike conventional power facilities these renewables can only run in the right conditions, and not necessarily when needed. Wind has to blow fast enough, but not too fast, in order to generate power. Generally, it can provide power from between 7% and 40% of the time, depending on the site and other factors.

However, often there is too much power in the system. Last October, Bloomberg reported that Germany was dumping electricity on its neighbors. Central and Eastern European countries were moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany’s during the windiest days, when they get flooded with energy.

Renewable energy around the world is causing problems, because unlike oil it can’t be stored, so when generated it must be consumed or risk causing a grid collapse.

Commercial farms can be monitored and controlled by existing EMS and SCADA systems by transmission operators. What they  cannot do is to predict with any level of confidence what the output of wind power will be 24 to 48 hours in advance.

New systems have to be installed to support this kind of forecasting. Forecasting the output is critical, as it determines when to fire up the large fossil plants to support days when the wind is either going to blow too strongly or not at all, or as in the case of photovoltaic, when the cloud is present and blocks the sun.

So a key problem then is how to optimize production scheduling for conventional power plants. Ideally you would take a plant offline for maintenance shutdown, when certainty of renewable resources is high.

There is an ancillary problem also being discovered by distribution companies. Not only are their systems in danger of occasionally collapsing, but more prevalent is the added wear and tear on components, which is increasing maintenance costs and reducing grid reliability.

One way to address this problem is to use sophisticated forecasting techniques and measure the load across all the components of the grid. In this way the maintenance tasks can be prioritized. This however is a significant computational effort that usually takes weeks to produce a prediction.

This problem is being solved by high performance in memory computing, which can render load forecast results in minutes rather than days.

This then allows the condition in the grid to be monitored in as close to real time as possible and remediation can be taken far earlier for critical situations likely to lead to collapse.

Companies like Alliander of the Netherlands, and Hydro One of Canada are in the early phases of adopting these technologies to minimize disruption and reduce maintenance costs.

This takes us one step closer to reducing the pain and in turn realizing the benefits of the energy revolution.

World Class Consumer Engagement

The Australian Retail Energy Market is fiercely competitive with rising prices (primarily due to increased network charges) and switching rates up to 30%.  So engaging consumers is more important than ever.

AGL recently presented their fantastic new My AGL IQ customer energy portal at the SAP International Utilities Conference in Copenhagen. My AGL IQ is a world class energy reporting tool for residential and commercial customers with gas and electricity (including basic meters, smart meters and solar feed in) across 4 different jurisdictions in Australia.  View the solution in this video.

This is translating to real success in the market place with AGL advertising that 600,000 customers have switched to their service in the state of New South Wales alone.

Building a Solution vs Buying a Service

While CIO Owen Coppage said the implementation of the solution (based on SAP Smart Meter Analytics powered by HANA) had been challenging, he said that he had “no regrets” and that the solution placed AGL one to two years ahead of the competition. Importantly My AGL IQ is built on a flexible platform that allows AGL to continue adding features to keep them ahead of the competition. For AGL it was an obvious choice to build a solution using SAP technologies rather than buy an “out the box” consumer engagement service subscription service. AGL found that buying a service:

• Would not allow innovations to be brought to market faster,
• Would not provide better analytics,
• Would not be cheaper in the long run,
• Would not cover all customers,
• Would not be sustainable in the long run.

Standard Services vs Sustainable Competitive Advantage

To provide a profitable “out the box” consumer engagement service to energy retailers it is logical that any service of this type would need to standardised. This standardisation becomes obvious when you compare the web sites for different retailers that all use the same service provider. Compare the following four examples:

https://mercury.opower.com/

https://energyaustralia.opower.com/

https://xcelenergy.opower.com/

https://comed.opower.com/

This standardisation is in stark contrast to the innovative and unique customer experience that AGL has built on SAP technologies. Multiple retailers that compete in the same market can build consumer engagement platforms on SAP technologies and offer distinctly different experiences and benefits to their consumers. SAP provides the ability for new innovations to be rapidly brought to market so energy retailers can compete into the future. For example Centrica in the UK co-innovated with SAP on HANA for smart meter analytics and demonstrated an innovative mobile solution for engaging commercial customers.

Leveraging the Asset

Another important factor in build vs buy decision is that an in house solution like SAP allows you to use the same data and high performance
analytics for many important business functions beyond Consumer engagement. AGL touched on the benefits of their HANA platform for energy forecasting in the conference presentation. Tata Consulting Services have provided a case study that describes the broader AGL solution and the business benefits for energy settlement, merchant energy portfolio management and analytics.

Innovation Acceleration

SAP continues to release new innovations that help Utilities deliver consumer engagement solutions more rapidly.

Alliander, the largest grid company in the Netherlands, presented their consumer engagement solution at the SAP International Utilities Conference. Alliander co-innovated with SAP to develop the new SAP Customer Energy Managementsolution. SAP Customer Energy Management uses the same foundational components as SAP Smart Meter Analytics and provides a layer of customer facing analytics, energy services (e.g. Bill shock alerts) and communications infrastructure to enable the rapid build of customer energy portals and mobile solutions. Alliander illustrates the solution in this video.

It is now easier to gain immediate value from the innovation of HANA with the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. This new deployment option combines the power of the HANA real time data platform with the simplicity of the cloud to help you get your solution up and running faster, with less risk and upfront cost – without locking you into the limitations of a standardised “out the box” consumer engagement service.

SAP has also released the SAP Utilities Customer Engagement Mobile App. View the solution in this video. This solution was developed with feedback from CenterPoint Energy in the United States. ASUG members can review a recent webcast by CenterPoint providing their insights on this solution and improving both your customer’s experience and your business with mobile apps.

AGL has delivered a market leading consumer engagement solution based on SAP Smart Meter Analytics and SAP HANA. Energy retailers that follow their lead and build a strategically competitive consumer engagement platform can benefit from SAP’s ongoing innovations in SAP Customer Energy Management, HANA cloud deployment and mobile customer engagement applications.    

Introduction

While researching our SAP Cloud offering to make it tangible for our Utilities customers, I found it rather challenging to understand the capabilities and boundary condition for each offering. Our head of technology development tries to structure it in his blog from a high level perspective. In my blog I would like to explain more detailed the offering we have around Platform as a Service that customers can use.

One of my first experiences when talking to customers (in particular Utilities industry) is that customer's expectations in many cases differ from what we have in stock. Therefore a thorough structuring and outlining is necessary. Historically many Utility companies have built up competencies, skills and resources for building, running and operating IT systems on their own. They have implemented both standard solutions (hopefully mostly from SAP) and also built custom applications around these backbones. As the Utilities market changes, many Utility companies experience high pressure to reduce costs. For CIOs this means while reducing their IT budget, they need to maintain the quality of their IT services to their internal and external customers at the same level or meeting even more demanding expectations. In order to reduce the bottom line, cloud based provisioning of technical platforms might be one option to cater for this goal while also introducing new innovation and opportunities for the IT department.

Platform as a Service with SAP HANA Cloud

"SAP HANA Cloud" is what SAP uses to position the different options we have in stock, which can help customers, partners or even the individual developer to improve the delivery of custom applications. However, when looking at the offerings it may look in the first place confusing what options we have available and which to chose. Instead of "one size fits all" it is worth while to explore the offering from a different angle. I decided to look at it from a use case perspective and explain the different options and their boundary conditions.

What is your Platform Use Case?

Before jumping into the cloud it should be clear what kind of use case you have in mind. Based on this, one can select the right offering and get the job done quickly. I have prepared an overview of what use cases we see and which also typically resonates with customers.

As you can see in the table above we can separate the usage into 4 major use cases:

SAP HANA Native

This use case is to explore and adopt native SAP HANA capabilities. In particular for analytical use case this is the way to go. Also with the new XSEngine capabilities even HTML5 UIs can be developed which makes the HANA system a fully fledged application server. There are currently three options available to get your hands on SAP HANA.

Check out SAP HANA, Developer Edition. This is a way for developers to get up and running in a few minutes You can chose from a selection of different cloud providers and get your hands onto SAP HANA fast and easy at reasonable costs, starting at USD 0.22 per hour. This is for test, development and evaluation purposes, however, not for productive usage. In any case it gives you fast access to latest SAP technology without bothering about hardware, procurement time and upfront investment.

Next candidate is SAP HANA One. SAP HANA One is a joint effort between SAP and Amazon Web Services to provide native HANA capabilities on a professional platform even for productive usage. You simply sign-on to AWS Marketplace, provide payment information and get up and running with SAP HANA within minutes. All use cases which can be accommodated in a 60 GB in-memory database can be run here.

What we have seen so far are options to use for starting your SAP HANA journey. But what if you want to go real big with SAP HANA in the cloud? Then of course SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will be your answer. SAP's latest offering to elevate SAP HANA into a new dimension and offer it with ease and comfort of a cloud based infrastructure for your purposes. As this offering has only recently been announced, stay tuned for more details to come.

JAVA Development

Ok, there is HANA as SAP's new ground-breaking technology. However, many customers have vast amounts of Java development and skill set in-house. How to provide to those a world-class platform in the cloud for fast access at reasonable costs? SAP HANA Cloud Platform is the answer. With this platform you get an open, standards-based and modular Platform for rapid development of on-demand applications. Any Java developer will love to get his or her hands on this. There is a free developer editionavailable to which everybody can subscribe and start development within a couple of minutes. I got it working within 20 minutes, also supported by great tutorials you find on the page. The SAP HANA Cloud Platform also comes with a Cloud Portal that can be evaluated through a trial version. When moving into productive stage, you can acquire pre-configured packages from SAP Store and / or  get your own custom SAP HANA Cloud Platform instance.

Mobile Applications

Also a very young addition to the SAP's cloud family is the SAP Mobile Platform on HANA Cloud. This is a very fast way to get your hands around mobile development. As usual it provides a free developer trial. Before this, the SAP Mobile Platform was already available through Amazon Web Services, which would be another option to get your hands on the fully-fledged mobile platform.

SAP (Business) Applications

A very frequent understanding and expectation of SAP Cloud that we hear from customers is: "So, you stuffed all your business applications into the cloud and I can get now an IS-U with a push of a button and a swipe of my credit card, right?". Unfortunately it is not that simple, but we can offer this to some extend. Introducing the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL). This is again a joint offering between SAP and Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers 8 virtual appliances that can be purchase through the SAP Store and deployed in your AWS account. The main purpose of CAL is to provide for test, training and educational purposes a traditional business application within minutes. Saving you the effort of procuring hardware and installing the system. Once you are up and running you can integrate this into your corporate environment or simply shut it down once it is not required anymore.

Summary

SAP HANA Cloud Platform has become a comprehensive and elaborate offering and it develops further! There is no one-size-fits-all button, but by carefully choosing which use case one has in mind, SAP has the right option available to get up and running fast for test and evaluation and also later for productive use. SAP HANA Cloud, it is there, it is real, you can use it!

This post is a framework to contain my experience in attempting to leverage higher performance in BAU tasks under a rapidly increasing data load.

In my environment, we are entering a phase of increased data granularity. Leveraging the ability to receive & process interval data from meter service providers.

Legacy business processes capable of supporting the low impact requirements for Monthly invoices from register readings have grown to the point were we are on the cusp of invoicing customers on Half Hour data.

During this step change in data granularity we are noticing what worked before is insufficient going forward. I intend to document my findings from a functional perspective with a minor focus on the technical aspects underpinning reading a quarter of a million records a month, to tens of millions of records per day.

IS-U-DM-MR

Meter Reading Upload

EXADATA

HANA

Billing & Invoicing

EXADATA

HANA

For a week large Energy Companies invest time and allocate resources to host SAP colleagues to  perform a joint exercise named “high level application roadmap”: which are Companies expectations, what is this activity about, what it delivers,?

     Why such engagement is needed?

It is a exercise of common understanding, business and portfolio. In the Utilities Industry,  standardized business applications have been gaining space in the portfolio of the companies replacing their legacy applications in a process which started in the nineties with the adoption of Backoffice  - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) and, since a decade ago adopting also Customer Information Systems (CIS). This transition, yet unfinished, has created since the beginning a fear in many Energy  companies of loosing knowledge and control of the IT support for business processes, this is for example to delegate the
intelligence of design and maintain billing rates to a third party supplier and therefore  the necessity of assurance that the selected IT supplier will support them in the short, medium and long term with knowledge and updated technology and new solutions for the new business processes, like the ones triggered by market liberalization.

For these companies which already decided for us as suppliers of business applications, even having a dedicated competence centre it is very difficult to
understand and identify the capabilities of the entire present (and future) SAP application portfolio and how it can support their current and future needs and
challenges.

SAP has resources with an average experience of more than 10 years working in the Utilities Industry, this is an outstanding  mixture  of product and business knowledge with different names: Industry Principals, Solution Architects or Industry Business Development which are able to assess companies on IT strategy in order to face  coroporate challenges, not only the pursue of efficiency but how to evolve complex business units such power generation, unbundling or market liberalization or new business requirements like energy retail.

What is the activity about?

The activity consists on three phases:  engagement, preparation and workshops / delivery on site.

Engagement consists on present this activity. We do not consider relevant to perform a presentation of a concept and nice slides but to present one of two deliverables from previous engagements already done and explain why it was required, what we did and show the output. As this activity is being done systematically since 2007 we are able to talk and share content from previous experiences and references across Europe, Middle East and Africa with different scope:  it can be the entire landscape like Swissgrid, Serbia Electricity or Saudi Electricity; focused on concrete areas and business units like Cyprus Electricity , PGE (Poland) or KenGen or subjects like unbundling for Hera (Italy) or CEZ. 

Preparation requires to achieve a good understanding in advance of the business structure of the company, its IT landscape and to identify which are
the corporate strategy goals or pain points which the need to prioritize when addressing. On this purpose, a list of documents is agreed to share in advance
for team preparation. 

Activities on site are created from the information received.  Team will suggest the workshops agenda and which people to invite. Content of the discussion is based on the preparation of an assumption of the current As Is situation and pain points / drivers in order to enable fluent discussion during the workshops.

Documentation required for the preparation phase

      What it delivers?

From the Complete understanding of the IT As Is and the drivers, goals and pain points of the Company a high level To Be Landscape is designed. The delta”, this is the list of projects / initiatives which need to be done in order to reach the To Be are listed. An exercise of prioritization, and even of risk assessment might be required as well. As a complement of the roadmap list some additional advices, like a high level view of the landscape alternatives might be necessary to see. 

Examples of deliverable content

A business case to help understanding the benefits might be possible to be done but then the exercise will become more complex as additional figures have to be shared to perform the exercise. It has to be clearly stated in the engagement stage of the activity and can  be one of the main follow up actions.

When possible, Examples of peer references are shared in order to help understanding the proposal and benefit from their experience. Here it is shown the case of an european utility which was looking for advice on unbundling landscape.

Example of peer cases for reference architectures

Defining an engagement model

As stated at the begging, this is an exercise of common understanding, business and portfolio. For SAP the success goal of this investment is not only
to identify which might be future IT needs of the companies but to demonstrate that SAP has the capabilities and willingness of sharing knowledge with be not only a tactical software provider but an strategical business partner

.

In this post I will share my experience on the Migration process performed for Electricity and Gas Data, using Emigall tool-set for Utilities. I will walk through the road map we followed during the different stages of the migration life cycle. The primary focus will be on the use of the Emigall tool-set in the different phases of the migration cycle.

Before we proceed further, please read this fine print. All the views provided below are my personal opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect my employer's. I work for my employer as an IS-U CRB ABAP consultant with a focus in Utilities Industry but every customer's requirement is unique and you should definitely seek for professional opinion before making your business decisions. Treat the inputs in this blog series as just opinions, nothing more, nothing less.

SAP Data Migration Approach:

SAP recommends the Rapid Data Migration and Data Quality for the migration of non-SAP data to the SAP system.

They depict the migration process as below

SAP Rapid DM and DQ provide a migration framework, including documentation, templates, methodology, tools and expertise to analyze, extract, cleanse, validate, upload and reconcile legacy data and accelerate your migration project.

Details can be found in the SAP links as below

http://service.sap.com/bestpractices

https://websmp103.sap-ag.de/rds-dm2u

Migration Life cycle:

There are many resources available online on the Data Migration process, but here I will cover the following stages as road-map for Data migration life-cycle and how we used Emigall tool-set in each phase.

1. Data Scanning/Profiling
2. Data Identification.
3. Data Mapping.
4. Data transformation.
5. Data Load.
6. Data Cleansing.
7. Data Reconciliation.

In my next blog I will write on the approaches taken for performance tuning the Emigall Loads.

1. Data Scanning or Profiling

1.1     Migration objects streaming

The object streaming happens in the Blue print Design Phase of the project. The Business streams are identified based on functional processes and data are categorized under specific streams. In our implementation we had profiled the data into the below streams.

1. Front Office
2. Device Management
3. FICA
4. Billing
5. Service Location Master Data
6. Address/Regional Structure
7. Service Management

For the streams identified the next step is to classify each object within each stream at a higher level. Business Owner, functional and the Migration team go through the requirements and based on the outcome:

1. Standard SAP Migration objects from the ISMW are identified.
2. Custom objects are built to cater to the additional requirements.

An example list of objects that we identified and the associated stream is attached here

1.2 Object dependencies:

Dependencies set the relationships among objects. If the objects are migrated out of dependency, it could lead to serious issues with the data not meeting the required functionality. The worst case would be re-loading of the entire data all over again or a series of manual corrections.

The objects within each stream have dependencies and are also related to each other across the stream, leading to Cross Dependencies. These relationships are outcome of functional and business requirements.

We found that setting up the object relationship earlier in the blueprint phase worked well for us. A team of Business Owners, functional and Data Load team worked on establishing the relationships.

1.3 Object sequencing

Once the objects relationships are established, the cross stream objects need to be sequenced appropriately. This sequence is then followed during the loads. From the objects identified and the dependencies set the following sequencing was used for the Data loads.

Based on the object sequencing the load strategy was designed. The strategy had to ensure parallel loads of the objects and the best possible use of the background  work processes . Once the object dependencies and sequencing are identified the next stage is the Data Identification.

2.  Data Identification

The Emigall objects were identified, set up, and sliced and diced for loads in this step. The identified Emigall Objects were scrutinized to generate the required automation structures and the fields. The details of the Emigall configuration and the specific object configurations can be found in the SAP documentation from the below linkGuidelines_ISMW

Following the below steps worked well for us in setting up the Emigall objects:

1. Data mockup was carried out from SAP GUI screen through the transaction codes, for e.g. FPP1 for creating the Contract Partner. This step helps in answering the below questions,

                what are the mandatory fields in the transaction

                what fields are expected to have values from the legacy system

                what are expected values for the fields, e.g. ID types

                how the final data should look like.

   2. From step 1 the Emigall Object was looked up for generating the automation structures and fields within each structure.

   3. Once the Emigall object is generated along with the data field, sample data file is mocked in Emigall, by creating Data import files from the Emigall transaction.

   
   4. Data loads are carried from the data import file. The load result should exactly mimic the data created from the front end in step1.

   5. Steps 1 to 4 can be iterative depending upon the Business scenarios and identified scope. Based on the scenarios, the field processing types ( rules, conversion set , initial values etc) are identified in this step.

   6. For objects that cannot be handled by standard SAP, custom objects are created. The guidelines documentation describes the creation of Custom objects in EmigallGuidelines_ISMW

These steps were carried out in presence of the functional folks and the data load team for each object.

3.  Data Mapping

This stage identifies the Mapping rules between the source system data and the target system. The target field values in Emigall are identified and appropriate mapping rules are established. As an example the Connection object Regional Structure data could be numeric codes in the source system while it’s configured as alpha numeric in the target system.

Emigall provides, known as processing types, to implement the mapping through rules, conversion set and fixed value. We considered these processing types only when the mapping rules were simple one to one mapping and did not have table fetch in SAP. More details and techniques can be found in the Guidelines_ISMW.

For complex rules involving look up tables and cross references, it worked well for us to implement them in the Data Transformation step.

4.  Data Transformation

Data Transformation is the meat of the Data Migration process. Files are generated at this stage based on the Emigall Data structures identified and the mapping rules defined. The outputs of the Data Identification and Data Mapping steps are supplied to the Data Transformation along with the extracted files from legacy system.

The Rapid Data Solution for Migration in Utilities details out the transformation process using BOBJ DS. Data Migration for Utilities

We ensured that the file extraction and subsequent transformation process were designed in such a way that the lag time/wait time for loading activity was minimal.

We considered having 3 mutual streams of Business Partner, Service Location Master, and Device Management at the Master data level ensuring some room of parallel loads. The transformation process was sequenced in such a way, that the files were transformed and ready for loading activity in either of the above streams without encountering idle time.

5.  Data Loading

The data loading activity was achieved in the following ways depending upon business requirements.

1. Standard / Custom  Emigall objects.
2. Custom Reports/BDC
3. LSMW.

We considered building custom Emigall object rather than developing ABAP reports,  when standard SAP objects did not meet our requirements. The custom Emigall objects can reuse the capability of Emigall. Emigall is the powerful tool equipped with the exhaustive error logs, load restart capability, data analysis and faster means of loading which can be put to best possible use rather than building a custom report and testing them.

5.1.       Things to consider before the actual execution of Emigall loading:

1. File Conversion: Standard file conversion program REMIG_FILE_TRANSFORM was used to convert the files into Emigall compatible (Migration) format. If the files are not delivered in the format expected by this program then custom program was developed for the purpose.
2. File Size:Once the file is converted to Emigall compatible format standard program REMIG_PARSE_FILE was used to break down the file to smaller files of certain packet size. The smaller the file size the better the performance of the load jobs.
3. Job Parameters:Appropriate object parameters were set before loading, for each object. The Commit interval for different objects differs. SAP recommends commit interval for each object was followed.Guidelines_ISMW.
4. Job scheduler: Standard data import utility REMIG_JOB_SUBMIT was used to split the files and schedule the jobs by defining the work processes and the application server.
5. Work Processes: The higher the number of Work Processes the higher the capacity to run parallel loads.

It worked well for us when the Data Load team worked with the Basis to determine the appropriate number of background work processes for each object load. We executed 2 to 3 different object loads in parallel with 100-110 background Work Processes in total.

Further details on the scheduling strategy can be found in the Guidelines_ISMW.

5.2        Job Monitoring tools:

The required tips and tricks for monitoring the jobs can be found in the Performance Guidelines for Emigall Perf_Cookbook but I would like to point out certain specific parameters we considered during our execution.

1. Process Overview: The transactions SM66 and SM50 were monitored extensively throughout the data migration. Fine tuning was performed based on the observations in these transactions.
2. Lock table overview DB01: Lock tables in active and wait state was monitored and traced for the jobs. Basis team performed monitoring the handling of the lock entries.
3. DB Stats: The DB stats for the tables were monitored and updated consistently by the Basis team when the jobs were running. For intense jobs such as Device Technical Install and Billing install the same tables (EABL, EABLG, EASTL etc) gets updated frequently and required stats updated. Perf_Cookbook has the details on the required DB stats.
4. Performance trace: During the test runs on high volume loads, the performance trace (ST05) was activated and monitored to see the DB tables being hit and the performance on these tables. Appropriate indexes were created / updated on certain tables depending upon the trace result.
5. OS level: Basis monitoring the OS level parameters provides insights on the CPU Utilization, I/O load, network response, memory utilized and DB management and help to determine correct packet size and Work Processes to be used.We executed this exercise to determine the correct figures for Business Partner and Meter Read loads, which were processing intensive. This helped in bringing down the load time to fit the cut-over window.
6. Error Statistics: Emigall provides a powerful tool to monitor the jobs. The throughput of individual jobs and the error count is monitored from this tool. EMIGSTATS transaction code is the door to this tool.

5.3.      Approaches to Load:

Two approaches to loads were considered

1. Using Distributed Import
2. Manual break down and scheduling

5.3.1     Using Distributed Import

Emigall provides the means to automate the distribution of the data import files during loads. It takes the migration converted file names for conversion and the Error file name. The split for the error files is automatically handled by the Standard SAP Master Program.

A screen shot of the auto scheduler

5.3.2       Manual break-down and scheduling.

For a larger volume file size the manual break down of the file into packet size and the scheduling using the standard program worked well for us.

It has the below steps

1. Break down the file using the program REMIG_FILE_PARSE. Provide the packet size and names for the smaller files.

    2.  Once the file break down is done, run the scheduler program with appropriate inputs to start the scheduler. The program name is REMIG_JOB_SUBMIT.

    3. The scheduler can be used to schedule the jobs by selecting the application server name, date and time for the job execution.

We found the manual scheduling approach better suited for high volume loads. Also we were able to reduce the error count to less than 1% of the total file, so the restart of the entire file was very easy and the restart produced a single file in a short time.

Moreover it provided a better way to tag team with the basis and allocate the jobs to the desired servers without impact the run of the other parallel jobs. More details on the load scheduling can be found out in the Guidelines_ISMW.

5.4     Error Analysis and Migration Statistics:

Detail coverage of the error analysis and looking at the Migration statistics is given in the Emigall guidelines Guidelines_ISMW.

Below I will mention the steps we took to analyze the error messages coming out as load rejects

1. The errors encountered for each of the load job was analyzed and statistics read from the error logs.

    2.   To get details on the errors we can highlight the error message and click on the long text to get the SAP suggestions on the error message. When the long text messages were quite obvious for the corrections to be done, this method worked very well to give us the first pass on the errors.

     3.   If the error long texts details were not sufficient, the next step was to run the particular record in a separate file in the online mode by setting the below parameter. This makes the execution of the data as if it is run as a BDC online. Uncheck the flag “W/o screens” and run the data file for the error record to find the error on the online mode.

       4.  In cases when debugging was essential debug mode was used, when the 1^st three steps above did not suffice.

5.5.     Load Performance

Improving the Performance of the Load is the key to the effective Conversion completion in the cut-over window.We had to apply series of Performance measurement techniques to arrive at a total load time fitting the cut-over window. The load time only bettered for every load from the regression tests through the Mocks and the preferred one was during the go live.I will mention the tip and tricks that we approached to improve the load performance in a separate blog.

 
6.  Data Cleansing

After the initial set of data was loaded into SAP, the Emigall rejected data due to cleansing issues were corrected in Emigall through set of defining rules and were loaded into SAP by restarting the Error file load in Emigall.

This approach was taken to push in the Master Data of Business Partner, Devices, Installations and the Partner relationship and Business Partner Contacts.

Using Emigall to cleanse data was chosen as the time and effort that would have required to clean the affected data in the legacy system was considerable. Writing simple rules in Emigall and re loading just the error files was an easier way of approaching the migration.

It’s very important to load as much of the data as possible, especially Master data into SAP, as it would give way for the downstream to get into the SAP. Else the downstream objects will be seen failing due to missing Higher Level Objects (HLO’s).

7.  Data Reconciliation

In this section I am mentioning about the data validation/reconciliation part that was performed by the load team to maintain consistency in the number of records.

Basically, with our number we looked to match the below equation

Number of records in the    =   Data loaded in SAP     +        Data rejected

Transformations file                  Through Emigall                      in Emigall

The above 3 parameters can be retrieved from the Emigall Statistics as below.

The records migrated by Emigall get entered into the migration table TEMKSV per object under the user specific company. As soon as the migration is performed for each object the table count on TEMKSV has to be performed.

A validation check has also to be made on the SAP DB table using query or a simple number count on the SAP tables involved.

In the end, load team can reconcile the data records as below for the end to end validation on the number of records created.

Data loaded in SAP        =          Number of records       =       Number of records in

Through Emigall                         in TEMKSV                              DB table in SAP.

Additionally we considered developing custom reports to perform the reconciliation of the financial data between  the legacy system and SAP. FICA Documents, Payments and Security Deposits were reconciled, ensuring that there is a penny to penny match in the migrated data.

I will continue on my next blog with the steps we took to improve the load performance.

How about a click and your PayPal® information to get access to a leading revenue assurance software running on HANA in the Amazon Cloud followed by a few steps to upload your data which you can then explore using a business intelligence interface designed for a business user?

For the past year or so, I have had the pleasure along with my colleague Wilson Ramos and a team from the SAP Co-Innovation Lab in Brazil to work with Choice Technologies on enabling their proven solution for energy theft and bad debt on SAP HANA - this is a utility-specific solution! For their effort, Choice was recognized as an SAP Pinnacle Award Finalist in 2013. In addition, Choice’s Revenue Intelligence©®-Portfolio 1.0 Solution was certified by SAP as Powered by SAP HANA®. The certification coupled with the availability of HANA in Cloud makes it possible for literally any customer – large or small – to jump online and have access to a very powerful solution.

The words “online” and “solution” are the ones that stands out to me. I often speak with employees at utilities who face business challenges just like any other employee does. And just like any other employee, these professionals need to, and more importantly want to present compelling and credible business cases to their management. Often times, a key obstacle is the burden of proof for “compelling” and “credible”. How do you meet the expectation without a large upfront investment of time and dollars? In other words, how can you run a low cost and quick experiment?

I believe the offering from Choice and SAP make running an experiment practical and the use case is killer. If you click here you will see the pricing

What do you think? Ready to be a hero?

David Moyer (Global Service Portfolio lead for Industries) and Maurizio Cattaneo (Global Energy & Natural Resource Hub Lead for Utilities) conducted a very successful mini-Design Thinking session at the International Utilities Conference in Copenaghen on April 17^th. 

This mini workshop lasted only four hours, instead of the normal 2-3 days,  with the intent to provide attendees with a taste of how to use Design Thinking concepts at their companies once they return back to base.

A team of 13 people from Customes, Partners and SAP engaged in very fast moving stages, simulating a formal Design Thinking workshop, going through:

Scoping

We identified several possible challenges ahead of the workshop and the group selected: "What would be the best way to educate customers (Residential) on reducing daily utilities?"

We then asked them to do a brain dump on all aspects of this challenge.

·     360 Research

We skipped this step as there was no time to do in depth, but David spent about 15 minutes explaining various aspects of what is involved in this step, how to do it and who should be involved and how critical is to develop a real, workable, solution to the challenge and how it often can take more time than the other sections of the workshop.

·     Synthesis

Having skipped the 360 Research step due to time, we had the participants group the brain dumps from the Scoping section. We also had them create personas to show them how to direct any ideas they might come up with to a specific person.

·      Ideation

During this portion we kept to brainstorming and "How might we..." questions.  We also let the participants create a Journey Map as a way to show how these steps can work together. 

·      Prototyping

The teams produced (very) low-fidelity prototypes given the amount of time again.  David did stress that this step can take a very long time based on those in the workshop, the challenge, skills of attendees and potential results, with potentially several iterations and rework.  All of the prototypes were flip-chart based drawings of web-based solutions that they were quite proud of!

·       Validation

Each team presented their prototype to the other two teams in roughly five minutes.

·       Implementation

We did not do any implementation for obvious reasons but several mentioned that the ideas presented could be done relatively easily once they were vetted internally. 

The participants thought the workshop was a well worthy exercise, scoring it very high (12 "Excellent", 1 "Very Good).

Even in the short time available, they were able to at least see the steps and realize that input from many different sources helped develop a more robust solution:

“I have learned a lot from it (DT workshop);  it is a new approach for us in dealing with multidimensional problems in a very disciplined and spear headed manner.”

“…the more varied backgrounds and experiences team members have, the more complete solutions could be developed"

Design Thinking is a method that allows companies to move through specific steps in an effort to gain deeper insight to issues they are currently facing.  Through integrating staff from different backgrounds and experiences, they see further into each issue to with a more comprehensive view resulting in a validated solution prior to incurring costs of implementation. 

Design Thinking can be used to improve processes, products, services, markets, and more as they method provides a framework within which to build a solution. 

SAP now provides Design Thinking workshops business areas for their customers to help them develop more complete solutions.

Seven appears to be a universally lucky or holy number.

Monty Python would define seven as the number after six, but before eight.

There are many terms that include the number seven: seven wonders of the world, seven deadly sins, seven virtues, the seven seas, seven days of the week, seven colors of the spectrum, the seven dwarfs, and so on. "Seven Samurai (Shichi-nin no Samurai)" is a classic Japanese movie directed by Akira Kurosawa, which was remade into, "The Magnificent Seven." Buddhists believe in seven reincarnations. The Japanese celebrate the seventh day after a baby's birth, and mourn the seventh day and seventh week following a death.

But what do SAP and the number seven have in common?

I have the great privilege to report that Gartner has just released their 2013 CIS magic quadrant, and report that SAP has been ranked as the leader in Utilities Customer Relationship & Billing.

This marks the seventh consecutive year Gartner has rated SAP as the leader in the CIS magic quadrant…….that’s what SAP and the number seven have in common.

Now I need to start thinking of something for the number eight for next year……congratulations to all for keeping SAP as the dominant market leader in utilities.

The Utilities industry is one of the most important industries for which SAP offers comprehensive business solutions. As the software industry shifts to new innovations and delivery models, Cloud Computing is one of the new ways Utility customers can use to deploy, implement and run business solutions for their business processes.

In order to understand the requirements and expectations of our Utilities customers better, we would like to ask you a few questions about cloud computing and the SAP Cloud portfolio.

The survey only takes approx.10 mins. to complete and we kindly ask for your time and collaboration on this.

Please follow this survey linkto provide us with your insights.

If you would like to learn more about SAP cloud portfolio with exciting new innovations, feel free to leave us your contact details at the end of the survey.

We thank you for your kind cooperation.

SAP Industry Business Solutions
IBU Utilities

In our last installment of NextGeneration EAM we spoke about the concepts of visualization.  The power of images over that of words and how visualizing is more effective in most workers minds.

In this week's blog, I would like to explore the expectations and the solutions that are available to address yet another critical node of our NextGenEAM Mind Map.  For a quick refresher, let's revisit it before diving head in.  The NextGenEAM Mind Map was an exercise in mapping the key ideas that support the concept of NextGenEAM.  The Worker, the Visualization, the Data and Mobility.  The MindMap below shows the structure and a couple of the minor nodes are specifically called out.

When we traditionally thought of mobilizing we contacted our IT department and they delivered a rendering of the back office transaction on some dedicated / purpose built hardware that was required unique charging stations, communications pathway, additional end user training for the UX and UI !  Fortunately these days are past us and today's technologies are flexible and better yet we are able to utilize rapid development techniques.  This has led to a shift in paradigm for application lifecycle - historically the lifecycle was measured in years and was closely aligned to that of the parent system.  Today's model would have us changing application functionality within a year or slightly longer timeframe.  This is now possible partially thanks to the pervasive nature of mobile apps in the day to day users existence - but also since the convergence of the UI and UX on a handful of platforms and form factors.

The porting of transactions to the mobile device has also gone by the wayside - Thanks Goodness - due to emerging SDK's that allow for the development of purpose built applications that take only what is needed from the transaction and add in information sourced from either the devices native capabilities or from a subset of the parents databases.  Users are more capable in the field, data is more accurate and the devices last longer as they are a welcome addition rather than a hindrance that breakage will remedy.

This leads us to the place we find ourselves in today.  Mobility Platforms that allow for the convergence of multiple databases, transactions and information sources.  The concept of a mobility platform while somewhat recent is a leap ahead for the shop that is still offering / supporting the dedicated applications and devices.  The SAP Mobile Platform offers a singular platform approach to the various channels of mobility that are required in today's enterprise shop.  Business to Employee, Business to Consumer and Business to Business. 

Clearly in EAM one would recognize the need for a comprehensive Business to Employee (B2E) method for work order, inventory, and inspection processes.  Additionally in scenarios what are found in the transmission and distribution world we have found great value in the Business to Consumer (B2C) applications.  While these are usually thought of as somewhat the domain of the "other side", the information that consumers can contribute to the eyes and ears of the EAM team are invaluable.  Take the scenario of a pole hit - the first person on the sidewalk to see that occur whips out their smartphone and completes a simple process on a SAP mobility app named Utility Customer Connect - this in turn provides the dispatcher and the call center with the on site reporting and imagery needed to mount a comprehensive first time resolution of the issue.

Now we have not only a on site report, the coordinates and a great image to share with the crew, we have a onsite historical record and input to the CSR and the planning group for their role in the process flow.

While all of these benefits of mobilization are essentially irrefutable, the question remains how to provide connectivity during the work day or in special environments ?  The only requirement that we - SAP would impose is the desire to mobilize.  Regardless of the mode of connectivity or environment the SAP EAM mobility solution can cover it.  If you find yourself in a radio emission (RF Free ) the zone our Work Manager Solution is capable of having the wireless communication link disabled while the worker is completing their tasks.  When they are out of the RF Free zone and can switch back on the com link the data is seamlessly passed back and any new information or responses returned.  This is also applicable for the worker who moves into an area of poor coverage - the SAP Mobile Platform merely holds the data in place until the coverage for coms returns and the information exchange resumes.  No need to any user intervention to occur.  Finally the steadfast Dock and Go is also supported for those situations where coverage is cost prohibitive or due to whatever security requirements not an acceptable risk.

So take a look at the latest from SAP Mobility Platform (SMP) and specifically the SAP Work Manager application.  Note that it's a far cry from the days of old techniques of ported back end transactions.  Beyond support for notifications, work order, and time confirmation, this application can be used to create new work while in the field and supports the drill down into additional detail on device.

On the roadmap for the SAP Work Manager Application is the addition of geospatial support from Esri by embedding the run time version directly in the applications structure.  This will allow the user to see the work on the map and drill into additional detail and functions with out having to toggle out of the Work Manager application into another map app to complete the task.  Beyond the Esri maps the roadmap calls for the introduction of additional visualization solutions from SAP to allow the user to access the power of 3D imagery through the integration of the SAP Visual Enterprise solution set.

So we could say Long Live the King - with the king being in this case the concept that an EAM worker is mobile and needs the benefit of purpose built apps for their tasks of EAM, Materials and Inspections.  These apps need to be flexible to enable rapid development and updates, visualization support from GIS and 3D sources, adaptive connectivity and the ability to connect to singular or multiple backend systems for data and process support.

This- and more -  is available from SAP in the SAP Mobile Platform and the SAP Work Manager, Inspection Manager and Inventory Manager applications.

Be sure to check out our SAP Mobility Solution linkand look for the next installation of this blog when I will address the final topic in the EAM MindMap - BIG DATA.

As the game clock wound down to the last few seconds in the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals Game 6, the San Antonio Spurs were poised to take home their fifth championship in recent years. But suddenly the ball was with Miami’s Ray Allen, and he positioned himself for a deadly three-point attempt. He stepped back, aimed, and…

Alas! My television screen went dark just when Allen launched the ball into the air.

It was only a minute later that I found both power and equity restored, as the game went into a fateful overtime, which Miami went on to win. The minor frustration left me wondering how many critical applications depend on our utility providers. And how much difference a momentary loss of utilities might make in a region where emergency services get interrupted!

On the provider side, unplanned downtime and cuts can result in huge financial and reputational losses. This situation is ironic considering how well utility providers actually “know” their customers today.

The utility business is, by definition, a gold mine of data and is changing every day. The utilities industry is transitioning and investing heavily in smart assets. For instance, €1.8 billion are already invested in smart grids across Europe today and, by 2023, the South American smart grid market will be worth $49.8 billion. IDC Energy Insights estimates that worldwide smart grid spending will grow from $20.8 billion in 2010 to $46.4 billion in 2015!

From the very generation of power in asset intensive plants, to the distribution grid, all the way to retail and business users, there are a myriad of points waiting to capture the data coming their way. Analytics solutions can help predict and avoid unplanned failures, reduce maintenance costs, improve uptime, improve customer experience, and increase profitability. Utility companies have always had this potential for data, and in some countries are even statutorily required to accumulate and retain certain information.

Making Sense of a Mountain of Data with Analytics

So, how much data are we really talking about? A North American utility provider records 221 million customer records per day after installing smart meters, about 2,500 times as many as the 88,000 it used to record with traditional meters. The question becomes, “How do we garner meaning from this avalanche of data?”

The availability of modern sensors, faster connectivity, and powerful computing tools has spurred on the development of sophisticated predictive analytics tools that can convert these billions of data points into valuable information. Information about asset health, potential for grid overload, correlation of usage with weather, and other patterns were never thought about before. This information has the potential to more than repay the initial investment in new software and hardware by transforming a “factory outlook” into a seamless blend of analytics and manufacturing, distribution, and retail.

This transformation is not only at the machine level—a change in employee culture and customers’ perspective is sparked when it’s understood that the company is finding new ways to increase efficiency and better utilize resources.

See this blog for a very innovative approach by a North American utility provider to improve customer experience by leveraging data analytics.

Visit here to get more information on Analytics solutions for Utilities industry.

With the right analytics solutions, maybe I won’t have to set up diesel generators to remain uninterrupted through a 48-minute basketball game!