the state of enterprise asset management for sap … 20/2020...the state of enterprise asset...

The State of Enterprise Asset Management for SAP Customers

http://sapeamconference.com

The State of Enterprise Asset Management for SAP Customers 1

Executive Summary

Enterprise asset management (EAM) is the linchpin for maintaining operational efficiency at asset-intensive organizations. SAP customers working in the EAM function acknowledge that they operate by responding reactively today, but they aspire to make changes to do more proactive work in the future.

The Movement from Reactive to PredictiveAmong SAP EAM customers, 83% of maintenance projects either react to issues or rely on planned preventative maintenance. This adds to inefficiencies and downtime because organizations are performing reactive maintenance in response to system failures or preventative maintenance based on metrics like time or events. These customers recognize that using predictive maintenance will be more effective, but they’re not sure how to get there.

Asset Managers Seeking ChangeProfessionals tasked with EAM responsibilities want to evolve their processes. The rise of Industry 4.0 has brought emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning into EAM processes. On average, our respondents expect that one to two of these technologies (e.g., AI, IoT, analytics) will have a significant impact on their businesses in the next 12 months. And the largest share of respondents told us they’re looking to explore new technology products. Though some may perceive this as a conservative group, these professionals have an appetite to plan for the future.

Figure 1: Where EAM Customers Need Help in 2019

exploring new products

45%optimizing

current products

41%implementing new products

14%29%

Utilities

Source: ASUG research, May 2019

Trends

Pressures

Deploying mobility options in the field

Data aggregation and quality

Innovating with emerging technologies

Lack of skills and appropriate training

Connecting and tracking asset data across the organization

The transition to digital business


Key Technology Topics

Deploying Mobility Options in the FieldMobility is a key area for innovation in EAM and has been a hot topic in this space for more than 10 years. Many of the industries that require EAM—such as oil and gas companies, utilities, chemical companies, transportation businesses, and manufacturers—depend on keeping their workers in the plants and in the field armed with the right technologies and the most current information. For example, the right technologies can help field technicians complete meter reads and updates, log GPS coordinates of remote devices, or inspect freight cars on a rail line.

Mobility, however, must be strategic and well planned. Safety is a key concern and could hinder adoption of mobility. “It might not be a good idea to carry a mobile device to look at all the time because it could create a safety issue. That is where the balance comes in—which tasks you should enable,” one respondent observed.

Ease of use is another consideration and could speak to a training or skills gap issue, which respondents identified as a pressure. “A year after implementing and going live, on the mobile device side, we still have low rates of adoption,” another respondent explained. Despite this, there’s still a good opportunity to make processes more efficient with help from mobility, as the majority of the asset management professionals we spoke with aren’t using mobile devices today.

“�I�need�two�buttons�on�this�screen�and�there�are�5,000.�Simplify�the�number�of�clicks.�Each�click�is�time,�multiplied�by�thousands.”

– 2019 SAP-Centric EAM attendee

35%Only

of asset management professionals are using mobile devices to complete one or more tasks

65+35


Innovating with Emerging TechnologiesThis trend is consistent with what SAP customers in EAM told us about wanting to innovate. The top technologies EAM customers expect to change their businesses are dashboards and analytics, which 66% reported would make a significant impact in the next two years. IoT (28%) and AI/machine learning (23%) are the next two areas that could drive innovation among SAP customers.

Though EAM customers might want to add these sophisticated tools to their technology stacks, they will need to find solutions that are easy to use. Respondents told us they sometimes encounter training and adoption hurdles when their workers have engineering skills but lack technical or software skills. Too much complexity in technology vexes this population and leads to inefficiencies.

Connecting and Tracking Asset Data Across the OrganizationData aggregation, cleansing, and governance are critical to achieving a single source of truth, especially considering how much asset management depends on readings from equipment in the factory or in the field. It’s also common for asset-intensive organizations with multiple plants or locations to maintain legacy systems. One respondent noted that their organization uses various technologies to track and maintain assets, which leads to significant data challenges. “We don’t have a single source of truth for the entire representation of our assets,” they said.

This could signal an opportunity for IT to take greater ownership of data governance as a general companywide function to help deliver desired outcomes to Line-of-Business (LoB) users.

64%of respondents report that

their company has IT personnel devoted to specific departments

36+64“�One�of�the�challenges�we�face�is�we�have�a�bunch�of�good�data�and�we�have�a�lot�of�terrible�data.�And�a�lot�of�times�you�don’t�know�which�data�source�to�go�to�get�the�correct�data.”�

– 2019 SAP-Centric EAM attendee


Major Pressures

Data Aggregation and QualityFor SAP EAM customers, a clear picture of what’s going on with an organization’s data relies on what’s happening in its field operations and the ability to connect its disparate technology systems to a central data warehouse. This fragmentation, in part, could be why respondents flagged data aggregation as a pressure.

And at the point of data collection, SAP EAM customers are often challenged with maintaining connectivity in areas like mountain ranges or drilling platforms where Wi-Fi might not be reliable or available. Edge computing solutions could help resolve these issues, which would be particularly useful for IoT applications.

There also are disparate networks to consider where data could be hidden across assets. For example, financial history might need to come from a fixed asset system, or objects across a network might need to come from the GIS. Pulling all of these sources together and analyzing big data is a significant undertaking and requires IT skills that LoB users typically don’t have. “Master data accuracy—making the most sense out of so much data” is a huge challenge, one respondent noted. All of these circumstances raise the bar for organizations to have well-documented and well-understood data governance practices in place. According to the customers we spoke with, this isn’t always the case.

“�A�lot�of�the�information�that�we�were�using�from�our�legacy� systems�was�inaccurate,�incomplete,�outdated,�and�required�a� lot�of�data�scrubbing.”�

– SAP EAM customer

31%Only

of companies with a data storage strategy have a budget for cleansing

and migrating their legacy data

69+31


Lack of Skills and Appropriate Training With the expected increase in new technologies deployed within EAM, IT and LoB teams will have to work together to make sure end users are trained to use new tools, so they’re not overwhelmed by them. As one respondent put it, it’s important for end users to be “familiar enough with SAP to be able to be confident that the data I’m looking for is what I am able to populate in our reporting.”

Encouraging adoption of new technologies could be an especially tall hurdle for EAM businesses with a lot of employees in the field. Field workers in this space might not be comfortable with technology in general, which could make it harder to bring them up to speed with the latest innovations.

The Transition to Digital BusinessThis pressure encompasses not just the innovative technologies and skills needed to effectively use them, but also the change management needed within the organization to get buy-in from the top down, so it becomes a mindset and not a mandate. Resistance to change makes keeping up with new technologies even more difficult. As one respondent told us, “We went into SAP 10 years ago, but we still have payroll people 10 years later who really want to go back to paper timecards.”

The asset management professionals who participated in this study show interest in being active participants in the digital transformations going on at their organizations, which surfaced as a hidden motivator on page 6. To accomplish these transformations, it’s important that EAM teams collaborate with their IT partners to achieve shared goals. For example, EAM professionals believe that technology purchasing is not owned by one entity and that implementation of technology is a shared responsibility for both IT and LoB users.

61%rate EAM technology expertise

among LoB employees to be intermediate or low

3+61

Primary responsibility for EAM technology purchases

Primary responsibility for EAM technology implementations

C-levels34%

EAM team40%

IT team38%

C-levels12%

LoB team40%

IT team59%��


Figure�2:�Responsibility�for�Purchasing�and�Implementing�EAM�Technology


The Secrets Behind Satisfaction

Critical Factors for SatisfactionWe asked about the factors that are important to SAP customers in EAM and evaluated how strongly they correlate to satisfaction with SAP information that’s available. Respondents told us these critical factors are: effective communication between IT and LoB users, master data management/governance/data integrity, and predictive analytics/maintenance.

These factors underscore the importance of better defining and dividing the responsibilities between IT and EAM teams, while still encouraging collaboration. Improved data integrity must be a companywide initiative that requires cooperation between IT and other teams. And trustworthy data is critical to run the systems that are capable of predictive analytics. It’s worth noting that all three of these factors require collaboration and cooperation across a company to succeed.

Hidden Motivators Driving SatisfactionRespondents didn’t initially indicate these factors as critical, but they associated them with high satisfaction. They identified these as hidden motivators: field operations/use of mobile technology in the field and asset management’s role in digital transformation. Each of these factors connects to a key topic and major pressure that surfaced in the research around how to use mobility well and transitioning to digital business successfully.

Bare-Minimum ExpectationsSAP customers in the EAM space also have minimum expectations for their investments: change management/getting users comfortable with new technology, using planning/scheduling tools to improve efficiency or reduce downtime, and data transparency/making data available to more users and stakeholders. The challenges around skills and lack of training came up both as trends and pressures, indicating that there is a fundamental need for workforce training among the EAM SAP customers who participated in our study.

Critical Factors

Hidden Motivators

Importance Satisfaction

Importance Satisfaction

Effective communication between IT and LoB users

Master data management/ governance/data integrity

Predictive analytics/maintenance

Field operations/use of mobile technology in the field

Asset management’s role in digital transformation


Products of Interest

SAP ECC still is the dominant core ERP, but 1 in 5 (19%) have adopted SAP S/4HANA. The solutions that get the most use are the ones that are intuitive and best consider the capacity and capability of teams in the field.

A Look to Future TransformationThe EAM space is trending toward transformation. Among aware nonusers, there is strong interest in SAP S/4HANA (66%), perhaps as a springboard to predictive analytics and other emerging technologies. There is relatively low use (17%) of SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service (PdMS), though it’s worth noting this is new to the market. That’s likely to increase, given that respondents showed solid interest (40%) in the offering that parallels their desire to adopt more emerging technologies.

Conversations about new tools or processes often are either entirely collaborative between IT and LoB (47%) or LoB driven (43%). With the potential for IT to take a bigger role in owning EAM data governance, it is important to make sure organizations share processes between their IT and LoB teams so that purchases and implementations both run smoothly. This is especially critical given the interest in taking on transformation projects.

60+40+34+31+1960%SAP ECC

31%SAP Ariba

19%SAP S/4HANA

34%SAP Work Manager

40%SAP Geographic

Information Systems


Figure�3:�Key�Products�Used�by�SAP�EAM�Customers

34+66

60+4066%

40%

of EAM professionals are interested in SAP S/4HANA

are interested in SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service


Getting the Most from SAP EAM Solutions

Based on our research, SAP EAM customers want mobility in the field, emerging technologies to help them innovate, and the ability to connect and track assets across an organization. They are challenged by data aggregation and quality, a lack of skills and training, and what it takes to transition to a digital business. These customers believe that purchasing of technology is not owned by one entity, but implementing that technology is a responsibility that should be shared by asset management professionals and IT.

At the 2020 SAP-Centric EAM & Supply Chain conference, you’ll be able to attend customer-led sessions with use cases that are applicable to these industries and more. Some of the sessions and topics we covered in 2019 included using AI and machine learning in EAM, implementing an integrated work management solution, integrated planning and scheduling to reduce downtime, and an enterprise framework for sustainable asset management. Previous customer company speakers included Johnsonville Sausage LLC, the City of San Diego, Shell, Puget Sound Energy, the University of Tennessee, and Norfolk Southern Corporation.

We’ll address these industry trends through real-life customer case studies, interactive discussion sessions, demos, and SAP expert presentations. At the SAP-Centric EAM & Supply Chain conference, you’ll have the chance to attend relevant sessions and connect with other professionals who work to keep asset-heavy organizations efficient.

Join Us in Spring 2020

March 16–18, 2020 San Antonio

The trends that surfaced from this study will inform the agenda for the 2020 SAP-Centric EAM & Supply Chain conference, where thought leaders and industry experts will share their insights and experiences to help you get the most out of your SAP investments. Join Eventful Conferences, ASUG, and SAP March 16–18, 2020, at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort to connect with your peers and take new ideas back to your business.

sapeamconference.com 914.509.5354 [email protected]

About�ASUG�Research ASUG research captures a unique view of what SAP customers are doing, thinking, and planning for the future. We apply traditional quantitative and qualitative methodologies and research best practices to deliver insights on relevant technology topics. The information in this report came from both a qualitative study and a quantitative survey of SAP customers in the enterprise asset management function conducted in May 2019.

© 2019. Americas’ SAP Users’ Group. All rights reserved. All SAP products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and in several other countries.

Utilities29%

Manufacturing12%

Oil and gas10%


Figure�4:�Top�Three�Industries�Informing�this�Trend�Report


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the state of enterprise asset management for sap … 20/2020...the state of enterprise asset...

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