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Energy & Utilities

Workforce Management 4.0
for service and maintenance

SAP FSM

Finding the right service technician

The machinery and asset portfolios operated by companies in the energy and utilities sectors are often large and their asset locations are widely distributed. If a malfunction occurs in one of the systems, fast action is required. Often, however, service providers have to answer a couple of questions before this can happen: Which service employee should be sent on this assignment? Which technician is closest to the affected site and who has the relevant qualifications? Moreover, when a fault is reported, it is often not yet clear what type of fault the service technician will end up dealing with; it makes no difference whether it concerns a faulty escalator or a ticket machine in a railway station, a damaged charging station or a power failure.

In addition to ad-hoc malfunctions, there is also system maintenance in the area of traffic, maintenance of network operation, testing of meters and the smart meter rollout ; new installations, such as a house connection or the installation of a solar energy system, as well as carrying out regular readings in the area of metering operation. In this area in particular, the volume of work is constantly increasing due to the smart meter rollout. In addition to the meter changeover, new legal calibration requirements are also increasing the amount of required maintenance effort. This makes it necessary to adopt new, cost-reducing approaches that maximise the contribution margin in cases of capped turnovers (Section 4 A of RegV).

The solution:
Mobile support for your workforce

Coupled with the stringent regulations that must be met in many areas of the energy and utilities sector, this means that workforce management, maintenance and service are extremely important in this industry. With the assistance of Power Reply, SAP FSM enables optimised mobile workforce support and improved customer experience for end customers.

Improved field service management experience

So that companies can offer their customers outstanding service, SAP has included SAP FSM in its portfolio; this is based on software from the Swiss start-up Coresystems, which was acquired by SAP in mid-2018. Regardless of whether it is operated on-premise or in the cloud, the system can be integrated into the existing SAP ERP landscape and enables the right service technician to be planned according to expertise, location and availability. To guarantee the required speed, the process chain is mapped as a fully digital process without media breaks, from the receipt of the service call to the final processing. This mapping uses master data and services of the existing system landscape, such as information about business partners, materials management and time recording. Real-time operational planning for customer service requests is possible. The system also supports the expansion of a company's own technician pool using AI-based crowd service technology. If a suitable service employee is not available in the company, a third-party technician can be found and deployed via a private service crowd.

The FSM software thus incorporates the benefits of digital transformation to enhance the field service management experience. By automating the allocation of resources, the software enables companies to provide more efficient service, faster invoicing, better documentation and better workforce management. The solution supports mobile employees and is fully usable offline; a core requirement for such a system, as no continuous internet connection can be guaranteed, especially in energy suppliers' working environments.

This not only enables service technicians and engineers to respond faster and fulfil service level agreements (SLAs), it also helps to ensure a higher first-time fix rate. This is made possible by QR codes, which are attached to the devices managed via SAP FSM. Scanning the code not only the triggers the service case, it also displays all relevant information to the service provider.

Power Reply helps its customers to connect SAP and SAP FSM and use them to become more high-performance, to manage their workforce efficiently, to improve their customer experience and make their services stand out from the competition – regardless of whether this concerns meter operation or troubleshooting within the station infrastructure of public transport. The Reply Group company focuses on the energy and utilities sector; it offers its customers in this industry consulting and development for service, sales and marketing processes in the area of end-to-end consulting as well as the minimisation of process costs using automation. Power Reply has been certified as an SAP Partner for SAP FSM since 2018 and offers its customers the full range of consulting services for the solution.

Use cases

Since the energy and supply sector is not only made up of suppliers or production of energy, but also includes many other products and services that are a part of our everyday life, the user scenarios are manifold. One example are public utilities, which, in addition to supply infrastructures for energy and drinking water, are involved in public transport in many cities or support information technology with internet services. SAP FSM can also support internal processes, however. Power Reply helps its customers to fully harness the possibilities of SAP FSM for the entire spectrum of possible use cases: from electricity substations to ticket vending machines.

Next Generation Field Service

SAP FSM offers next generation Field Service Software – as part of a new generation of the SAP Service Cloud, it has been part of the company's CRM division under the umbrella brand C/4 HANA since its takeover by SAP. The advantages:

  • Management: Field service management provides relevant metrics and analysis for senior management
  • Service-Center: The automated solution from SAP FSM facilitates the planning of service orders and technician deployments. Automation can significantly improve information management.
  • Technicians: Because they have all the data they need in a single application – both from previous deployments and real-time data – engineers can be immediately deployed to carry out on-site repair work and achieve sales goals and quotas.
  • End customers: To provide real-time service, the field service management solution uses artificial intelligence and can be integrated with third-party communications apps such as Twilio or Waze.