Global EC&O companies reach consensus on top IT priorities

Last week was an important one for SAP’s Engineering, Construction and Operations (EC&O) practice.  The annual meeting of SAP’s EC&O Executive Advisory Council convened in Heidelberg, Germany and included customer participants from all regions of the globe. This was without a doubt the most geographically diverse group of customers to ever attend the annual meeting.

Despite coming from many locations, it was remarkable how clearly the group reached consensus on the game-changing aspects of construction information technology. The clear favorite among transformative technologies was in multi-dimensional modeling of construction data throughout the design, construction and operations phases of buildings and other constructed assets (known commonly as Building Information Modeling, or BIM ). SAP’s recent launch of modeling technology via SAP Visual Enterprise was extremely well received, with customers eagerly volunteering to combine their business process knowledge with SAP Visual Enterprise technology to drive innovation for the industry. 

SAP Visual Enterprise allows EC&O companies to combine design data, and business data for complete process control across the project and asset lifecycle. This allows EC&O companies to manage projects and assets more efficiently, eliminate duplications and errors across project stakeholders, and ultimately drive increased ROI on projects and assets.

An important session during the program was a review of an early adopter who is currently launching SAP Visual Enterprise and SAP EC&O applications to create a 5D data hub for EPC projects. The excitement around construction data modeling will clearly be a major theme for the Council going forward, as the growth in adoption of SAP Visual Enterprise with SAP EC&O business applications continues.