What's new with Collaborative Maintenance?

Rajarshi-Ghosh

No company is an island!!!

Almost all internal business processes have a connection to the outside world, along their lifecycle. The challenge for these scenarios is to avoid business process fragmentation which can occur with nonintegrated applications, inconsistent master data, manual entries, and a lack of control.

SAP Business Network is the connecting tissue that extends your ERP and allows your company to build bridges with your external trading partners ensuring all steps of a business process, regardless of participant, are performed securely, against accurate data, efficiently.

SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration provides that foundation for Next Generation Maintenance

Seamless business process integration- Multi-tier connectivity with your partners, across the supply chain, simplified via multi ERP support and API extensibility.
Shared platform for maintenance planning & execution- Centralized access to all maintenance information, enabling continuous collaboration among asset ecosystem partners.
Improved performance and safety- Via digital accessibility of critical maintenance information, such as work instructions and maintenance history, securely provided to service contractors, in the field and at the point of repair.

Thanks to amazing partnerships with our customers, a passionate team, over the past few months we have worked on several new and innovative solution capabilities in this space.

The current process flow looks like this

Let me share some of the key features and benefits -

Support the ERP-inbound replication of shared work orders

As a service contractor, you can now synchronize a shared work order to your ERP system using the Synchronize with ERP option.

Benefits

Enhance current integration capabilities
Provide comprehensive integration functionality
Enhance coverage of end-to-end collaborative maintenance processes

Support the ERP-inbound replication of Confirmations

As an Operator, you can now synchronize a confirmation sent by your service contractor on acceptance to your ERP system.

Benefits

Enhance current integration capabilities
Provide comprehensive integration functionality
Enhance coverage of end-to-end collaborative maintenance processes

Ability to share work orders automatically

Enables operators to configure criteria for automatically sharing their work orders with service contractors

Benefits

Improve planning and execution of work orders through collaboration between business partners

Templates for Work Orders

Enables operators to maintain and share customer specific attributes related to work orders to their service contractors

Benefits

Achieve resiliency and transparency across the work-order lifecycle
Improve and streamline collaborative maintenance processes
Customers can now bring their very specific information to the work orders
They can also give rights to the service contractors to change values and add new attributes

Download list of notifications in Excel Format

Enable users to download a list of notification from the notifications application in Excel format

Benefits

Download notifications efficiently in different applications
Refer as needed to downloaded lists of notifications that are accessible and editable in Excel

Download list of work orders in Excel Format

Enable users to download a list of work orders from the work order application in Excel format

Benefits

Download work orders efficiently in different applications
Refer as needed to downloaded lists of work order that are accessible and editable in Excel

some other features-

In order to harmonize the work order status mapping in the SAP S/4HANA system and the SAP Business Network asset Collaboration system, you can now filter the work orders based on their backend status in the work order list page
You can view two new fields Long Description and Execution Factor on the work order - operations object page. Execution factor displays the number of times the operation has to be performed as part of the whole work order execution
You can now edit the long description of the notification if you have not yet shared/synchronized the notifications to the backend ERP system
When you create a new confirmation for a work order - operation, the confirmation text is prefilled with a default text from the operation short description
You can now view the associated objects in the header data of the confirmation
You can auto-confirm confirmations for specific business partners

Why it Matters?

Companies must maximize asset utilization to minimize costly downtimes which lead to revenue loss. The SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration solution provides a digital platform to connect operations and the asset management ecosystem for collaborative asset lifecycle management. It enables consistent visibility, transparency and resiliency through a shared platform for work order collaboration with Service Contractors & Suppliers for efficiency and accuracy from work planning to execution.

The Value of Business Network Asset Collaboration

Improve asset data accuracy & completeness- Remove the data silos and collaborating on a common model taxonomy and create a consistent understanding
Improve wrench time- Provide centralized access to all maintenance information with continuous collaboration among asset ecosystem partners
Reduce maintenance data management costs- Improve efficiency of data handover from asset owners to service providers and reduce data maintenance and validation
Reduce unplanned downtime or outages- Enable effective collaboration between the operator and service provider on equipment failures and maintenance performance
Improve customer satisfaction- Manage of the full customer lifecycle from maintenance planning, scheduling, execution, and customer service

How do I decide whether this is a solution for me?

Do I work with external business partners?
Do I want to give access of those partners directly on my ERP?
Do I really want to build my own portals and also accept TCO?
Do I have only one level of business partners or it could be many to many relationships?

If you are looking for

A centralized access to all maintenance information with continuous collaboration among asset ecosystem partners (operators / OEMs/ Parts Suppliers/ External Contractors/ Sub-Contractors) without giving access to your ERP. It's as simple as just sending a connection request to get the ball rolling.

Multi-tier connectivity with your partners across the supply chain simplified with multi ERP support and API extensibility.

This is the solution for you.

FAQ's

How can I ensure the security of my data on the Network?

You have complete ownership and control of what you share, at what granularity and with whom. Every member on the network has complete transparency and visibility of their data.

Could I use this capability even if I have not yet started my S4 transformation?

Yes, we support both ECC & S/4Hana. Here are the details about the supported versions.

What if I use 3rd Party solutions? Could I still connect to SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration?

Yes, you can connect using our extensive coverage of REST APIs. Here are the details.

Where can I find out more details about SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration?

Here you will find all the relevant details.

Where can I find out more details about how Business Network Asset Collaboration fits into Acquire-2-Decommission process?

Here you will find all the relevant details.

How can I get started?

Talk to SAP about SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration.

Here is information around a new RISE with SAP advanced asset and service management package

Upcoming Innovations

Following exciting innovations are planned fin the next months for the upcoming releases of SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration:

Object list in work orders
Components for work orders
Templates for Notifications
Collaborative statuses for Notifications

Submit innovation requests

We encourage you to visit the SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration Customer Influence Portal to submit your innovation request...

For further questions and feedback related to the blog, please check the Q&A area and feel free to post your questions in the link with the tag SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration.

We hope you enjoy these new capabilities. Thanks for reading the blog post and Stay tuned!

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