At the recent SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG con­fer­ence, pro­fes­sion­als from var­i­ous util­i­ty com­pa­nies con­vened to dis­cuss the chal­lenges and suc­cess­es of their SAP Field Ser­vice Man­age­ment (FSM) solu­tion implementations.

The pan­el ses­sion fea­tured can­did insights from indus­try experts, while the fol­low-up break­out ses­sion delved into the nit­ty-grit­ty of lessons learned and best prac­tices unique to each orga­ni­za­tion. This two-part FSM ses­sion high­light­ed issues like tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion, doc­u­ment man­age­ment, and change man­age­ment, empha­siz­ing the need for the mod­ern enter­prise to bridge the gap between tra­di­tion­al pen-and-paper meth­ods and cut­ting-edge technology. 

“The future of util­i­ties in North Amer­i­ca has shift­ed,” said Dominic Bren­nan, Senior Spe­cial­ist, Util­i­ties IBU with SAP, in open­ing the ses­sions by reflect­ing on a trans­for­ma­tion­al peri­od dri­ven by cus­tomer demands, shift­ing expec­ta­tions, and rapid­ly chang­ing glob­al events. As util­i­ties con­front mod­ern chal­lenges, inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions are help­ing them to not only meet cur­rent demands but also to improve upon long-held, inef­fi­cient work processes. 

Bren­nan, who mod­er­at­ed the pan­el, kicked things off with a thought-pro­vok­ing remark. ​“This ses­sion isn’t about the prod­uct,” he said. ​“It’s about the journey.”

Bren­nan was joined by Kyle Wor­gan, Senior Man­ag­er of EAM Trans­for­ma­tion at Lib­er­ty Util­i­ties; Travis Knabe, Chief Infor­ma­tion Office of Eugene Water and Elec­tric Board (EWEB); Tony Fore­man, Solu­tions Man­ag­er at Loudoun Water; and Greg Hall, IT Man­ag­er of EAM Func­tion­al and Solu­tion Archi­tec­ture at TECO People’s Gas. All the pan­elists are in the midst of tack­ling field ser­vice man­age­ment trans­for­ma­tion projects, with most of the pan­elists lever­ag­ing the SAP Field Ser­vice Man­age­ment module. 

The ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered not only the specifics of each organization’s project but also touched on the ways new tech­nolo­gies can lead to greater work process effi­cien­cies in the util­i­ties sector. 

Meet the Pan­elists and Learn from their Unique Journeys 

Kyle Wor­gan, Senior Man­ag­er — EAM Trans­for­ma­tion, Lib­er­ty Utilities

Wor­gan recount­ed the ini­tial resis­tance that his team at Lib­er­ty Util­i­ties faced as the orga­ni­za­tion approached its SAP FSM imple­men­ta­tion. He empha­sized that change man­age­ment and user adop­tion were among the biggest chal­lenges, with field per­son­nel prov­ing ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to embrace the new tech­nol­o­gy. Liberty’s per­son­nel had to ease into use of the tech­nol­o­gy, adopt­ing a ​“crawl, walk, run” approach that encour­aged more fre­quent opti­miza­tion rather than opti­miz­ing orders overnight. 

Wor­gan stressed the impor­tance of ​“telling the whole sto­ry” to moti­vate employ­ees dur­ing tech­nol­o­gy train­ing and focus­ing on user adop­tion through­out the tech­nol­o­gy mod­ern­iza­tion jour­ney. Wor­gan also spoke about the busi­ness val­ue of hav­ing a sin­gle source of truth for rel­e­vant FSM doc­u­ments at Lib­er­ty, which pro­vides ser­vices to over 1 mil­lion cus­tomer con­nec­tions, and inte­grat­ing all data sources to over­come fragmentation. 

A ven­dor in the audi­ence also high­light­ed the poten­tial of inte­grat­ing map sys­tems with asset man­age­ment to improve field mobil­i­ty solu­tions. Wor­gan also spoke to the improve­ment in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence that lever­ag­ing SAP FSM enables, with fea­tures allow­ing users to track ser­vice per­son­nel and increas­ing over­all transparency.

Travis Knabe, CIO, Eugene Water and Elec­tric Board (EWEB)

Dis­cussing his jour­ney at EWEB, Oregon’s largest cus­tomer-owned util­i­ty, Knabe echoed sim­i­lar goals for enhanc­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and empha­sized the impor­tance of employ­ee expe­ri­ence for bet­ter ser­vice deliv­ery. He empha­sized the preva­lence of paper-based oper­a­tions in the field and the chal­lenge of intro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy to field ser­vice teams. ​“The crews don’t have any­thing nor­mal­ized from a tech per­spec­tive,” he said, not­ing that some of the chal­lenges stem­ming from paper process­es have an impact on cus­tomer ser­vices, with cus­tomers hav­ing lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into project sta­tus­es and updates. 

Knabe also men­tioned EWEB’s aspi­ra­tion to devel­op a new FSM sys­tem from the ground up, to bridge the tech gap unique to water and elec­tric­i­ty util­i­ties. The chal­lenge of adopt­ing FSM and oth­er such tech­nol­o­gy, as he point­ed out, often involved intro­duc­ing new tools to sea­soned field ser­vice teams accus­tomed to their tra­di­tion­al methods.

Tony Fore­man, Solu­tions Man­ag­er, Loudoun Water

Fore­man high­light­ed Loudoun Water’s main chal­lenge: a field ser­vice team unac­cus­tomed to mobile tech­nol­o­gy as a tool for FSM. In con­trast, Loudoun Water’s util­i­ty pro­tec­tion teams were fur­ther along in their adop­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, cre­at­ing an inter­nal tech skills gap that the organization’s IT lead­ers sought to bridge.

Fore­man echoed Worgan’s com­ments about the impor­tance of estab­lish­ing a sin­gle source of truth for doc­u­ments at Loudoun Water; he also saw great poten­tial in cus­tomer self-ser­vice and report­ing, reduc­ing the need for cus­tomers to call into offices to sub­mit their requests and reports.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges I see is that our field ser­vice man­age­ment team doesn’t have a glob­al solu­tion today,” Fore­man said. ​“The chal­lenge is: how can we get all our ser­vice tech teams into a sin­gle module?” 

Greg Hall, IT Man­ag­er, EAM Func­tion­al & Solu­tion Archi­tec­ture, TECO Energy

Hall out­lined the long jour­ney of tran­si­tion that TECO Ener­gy embarked on in ear­ly 2018, and the many chal­lenges faced dur­ing the process. Switch­ing from lap­tops to iOS devices brought issues like man­ag­ing iCloud accounts and Air­drop into focus for TECO Ener­gy, while the remote work­ing mod­els imposed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic came as an unex­pect­ed twist. Despite these hard­ships, TECO Ener­gy thrived by solic­it­ing tech­ni­cian feed­back through­out its jour­ney, which proved invaluable.

TECO Ener­gy opt­ed for simul­ta­ne­ous SAP Field Ser­vice Man­age­ment (FSM), SAP Ser­vice and Asset Man­age­ment (SSAM), and SAP imple­men­ta­tion, although the SAP por­tion remained under­uti­lized ini­tial­ly. Stream­lin­ing oper­a­tions across a large, diverse state like Flori­da was no small feat, with ter­ri­to­ry vari­a­tions impact­ing the roles and require­ments nec­es­sary for ser­vice providers to ful­fill. Tech teams in rur­al ter­ri­to­ries are more like­ly to have to cov­er every sin­gle part of a project, while teams oper­at­ing in met­ro­pol­i­tan areas are more like­ly to have spe­cial­ized areas of ser­vice and work. 

Hall point­ed out the impor­tance of net­work cov­er­age when deploy­ing iOS devices across a large state. He also shared insights into TECO Energy’s approach to tech­nol­o­gy train­ing, includ­ing iPad 101 ses­sions and hands-on train­ing. By mak­ing train­ing more inter­ac­tive and tai­lored to what the field per­son­nel actu­al­ly need, TECO kept trainees engaged and excit­ed about the change instead of mak­ing them resis­tant and fear­ful. Hall expressed his excite­ment for real­iz­ing the orig­i­nal vision for trans­for­ma­tion now that the com­pa­ny has sta­bi­lized, and he expressed that all at TECO looked for­ward to har­ness­ing the full suite of avail­able technology. 

Q&A Ses­sion with the Audi­ence Participants

Part 2 of this ses­sion delved into lessons learned, includ­ing the impor­tance of net­work cov­er­age, engag­ing ser­vice per­son­nel ear­ly in solu­tion devel­op­ment, and address­ing change man­age­ment issues for a suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of SAP Field Ser­vice Man­age­ment (FSM).

Atten­dees were engaged in the con­ver­sa­tion and had sev­er­al ques­tions for the pan­elists. One ques­tion was around deci­sion-mak­ing for SAP Field Ser­vice Man­age­ment (FSM) and SAP Spa­tial Asset Man­age­ment (SSAM). When asked about the deci­sion-mak­ing process for FSM and SSAM, Hall high­light­ed TECO Energy’s for­ward-look­ing approach, posi­tion­ing the busi­ness for the long term by adopt­ing iOS devices, which aligned with user pref­er­ences and expe­ri­ence. Wor­gan men­tioned that Lib­er­ty Util­i­ties was still using Click and had­n’t made a change to its devices.

Reflect­ing on the pan­elists’ pain points relat­ed to change man­age­ment, Hall men­tioned TECO Energy’s chal­lenge with user buy-in, which led to a shift from email com­mu­ni­ca­tion to more per­son­al­ized vis­its to users. Address­ing train­ing for users of var­i­ous age groups, Hall talked about their iPad 101 ses­sions and trav­el­ing to meet field per­son­nel, to make the train­ing more acces­si­ble with­in their day-to-day work. In response to a ques­tion about the impact of FSM imple­men­ta­tion, Hall acknowl­edged the ongo­ing learn­ing process that accom­pa­nies opti­miz­ing operations.

Knabe empha­sized the need to bal­ance tech­nol­o­gy mod­ern­iza­tion with cur­rent employ­ee needs and pref­er­ences. ​“For us, we know there are projects com­ing down the road, and we hope they will buy in,” he said. ​“We are work­ing on mak­ing the process as seam­less as possible.”

One audi­ence mem­ber sug­gest­ed bring­ing ser­vice per­son­nel in at the begin­ning of solu­tion devel­op­ment, fos­ter­ing own­er­ship and cham­pi­oning change, and also empha­sized the pow­er of engage­ment in mak­ing change man­age­ment successful.

The FSM dual ses­sion pro­vid­ed valu­able insights into the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in field ser­vice man­age­ment. It’s evi­dent that the jour­ney toward adopt­ing and opti­miz­ing new tech­nol­o­gy is a com­plex and ongo­ing one, with user buy-in and change man­age­ment both key com­po­nents of suc­cess. The shared expe­ri­ences and lessons learned at this con­fer­ence will guide util­i­ties com­pa­nies as they con­tin­ue their tech­no­log­i­cal transformation. 

In clos­ing, Marc Rosson, Enter­prise Archi­tect with Sno­homish Coun­ty PUD, empha­sized the impor­tance of the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty com­ing togeth­er to learn and pro­vide feed­back, includ­ing through engag­ing with the ASUG Util­i­ties indus­try newslet­ter

Alyssa Per­na is Pro­duc­er of Enter­prise Con­tent Pro­gram­ming at ASUG.