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Thinking about attending the International SAP Conference for Utilities?

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Are you thinking about attending the International SAP Conference for Utilities? If so, then NOW - would be the best time to register as the prices go up this Saturday, 13 February.

 

This SAP for Utilities event is the leading international conference for IT and business professionals in utilities industry with:


  • 25+ real life business focused customer case studies
  • 9 pre-conference workshops designed for all levels of experience
  • 17+ hours packed with interactive and informative content
  • 10 SAP solution road-map and overview presentations
  • 7.5+ hours of undiluted networking time
  • Multiple opportunities for private meetings with SAP executives and solution experts

 

To download brochure and to register, visit the conference web site >>


Display the initial screen of BP creation

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In this blog, I would like to share my knowledge about how to add initial screen during Business Partner creation. Most of you might already know this but even then have this document might be useful for others.

 

When you try to create a Business Partner from transaction BP (or from FPP1 for Utility Customer) there is standard BAdi which you can use to activate an initial screen which asks for BP Type like the one shown below in figure A.

 

 

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Figure A

 

Ideally, without this BAdi being activated you have to go to the 'Control' tab and then specify BP Type.

 

 

Following are the standard delivery:

 

Enhancement Spot: BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN

Enhancement Implementation: BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN_IMP

Interface: IF_EX_BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN

Implementing Class: CL_EX_BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN

 

Technically, create an Enhancement Implementation for the above BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN_IMP and then assign the BAdi BUPA_INITIAL_SCREEN to this from SE19, then activate your implementation, all done now to get this initial screen.

 

This initial screen is really useful as it reduces the time to create a new Business Partner (though its fraction of seconds).

 

Hope this helps!

The journey of Digital Transformation for Utilities - Select the right capital projects which will path your way into the new era of digital business

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Aging infrastructures and workforce, deployment of renewables, adaptation to liberalized energy market rules, and deployment of smart meters are challenges European and global utilities are facing while at the same time they need to contiously develop new markets and products to meet expectations of a new generation of digital consumers.

To achieve this goal leading utilities are forced to invest into the digital transformation of their business to combat new quickly emerging market entrants and to get prepare for totally new business models.

On this journey of digital transformation Utilities need to re-balance their  portfolio of capital projects towards those investments which will help to repsond to these new challenges and trends. Investment areas  which will play a more important role in the future are:

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  • Deregulation: incumbent utilities need to invest into information systems due to legal requirements to split supply and distribution business.
  • Digitization: leverage predictive maintenance to automatically create work orders or investment requests as a new channel for investment planning. New business models and new business processes emerging with the new technological capabilities require investments into IT projects.
  • Decarbonization: requires investments into generation capabilities, either into fossil to achieve higher efficiency or in renewables. This results in more investment requests and repriorization of requests and ongoing projects. To provide full visibility and transparency to decision makers and project stakeholders a holistic view on the investment portfolio is required. Repriorization requires an integrated change management allowing for impact modeling and simulation.
  • Decentralization: increasing feed-in of renewable energy into grids requires investments into infrastructure to transport energy from new locations (e.g. offshore) and grid connection of local renewable power plants to model the increasing number of renewable prosumers as “virtual power plants
  • Energy efficiency: investments into improved energy efficiency in generation, implement a innovation culture to identify ideas for new business models and turn them quickly into new products and services

 

SAP can play an important role in helping utilities to transform into a digital enterprise, stay competitive, and deliver against its business imperatives. SAP’s Solution for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management enables a more effective management of the overall investment portfolio, as well as a more streamlined execution of capital projects, which will result in substantial cash flow increases in each business unit.

 

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Please join us at the International SAP Conference for Utilities (11-13 April, 2016 – The Hague, The Netherlands) to learn more about SAP’s solution for Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management.


A half day pre conference workshop dedicated to this topic is scheduled for Thursday April 14, 2016 (09:00 - 12:30) . Please check this site for further details and registration -> Link

Upcoming SAP S/4HANA Sales Enablement Webinars for Partners in Utilities

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Dear Partners,

 

The SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management solution represents our foundational core solution covering all mission-critical business processes of an enterprise natively built on the SAP HANA platform, designed with SAP Fiori UX. It delivers the core functionality across end-to-end processes such as order to cash, plan to product, procure to pay, as well as finance capabilities.

 

To help you, our valued partners, effectively position SAP S4/HANA and its capabilities to your customers in the Utilities industry, we would like offer the upcoming SAP enablement webinar:

 

"SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management – Simplification and Innovation for Utilities Industry" – 25 February, 2016. Detailed information and registration here.

 

In this webinar we will discuss the relevance and implications of the innovations coming with S/4HANA for the Utilities solutions and customers.

 

Agenda:

  • S/4HANA for Utilities: Status quo & roadmap
  • How to position SAP S/4HANA in Utilities Industry
  • Sales and Service opportunities and call to action

 

Target Partner: Services Partner, Channel Partner, Authorized Reseller, Solution Partner

 

Roles: Presales Consultant, Sales Executive, Business Development, Solution Consultant, Development Experts 

 

We look forward to having you in these sessions!

The Digital Customer Experience workshop

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The Digital Customer Experience workshop held at the "International SAP Conference for Utilities" should hopefully foster some good exchange of views. We would like to provide some of our views that hopefully will inspire you to either comment or bring YOURviews to this workshop



The digital transformation gap

 

The gap between those who has an idea of what to get from a digital transformation and those responsible for delivering the digital transformation is a key barrier for these types of projects. When you are not restricted by having to actually build your idea, it easy to flight high. When you have to deliver it is more comfortable to only commit to things you already familiar with.

 

None of the above approaches are practical when delivering something as big as the digital transformation. The first item on the agenda is to agree that this is a journey and not a destination. The mental trick about this being a journey is  - that we all agree that no one has the answer to how this will finally look like and therefore we can be comfortable about doing this in smaller steps and also consider part of every step a test and verification that we are doing the right thing.

 

An obvious question is the cost to do this. If we are doing 100 things in a 100 step's, would it not be more effective to deliver these 100 things in 2 or 3 steps. The answer it absolutely yes BUT with one HUGE assumption which is – We can upfront agree and define the steps.

 

We hope to get your views at the conference in The Hague – see you.

Article: German utilities urged to pledge cash for nuclear clean-up

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Germany's ailing utilities should transfer cash into a fund to pay for the country's exit from nuclear energy unless they want to give up some of their most promising assets, the chairman of a government-appointed commission said.

 

Dealing with the costs of dismantling their nuclear plants has become the make-or-break issue for the country's energy firms, with markets eagerly awaiting commission proposals due by the end of the month for how it can be done.

 

At the heart of the problem lie nearly 40 billion euros ($45 billion) in provisions set aside by Germany's "big four" utilities -- E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall -- to fund the dismantling and storage of waste from their nuclear plants, the last of which will be closed in 2022.

 

Shares in both E.ON and RWE rallied on Monday, recouping some of last week's losses, as analysts and traders welcomed the likelihood of a solution that could free the companies from the uncertainty over future liabilities.

 

Concerns over their financial health have fuelled fears that the power firms may be unable to turn the provisions, which include assets and shares as well as cash, into liquidity. That risks leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill. Read the full article >

Integrated Workforce Management – Workforce Scheduling and Optimisation (WS&O) by ClickSoftware

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This approach ensures that the right engineers and technicians get to the right appointments on time, and that customers are continually kept informed. The result? Maximizing customer satisfaction and minimizing costs.

 

ClickSoftware will be exhibiting at International SAP Conference for Utilities this year to share our extensive experience of integrated workforce management in both the energy and utilities sectors. Recognized by industry analysts as the leading provider of mobile workforce management and service optimization solutions for field and in-house resources, our solutions provide organizations with end-to-end visibility and control of the entire service management chain.

Based on results from our global utilities customers, benefits typically include:

 

Increased Workforce Productivity

  • 50% more maintenance visits
  • 95% reduction in backlog

 

Customer Service Improvements

  • 30% improvement in response times
  • 20% improvement in emergency response times

 

Overall Cost Reductions

  • 22% reduction in overtime
  • 24% reduction in travel time


Visit our stand in the exhibition area where we can take you through ClickSoftware’s data-driven decision making approach which facilitates increased workforce productivity, customer service improvements and overall cost reductions. We’ll also be demoing our products, including our ClickSchedule and ClickMobile solutions, showing how they can help businesses with their digital transformation of managing their workforces.

 

ClickSoftware’s field service management solutions are available from either ClickSoftware directly or from SAP.

If you think we can help your workforce or want to find out more, come and say hello!


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Workshop 4: Smart Metering with SAP – Optimizing Processes for Efficient and Customer-Centric Operations

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For the 5th consecutive year myself, together with Holger Schweinfurth will be hosting a workshop focused on how business processes can me modeled by utilities once an Advanced Metering Infrastructure is in place. From the moment it starts, with a subset of points of delivery covered, until the full smart metering roll-out gets completed.

 

In this Workshop, we will address multiple aspects that are fundamental for a utility to define the best approach to the business process re-engineering that results from the new possibilities that smart meters offer to utilities and to the overall stakeholders of the industry, in particular, its customers.

 

On a daily basis we are asked to advise our SAP customers on key questions that we will be addressing in our workshop.

 

Key topics we will be covering include:

• Alternatives for Reference Architectures

• The SAP MDUS Concept

• Master Data Model and Enhancements

• Integration Concepts and Data Volumes

• Meter Asset LifeCycle and Commissioning

• Communication of Meter Readings

• Processing of Events • Disconnection/Reconnection

• Energy Settlement on HANA

• Critical Peak Pricing and Support to Demand Response

• Architectures for Liberalized Energy Markets

• Smart meter planning and roll-out

 

We will be sharing with the audience our insights from our daily engagements with the industry on what are the possible approaches for different market participants like Distributors, Meter Reading Operators, Clearing Houses or Retailers that should be taken leveraging SAP for Utilities and coping with the regulatory and market requirements that each participant needs to meet to comply and/or to compete.

 

Workshop 4 Smart Metering with SAP - Optimizing Processes for Efficient and Customer-Centric Operations will take place on Monday, April 11, 2016 from 9:30 to 13:00.


I look forward to meet you in all in this Workshop and at the International SAP Conference for Utilities.

 

Miguel Gaspar Silva

 

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P.S. Stay tuned for more details, and remember to sign upfor the conference! To get regular updates,follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.


SAP Geo.e and SAP Geographical Enablement Framework @International Utilities Conference in The Hague

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Customers are running more and more sophisticated methods to improve their business processes today. One of the key topics for the Utilities customers has been the integration with the GIS systems as well as provide the capabilities to display business information in SAP. SAP Geo.e & Geo.eSync Framework enables customer today to see business data (Functional Location, Equipment, Work Orders, Notification, Connection objects,..) in a map in SAP either as a point, line or polygon as well as the synchronization between GIS and SAP. Additionally to display the business data created in SAP it’s also possible to consume layers or attributes defined in GIS.

 

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SAP Geo.e is being also a facilitator for the scenarios to converge data from IT and OT system. During the microforum at the International SAP Conference for Utilities, it will also be presented a demo scenario (IT/OT: Alert Management) developed by SAP Consulting team where we do:

 

  • Integration of external data created from the field, simulating the behavior of sensors installed at a transformers
  • The automatic creation of a new notification in Geo.e at the detection of a anomalous reading
  • The creation of a new work order in order to send a crew to inspect the affected transformer
  • The scheduling of the work order from Geo.e using SAP Multiresource Scheduling (MRS)
  • The execution of the work order from the SAP Work Manager.

 

 

Additionally to that, we will also introduce SAP Geographical Enablement Framework that will enable in the near future all the HANA customers to see all the business data and GIS data in the SAP. If you want to know more about how Geo.e, Geo.eSync Framework and SAP Geographical Enablement Framework please follow me on the microforum. The schedule will be announced soon.

 

If you want to know more about the experience of Loudoun Water during the implementation of Geo.e and Geo.eSync Framework don’t miss this session:

Geoenabling the Enterprise - Implementation of SAP Geographical Enablement Framework at Loudoun Water, which is part of the Digitalized Assets track, and will take place on Wednesday, April 13, 2016 from 14:30 to 15:15.

 

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Stay tuned for more details, and remember to sign upfor the conference! To get regular updates,follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.

Will Utilities Be Left In The Dark And Off The Grid?

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Gartner states that CIOs must move beyond creating digital awareness in the organization. For a successful digital business transformation, they must develop digital business principles, a digital business blueprint and a digital business execution plan.

 

Digital_Utility Whitepaper.GIFTo help Utility leaders make sure they are not left in the dark and off the grid when it comes to digital transformation, SAP published the Digital Utilities whitepaper to help create a digital business blueprint and execution plan. As described in the paper, the three key drivers of the digital transformation are:

  1. Reimagine business models to find new revenue and profit sources by offering innovative supply, load balancing, and smart home/business energy services
  2. Reimagine business processes and use digital technology to optimize business outcomes by converging information and operational technologies
  3. Reimagine the role and structure of the workforce to support future business by incorporating wearable technology, 3D printers, and geospatial technologies

 

During my keynote at the SAP International Utility Conference in The Hague, I will highlight examples of “Reimagining” of the utilities business models and discuss what will shape the Digital Energy Network that overlays and complements the power supply system.

 

All participants - utilities, consumers, and new non-utility players - will use digital innovation to anticipate real-time demand and supply, operate self-healing grids, and innovate the customer experience and the Internet of Things (IoT) is at the heart of this transformation.

 

Utilities are one of the major industries to realize the next revolution from IoT because of the IT/OT convergence driven by the deployment of new equipment on the grid such as advanced meters, complex transformers as well as advanced power and communication networks all containing hundreds if not thousands of microprocessors providing lots and lots of data, big data, to be used in multiple ways. Big data around analytics and, with lots of data, predictability is the ultimate goal of the Internet of Things.

 

SAP’s vision is to help the world use energy and natural resources responsibly today and tomorrow while providing reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy for all people. This requires access to the Digital Energy Network for all participants. SAP will offer the digital foundation and the digital gateways that integrate the core solutions of each market participant to the Digital Energy Network.

 

I am looking forward to meeting you in the Hague!

 

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Stay tuned for more details, and remember to sign upfor the conference! To get regular updates,follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.

Digitalized Assets @ International SAP Conference for Utilities 2016

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The theme of this year's International Utilities Conference is 'Creating Value in the Digital Energy Network'. Digitalization is not just another buzz word, it's already reality.

Utilities worldwide still spend trillions of dollars on their assets to either build new ones or keep the existing ones running. The big question now is: How can digitalization help to optimize the management of assets in your company?

 

Talking about digitalization and asset management, there are two streams of digitalization:

1. Digitalization of assets

2. Digitalization of asset management as a core business process

 

The digitalization of assets has already started years ago. The smart meter is just a prominent example, more and more assets become their own processor and additional software. More mechanical parts are replaced by software and all types of assets can now connect and exchange information via their own IP address. Nowadays, this is called the 'Internet of Things'. Gartner is already talking about a utility being a high-tech company that is managing such a tremendous value of high-tech assets.

 

Both trends open up an enormous potential for optimization and increased efficiency. Just think of connecting your digital asset via sensors to get all types of information out of it. This could be the basis for predictive maintenance and ultimately provide optimal asset management capabilities, such as better forecasting and investment decisions. Once this connection is established, the next step would be to build a connection between manufacturers and asset operators.  SAP is calling this the 'Asset Intelligence Network', where various market players connect seamlessly, exchange information and run business processes completely digitalized, saving time, money, and resources. The manufacturer gets access to asset information allowing him to provide additional services like updates, recalls, 3D asset models, updated and optimized maintenance plans (based on learnings from all companies across the network), etc. Through the network some services would be provided right to your digital asset. But besides the digitalization and optimization of those processes, such a network has even the power to completely transform the asset management business of the future. Manufacturers will not just be able to sell an asset, but selling up-time of an asset instead.

 

So thinking about digitalization of assets and asset management, please keep in mind that this is just a vehicle to drive plenty of new innovations ahead of us.

 

If you would like to hear more about this topic, please join my presentation Asset Management for the Digital Utility (from 10:45 - 11:30 a.m.) as part of the Digitalized AssetsTrack at the International Utilities Conference on April 13.


I am looking forward to meeting you in The Hague!

 

Bernd


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Stay tuned for more details, and remember to sign upfor the conference!

To get regular updates, follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.


Learn more about SAP's Influencing Programs & Innovation Discovery at IUC 2016

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Do you know how SAP's product teams choose which features are in scope for the development of new software versions? Or how SAP end users can make sure future innovations and enhancements meet their requirements?

 

A few years ago, SAP has started its Customer Engagement Initiative (CEI), allowing customers worldwide to influence its future product offerings. Typically, in the context of this initiative, you - as an existing or potential SAP customer - can interact directly with SAP's product development team. On the one hand, this provides you early insights into SAP's planned development in a secure legal environment. On the other hand, this set-up also makes sure that your feedback and input go straight to the SAP development team working on the respective topic, allowing SAP's software developers to take your business requirements into consideration while designing the latest version of the software. In addition, you are getting the opportunity to collaborate with other customers and partners who are interested in the same products.

 

At the International SAP Conference for Utilities 2016 taking place in The Hague in April, you will have the opportunity to find out more about this important initiative at a micro-forum dedicated to this topic, which will take place in the exhibition area.

 

You will also have the chance to find out about SAP Innovation Discovery,an easy-to-use tool that lets you stay tuned about latest SAP innovations and features and those that are in the pipeline, looking at both business and technology aspects.

Finally let's talk about what's in it for you in 2016 - and take a look at SAP's current CEI projects that are dedicated to various topics relevant to the utilities industry.

 

Join us at the micro-forum in the exhibition area at the International SAP Conference for Utilities 2016:

 

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User Experience at IUC 2016 in The Hague

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Shaped by the experience of their private life - shopping, booking, exploring data via mobile devices and the internet - users are demanding simplicity and task orientation also in their business environment. For SAP, user experience is one of the key important topics and drivers for business solutions in the current digital transformation.

 

No matter if you are just beginning or continuing on the UX journey in your company, you will get all information and the latest updates at the upcoming International SAP Conference for Utilities- taking place in The Hague, Netherlands from 11 to 13 April 2016.

 

To get a focused jump start into this elementary topic of User Experience, join the pre-conference workshop 6 on Monday morning, April 11. Under the umbrella of “Create your UX strategy and start your UX journey” SAP experts will guide you through half a day of learning and experiencing around the topic user experience.

  • Get the latest update on SAPs User Experience strategy and what that means for you; get to know new trends and tools that help you refresh, renew and re-imagine your SAP investment for greater adoption and ROI
  • Through hands-on exercises you will create a UX vision, identify road blocks and come to a concrete road map you can apply in your company.
  • Experience design thinking methods live and learn how these foster and nurture the innovation potential within your company
  • Connect with peers and SAP UX experts to share and discuss about their approaches and experiences


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Stay tuned for more details, and don’t forget to registerfor the conference and the UX workshop on Monday morning!


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To get regular updates,follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.



Enerya’s Transformation Journey from Operational Excellence to Customer Excellence: Challenges and Lessons Learned

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Enerya was founded in 2003 to provide natural gas, electricity and water distribution services. Now, 2nd most widespread gas distribution & wholesale company in Turkey exclusively licensed in 10 cities, it has a success story to tell.

To read about Enerya SAP project in more detail, download the Enerya's Transformation Journey presentation >

Digital Power Operations: blueprinting a new platform for Power Generation & Wholesale Companies

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Power Generation is changing. The once financial pillar and more profitable business unit in energy companies is becoming the main stream of losses and headaches of traditional utilities which are taking radical decisions such as accelerating the decommissioning of some Power Plants, creating daughter companies where to transfer these assets or simply selling them.  It was a matter of time, but the speed of changes due to the impact of the renewable energy production and the adoption of smart grid technologies to manage the balancing processes associated to these new sources of energy is becoming very high and the forecast is that changes will continue even with a higher disruption once industrial batteries are adopted.

 

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Image 1. Source “Digital Power Operations, Plant Types” by M. Lutz Utilities IBU.


How “Traditional” Power Generation may survive in a context of massive replacement by renewables sources? Is the solution the removal of subsidies and compensations for these new sources?. It may be a different approach. As per image above related, the increase of renewables sources of energy increases the risks in the network. Production load is not so stable, it is more variable and conventional plants, which are more feasible, are necessary for compensating these variations, this is the Energy Balancing. For example wind may not be available in a park whose production capacity has been booked (or a windmill failure my occur as renewable assets are still more failure prone),  and therefore the recalculation of the available capacity Vs market demand has to be done on a quicker cycle, often in 15’ to 60’ slots depending on markets.


And here is the opportunity:  the increased variability and volatility of the Energy Market obliges  generation and wholesale companies to check constantly their open positions, capacity situation, nomination situation, market price situation and decide short-term on most economic options make or buy. All these fluent changes require production schedules to be adjusted (and companies may manage dozens of different production sites) or energy be procured on the market short-term.  Buy and Sell during the day, in short term, this is the intraday market:  are Power Generation organisations ready?

 

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Image 2. Source “Digital Power Operations, Plant Types” by M. Lutz Utilities IBU. 

 

 

Success in this new scenario is about realizing the value of seamless data flow between Power Generation and Wholesale organisations, and in particular between asset, dispatch, nomination, and trading data. Depending on economic options, both production or maintenance schedules would need to be adjusted short-term, and therefore a fast recalculation and exchange of schedule data is needed.  Since some months ago our colleague Michael Lutz, from the Utilities Industry  Business Unit is working in a Blueprint on how this new platform for Power Generation & Wholesale Companies may look like and how SAP portfolio may help. Together with some partners and companies a blueprint of this concept is being implemented as a PoC (Proof of Concept) at SAP Co-Innovation Lab (Coil) environment. Project name is “Digital Power”.

 

 

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Image 3. Digital Power Generation SAP Blueprint, high level view.

 

Goal is to bring forward a common energy data layer with a data model and services taking into account both asset-centric and dispatch-centric application requirements. This may be described by “portfolio management energy data services”. Such services would provide for example net and aggregate data of physical and trading positions according to portfolio attributes. Proposition is to leverage a concept called “Energy Cloud” which would be developed on HCP with IoT App Services. As you can see at image number three the high level concept looks for an integrated view of the different roles and needs for Power Production and Wholesale. Two main work streams of current stage of the prototype are addressing this goal (and yellow highlighted in picture number 3): 

 

The first one is an integrated Repository of Energy information common for all the roles of the Wholesale part of the business based on SAP energy cloud. Digital Power Blueprint contains the integrated schedule data between maintenance and dispatching. It supports frequent rescheduling triggered by asset and market events. An extension is planned to connect 3rd party trading and nomination software and increase the scope of the Energy Portfolio layer of the Repository with Capacity Schedules (per generation unit, based on maintenance and scada data combined with other inputs such as job, resources, weather, price and dispatch data), Dispatch Schedules (aggregated), Deal data and Net positions calculated. Data is exchanged with dispatch, front-end trading and nomination tools. A Workflow is orchestrating the process.  This is a Big Data Platform

 

Second area is an Asset Information Platform integrating data from the operational technologies of the Plants together with the information from the transnational systems to increase the sophistication of the maintenance activities and gain plant availability. Since some years ago technical asset management organizations are pursuing an evolution of the current maintenance strategies, based on scheduled / regular maintenance and inspection plans, into a more sophisticated strategy which can be condition based, reliability based or Predictive just naming the most frequent actually adopted. Reasons are diverse but related with this scenario is the need to increase or assure the ratios of availability in order to achieve the energy wholesale goals. SAP is working in delivering these functions in its portfolio so, what is new here? Current Blueprint is focusing in providing the information to discover and decide the right approach, this is the right maintenance methodology to apply  for relevant technical assets: Which events grouped by asset category, model, component, maintenance type, cause contributed +80% to lifecycle costs? ; Which type of costs can be improved and what is the potential improvement value? ; Have maintenance strategy been effective and need to be adjusted?. These kind of reports and indexes require the integration of operational data together with activity history and financial data, this is an “IT-OT integration” use case. By answering these questions an investment in sophisticated maintenance approaches can be done with the assurance of meeting the goals.

 

Holistic approach

 

While this picture reflects the concept around Energy Cloud, multiple Partner and SAP portfolio components are being considered in order to provide a complete solution for Digital Power Operations. Just to complete diagram explanation we highlight the following elements of SAP portfoilo*:.

 

  • IoT (internet of Things) connectivity to bring the large stream of  data required into the Energy Cloud Platform
  • Pdms (Predictive Maintenance and Service) as the foundation for Asset Information Platform
  • MDG (Master Data Governance) to assure data quality in the Asset Information Platform
  • FSCM (Fuel Supply Chain Management):  To optimize the acquisition, transport and management of the fuel for fossile power plants
  • SPP:  Spare Parts Planning:  to manage spares the demand forecast in larger horizon and optimize the supply chain
  • AIMN (Asset Intelligence Network):  this is the marketplace of technical asset information and services

 

*. List not extensive.

 

As highlighted in the title this is a blueprint, a live project. Part of these ideas are already implemented and tested in the COIL infrastructure, so demos are available or can be scheduled. Goal is to complete as much as possible these scenarios so any company and partner interested to join us and share efforts and ideas is welcomed.


How can S4/HANA for the Utilities Industry support your Digital Transformation and what is the transition path?

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S/4HANA offers utility companies a great platform for innovation and improved business efficiency.


We will cover these topics in a pre-conference workshop at the International SAP Conference for Utilities, taking place in The Hague on April 11- 13, 2016.


On April 11 from 9:30 - 17:30 you can learn more about S4/HANA in Workshop 2: SAP S/4HANA for the Utilities Industry – Insights, Transition, Impact on SAP BW on SAP HANA, and Embedding Predictive Analysis.

Read more and register here.


The picture below provides you a short description of the topics that are considered in that workshop. It will be presented by SAP experts with deep knowledge in these areas.

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There are several sessions that also might be of interest for you:


Keynotes:

  • Creating Value for Utilities in the Digital Energy Network

 

Break-out Sessions:

  • SAP's Innovation Road Map for the Digital Utility (Value of Platform track)

 

Microforums:

  • Operational Reporting in S/4HANA with SAP Lumira
  • How Companies can Benefit from Predictive Analytics in Their Business Suite



I am looking forward to seeing you in The Hague,

Axel


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How can SAP Support Utilities on Their Digital Journey?

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Dynamic industry trends and continuous innovation mean that utilities companies cannot afford to stand still.

And the latest buzzword also affects them:
Every industry must go digital and utilities need to transform themselves into a digital utility to stay in the game.

 

Why?

 

Because technology trends, such as hyperconnectivity, super computing, cloud computing, smarter world, and cyber security will change the entire business in future.

 

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New business models emerge and ongoing automation affects existing business processes.These trends will also change the ways we work and collaborate.

 

Just one example are the increasing number of sensors that will be attached to utilities’ assets in the near future.
These mean that the health of a transformer can be permanently tracked and huge amounts of asset life data are stored in SAP HANA. Together with data from the Asset Intelligence Network, the asset life cycle profile is updated and enriched by analytical models running on SAP’s digital core S/4 HANA that predict the end of life of the asset.

As a result, capital-intensive assets such as transformers can now be included in future financial portfolios at the right time. This will better balance the necessary capital expenditures of a utility.

 

On the other hand, industry trends, such as decarbonization will force utilities to invest in a low-carbon policy through improved fossil generation efficiency, applied carbon capture and storage technology, and substitution using CO2-free generation.

Ongoing decentralization however, will turn power supply into a two-way power flow within distributed networks with a mixed generation portfolio, including renewables.

 

The rise of renewable production and the construction and operation of renewable power plants also require advanced measures to guarantee worker safety.

New types of risks need to be captured and incorporated. New technologies, like wearables and 3D printers will change current business processes and mean it is easier to operate assets safely and reliably.

 

As an example, wind turbines in on-shore wind parks are equipped with sensor technology. These immediately detect any imbalances and automatically identify and inform the relevant person who can deal with the incident.

On arrival at the top of the turbine, the technician is warned acoustically that a security check has to be performed. The check is initiated and executed using digital gloves in combination with smart glasses.

SAP Visual Enterprise also provides the technician with a 3D model of the object to be maintained. During the inspection, they also identify a faulty injection molding part that needs to be exchanged. Looking for a substitute within SAP’s Asset Intelligence Network the technician finally is able to print the part in 3D from their service vehicle, thereby saving valuable time.

 

SAP can play an important role in helping utilities to transform into a digital enterprise, stay competitive, and deliver against their business goals.

 

Experience how SAP solutions for Operational Efficiency for Plants and Grids can support your journey to becoming a digital utility.

This topic will be subject of a half-day conference workshop at the International SAP Conference for Utilities in The Hague, Netherlands.

 

When?


Monday April 11, 2016 (14:00 - 17:30) - Workshop 8 "Achieving Operational Efficiency for Plants and Grids by Managing the Capital Lifecycle and Establishing Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) and Work Permit Management". Further details and registration ->Link

 

Stay tuned for more details, and remember to sign up for the conference!

 

To get regular updates, follow us on Twitter SAP Industries #SAPUtilities.

Let’s get anonymous – data protection in SAP systems

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As Natuvion, we combine many years of experience in SAP projects with profound understanding of and process skills in the utilities sector. Our actions focus on trusting and creative working methods. We are convinced that cooperation is the inspiration for professional and technically innovative IT consulting.

 

We are looking forward to exhibiting at the International SAP Conference for Utilities to share our portfolio. One of our key topics this year is our engagement in data protection.


Data theft, misuse, wiretapping – catchwords that have become ever-present in the media landscape these days. Companies find themselves increasingly under great pressure as they are forced to protect their costumer data adequately – and promptly. The subject is considered especially relevant in the insurance, energy, banking and healthcare sectors, which generate, store and process a particularly large amount of personal information. In the Federal Data Protection Act the legal requirements for handling personal information of natural persons are defined. If companies ignore these requirements, they’ll risk a misuse of data – including the threat of negative headlines, serious penalties and/ or loss of reputation.

Due to the fact that in system landscapes, which usually have three levels, the production systems serve as the data source to set up the secondary systems, a sophisticated authorisation concept for a single SAP system to protect company data and, especially, personal information is insufficient. For this reason, we recommend to consider the entire SAP system landscape.


Our solution: Let's get anonymous – data protection through anonymisation


If you want to get more information about data protection in SAP systems in general and our service module which is called Test Data Anonymisation (TDA), part of the service portfolio SAP data protection, come and say hello.

We’re looking forward to meeting you in person, not anonymous. 

 


Natuvion – Innovation and Professionalism for your success



Workshop: Enterprise Mobility for Utilities

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International SAP Conference for Utilities will host a workshop on strategic mobile technologies. In this workshop, you will learn how enterprise mobility can provide value for your organization and transform business processes.

 

You will be able to explore mobile scenarios for your employees as well as your customers and your partners, hear about important steps when developing a mobile strategy and see the current mobile solutions in detail, including work management, field service, employee productivity, and customer self-service; understand mobile platforms, tools, and security. Places are limited for this workshop, therefore if you are interested in attending, please visit the conference web site and register >

2016 SAP for Utilities Think Tank Discussion Roundtable

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I attended this session yesterday, with mostly other East Coast utilities.  The Eventful Group had been traveling throughout the week to Los Angeles, Houston, and then finally the east coast to obtain feedback.

 

This year Eventful’s Jennifer Mellace is producing the SAP for Utilities Conference in October in Huntington Beach.  The conference is to “address pain points.  With Eventful's permission, I am sharing my notes of only the East Coast discussions.

 

We started off by introducing ourselves; in the room there were 2 different sets of identical twins and one person was a the parent of identical twins; how unusual.

 

Question 1: What is critical to you and your business?

 

We were asked to be CEO, and on Monday we have a staff meeting with executives – what are 3 things critical to our business and how do we solve them?

Below were some of the comments/feedback:

  • How serve customer better
  • Rates are down; how can we optimize the work force
  • Cyber security
  • Customer experience
  • Revenue analytics – forecast, confidence
  • Safety
  • Flint water quality– issue
  • Less outages
  • Water main breaks, alerts
  • Aging infrastructure
  • Performance, archiving
  • Reporting
  • Consistency across the channels, same answer, same information
  • “Single view of the customer”, 360 degree view of the customer
  • “How grow business with declining rate base”
  • “declining use in water”
  • Manage workforce
  • Retain employees
  • Aging workforce
  • Need good data in system
  • Disaster recovery
  • System responsiveness

 

Top 3 the attendees voted on:

1) Safety

2) Customer experience & usability

3) Data

 

Question 2: Three most pressing pain points for SAP Technology and business process alignment

 

1) One view of the data

2) Usability of SAP

3) Changing technologies; all new innovations going to cloud – not ready


Question 3: What could the conference solve for you to make it massively compelling for you to attend

  • Hearing other customers stories
  • Hearing about solutions about to implement
  • Usability – user interface, move in move out – too many clicks
  • Where is SAP going – roadmap, leaps in technology – hurt by speed and cost to deploy new technology
  • Installed enhancement pack, no time to turn on

 

System of records for assets

  • - GIS vs SAP
  • - Geo enabled software synch (ESRI)
  • - Keeping data in synch
  • - Difference in plant and linear assets

One customer said they have a “Mountain of data, need action points”

Enhancement pack – how do the changes impact me?  Business Function Prediction, automated testing

Another company was interested in Data governance (MDG) or EIM with ISU

 

Question 4: What are some pain points and what you like to see at a conference?

  • - Options for scheduling work orders
  • - Managing warehouse and inventory
  • - IoT – how relate to EAM – IoT – how relate to SCADA
  • - Mobile work orders, some still print
  • - Interactive GIS – how interface with mobile solution, embed to work order solution
  • - Going from a map to work order
  • - IoT – how used effectively – how different from SCADA – monitor transformer
  • - Time of use metering (IoT)
  • - Multi-Channel Foundation
  • - Retain SAP talent, workforce
    • Summer internship
  • - Company Acquisitions
    • Data Services RDS Utilities

Reporting & Analytics

  • - Self service
  • - Analysis Office
  • - Lumira
  • - Dashboard

How roadmap this?

End user self-service and trust data

Bring in other sources of data – GIS, weather, with SAP data

  • - Merging customer account information – metrics on operations
  • - Cloud for Analytics

 

Question 5 - Six to Eight Months Now, What Kind of Problems are you expecting?

             Upgrades

HANA – when invest, when do I have to invest

Cloud

 

Knowledge Management

  • - Approach
  • - Succession planning
  • - Cyber security
  • - SharePoint – information for stale information

 

Top votes for topics to see at a conference:

 

SAP discussed the content flow at the conference

The conference is 2.5 days, with a day 1 day 2 day 0.  There is a keynote, a SAP Keynote, and a keynote from customer with 4 tracks

Feedback from last year:

  • Too much content – feedback
  • Enjoy hearing from other customers – need more time to interact
  • Too many SAP speakers
  • Too much HANA talk

 

Under discussion suggestions:

Ask the Experts

Meet the Speaker

Make the content 70% customer, with 15 % how – enhance today and 15 % roadmap

 

Everyone said yesterday they enjoyed the conference and looked forward to attending it again. It was a great opportunity to share experiencing and learn how other utilities use SAP.

 

A subset of some whiteboard pictures:

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IMG_0402.JPG

 

Voting on the topics:

IMG_0404.JPG

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