This week London kicked off the Annaul SmartGrid World Conference; http://www.smartgridworldconference.com/?gclid=COWVw5e67bMCFYqvzAodAjEAwQ. Climate Change and world engergy should concern all of us. There is a Danish Energy Company, by the name of DONG Energy that has taken this concern and approached it from a larger Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) strategy. I want to share their insights with you as it helps for all of us to read examples of how companies are putting mobile to good use.
DONG Energy’ s Jan Staack gave a talk at the reccent SAPPHIRENOW event in Madrid entitled “Build Your Enterprise Mobility Strategy” (He partnered with co presenter Richard Campetilli of SAP’s Mobility Services Engagement group.) To appreciate why Staack’s insights are so compelling, you have to know a little about DONG Energy.
DONG started as a a Danish state company involved mainly in managing Denmark’s share of the North Sea Oil Fields, and over time moved into other petroleum related activities including natural gas production, deep water off shore oil exploration and ultimately, arctic and sub arctic petroleum production. It is an understatement to say that this company is technology driven. In fact over the forty years since the company’s inception, it would probably be a lot more accurate to say that the needs and challenges of their business and operating environment have driven technology development. Long before every preteen had a mobile device or two in their backpack, DONG was using always-on, always connected, remotely deployed technology to accomplish their business goals.
Today DONG is a full blown utility business, providing energy throughout Denmark, producing it from windmill farms, traditional electrical power plants, and offering a broad spectrum of oil and gas products to energy consumers. That’s a whole lot of diverse, dispersed people, plant and resources to manage. DONG relies heavily on mobility to operate its business. It does so by using SAP’s enterprise mobility management platform. In fact, Staack calls the company’s mobile platform strategy “a roadmap to enablement”.
Over time DONG has realized key areas of savings by standardizing on a single, universally implemented EMM solution:
- Total Cost of Ownership is reduced by settling on one mobility platform
- SAP’s enterprise ready solution allowed DONG to use a single platform to cover all four areas of mobile business requirements: production, sales, service logistics, and warehousing
- Powerful backend integration is key to cost savings, enabling an optimization of field work to support operational strategies.
Here’s just one specific example of Dong’s mobility payback: Windmill maintenance is a big job. Normally it takes two weeks for two men to service a modern wind turbine. Using fully mobile documentation and checklists, DONG has been able to gain insight into timing of individual steps, allowing them to optimize the process and significantly reduce service cycle time. DONG’s success is a mobility story about real world business process impacts. At the end of the day, these are business process systems. Whether it’s innovating a new route to market, or making business processes more effective and efficient, an EMM solution provides the enabling infrastructure.
