Asset Management in Utilities – part 8: SAP Innovations on the 2023 Roadmap

Welcome back to the Asset Management in Utilities this blog series! As a start in 2023 I would like to have a look at the SAP innovations, that are on the roadmap this year. As you probably know you find them in the Road Map Explorer. You should limit the search to “Asset Management” or specific solutions you are interested in.

As you can see these planned innovations are no secret – on the other hand it can be a bit overwhelming if you see a couple of hundred innovations in Asset Management alone. Therefore I want to point you to some of the innovations that I find especially interesting. Please note, this selection is subjective! You might find other innovations much more interesting. If this is the case, please feel free to share them as a comment.

Please also note the usual disclaimer in the Road Map Explorer “SAP has no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein.” (you find the full text with the link “Disclaimer”)

So much for the introduction, here is my subjective list:

• SAP Asset Performance Management (APM) has been launched last year, benefitting from the already existing SAP ASPM and SAP PAI solutions. From the many topics on the SAP APM roadmap I especially want to point out Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA): RCM assessments and FMEA assessments can be performed for functional locations and equipments. Several other topics include to propose and assign recommendations for RCM, consequence evaluation with RCM and sort and filter capabilities.
• SAP APM will also be extended in the area of Machine Learning and AI, for example with an Anomaly detection with explanation of contributing indicators. In this context it is also of interest that SAP Enterprise Product Development will be integrated more tightly with SAP APM.
• Another solution with many planned features in 2023 is the mobile SAP Service and Asset Manager. Here I especially like to mention the support of Work Clearance Management, the advanced support of Smart Forms and the Low-code No-code app configuration. Moreover the support of Windows devices, that has first been introduced in Q4/2022, is further improved.

• Closely linked to the mobile execution with the SAP Service and Asset Manager is of course the scheduling of work orders with the SAP Field Service Management solution. Innovations include enhanced support of business rules, for example updated execution reports, the health status of business rules and a simplification of the business rules definition. Moreover spart parts availability checks have been added.

• Besides Work Clearance Management (WCM) in the SAP Service and Asset Manager, WCM is also one of the important topics in SAP S/4HANA. There will be for example new SAP Fiori screens to enable a simplified permit to work process. In addition there will be a new dashboard and the support of safety certificates.
• In my view it is important and especially beneficial that the SAP solutions are further integrated. Therefore I like to also mention the planned external collaboration using Ariba Guided Buying in SAP S/4HANA cloud.

• And external collaboration is of course the main topic of the SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, that has been called SAP Asset Intelligence Network until last year. Out of the many collaboration topics on the roadmap I like to point out sharing of failure catalogs and codes and the capability to automatically share notifications and work orders.

• Finally a topic that is one of my favorite topics since many years, SAP Spatial Asset management including Geographic Information Systems. Here we will see a Fiori app for dynamic segmentation of linear assets and the support of the ESRI 4.x library.

As mentioned above, please add further innovations that you find beneficial as a comment. This would surely be of interest for other readers as well.

Kind regards,

Gero

Asset Management in Utilities – part 7: Strong focus from SAP Partners on Asset Management in 2022 and beyond

Asset Management in Utilities – part 9: Asset Management presentations at the International SAP Conference for Utilities