This partner insight was authored by Claire Gotham, Utilities Consulting Lead, North America at Wipro; Ashwini Dayal, General Manager and Global Head, SAP Partnership at Wipro; and Brian Barr, Partner, Utilities Consulting at Wipro.
The American utilities sector stands at an opportunistic crossroad, facing a unique mix of operational, regulatory, and technological pressures. Across the nation, utilities are grappling with aging infrastructure and regulatory scrutiny to maintain system integrity. The US Department of Energy states that over 70 percent of the US grid is more than 25 years old and is nearing the end of its typical 50- to 80-year lifecycle. This is leading to mounting inefficiencies and costly outages. As the global push for decarbonization and electrification accelerates, the industry is being called to transform from traditional commodity suppliers into the backbone of a cleaner, more resilient energy future. The need to ‘re-envision’ utilities, end-to-end, has never been more urgent.
Meanwhile, the utilities landscape faces increased complexity due to rising competition. Decentralization is opening the market to new entrants and services, boosting competition and shifting customer expectations toward more innovative and sustainable solutions. As regulatory demands and costs grow, utilities must balance compliance, reliability, and affordability.
A key strategic and technological pressure is the upcoming 2027 retirement of SAP ECC, a core system that many utilities depend on. This system is essential for managing critical operations like finance, billing, procurement & inventory management, and asset management.
The upcoming retirement of SAP ECC forces utilities to urgently migrate to SAP S/4HANA to maintain operational stability and continuity (read more of Wipro’s point of view on Accelerating Business Assurance: Strategies for SAP S/4HANA Transformation here). The decisions that utilities make today around the migration will shape the digital readiness, reliability, sustainability, and competitiveness of America’s energy landscape for decades to come.
Wipro’s SAP Solutions for Utilities: The Rizing Advantage
Wipro is well positioned to guide utilities through this transformation by leveraging over 20 years of SAP expertise and a deep understanding of asset-intensive industries, including O&G, Utilities, and Manufacturing (Wipro is a global strategic SAP partner and adopter of RISE with SAP). In addition, with the acquisition of Rizing, we are now a combined SAP Consulting powerhouse. Rizing has developed a portfolio of solutions and proprietary applications that have significantly expanded our breadth of capabilities, enabling Fortune 500 companies and utilities to transform into intelligent enterprises. Together, Wipro and Rizing offer unmatched experience in SAP transformations, migration, and fresh implementations:
End-to-End SAP S/4HANA Transformation and Implementation
A successful SAP S/4HANA transformation is vital for utilities aiming to modernize their operations. This can be achieved quickly and reliably by focusing on nine key factors:
- Standard SAP Functionality: Utilize as much standard SAP functionality as possible to ease future upgrades and scalability, aligning with “keep the core clean.” This favors fresh implementation or selective migration with business process redesign.
- Easy Upgrade Path: Move heavy customization to the industry cloud and leverage holistic design, which supports easier future upgrades and scalability (recommended for fresh implementations).
- RISE with SAP: Adopting RISE with SAP simplifies governance and promises a possible cost-neutral migration from ECC. Utilities benefit from streamlined cloud transformation, making migration attractive for rapid and reliable change.
- Best Practices: Both migration and fresh implementations require change management strategies, clean core design, data management, and company buy-in to succeed. Migration journeys (and upgrade paths) and “RISE with SAP” as transition mechanisms are recommended best practices.
- Gen AI, Bots, and Accelerators: Wipro offers automation bots and AI-powered assistants integrated directly into SAP S/4HANA, significantly streamlining migration/implementation and accelerating transformation. These tools automate tasks and enhance data/document migration quality, which is crucial for reliable and fast transformation.
- Business Assurance and Optimization Tools: Tools like SAP S/4HANA Assurance and strategies such as leveraging AI drive efficiency and reliability for both migration and implementation paths.
- AI-driven Quality Assurance: Strategic business assurance frameworks like Wipro’s SAP Assurance Prism mitigate risks and disruptions by 40%, ensuring efficient migration or implementation.
- Intelligent Test Automation: By utilizing intelligent test automation, utilities can ensure strong data integrity and security throughout the migration.
- Expert Support: Supporting the project with seasoned SAP ISU transformation leaders who are more likely to succeed quickly and reliably, regardless of approach (migration or implementation).
Next Steps for Sustainable Transformation (and Measurable Impact)
Post migration/implementation, Wipro empowers utilities with advanced solutions, driving excellence in asset management, maintenance, and operational performance. Our tailored expertise unites technology, innovation, and the practical needs of utilities to deliver sustainable transformation with measurable impact.
- Asset Management and Maintenance Excellence: Utilities can significantly enhance operational reliability and asset lifespan by using advanced SAP solutions customized to specific business challenges.
- SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Expertise:We optimize asset performance, reduce downtime, and extend asset lifespan, customizing SAP EAM to meet real-world utility needs.
- STO360 for Shutdowns and Outages: Our SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)-based shutdown, turnaround, and outage solution, STO360, standardizes and streamlines plant shutdowns, synchronizing complex processes and ensuring safe, efficient maintenance across departments and systems.
- AI, Automation, and Advanced Analytics: Utilities adopting GenAI-driven automation are attaining notable operational efficiencies, with smart bots and AI assistants optimizing back-office tasks, procurement, and knowledge management. Our AI and automation experts focus on three key areas:
- AI-Driven Document Intelligence: Tools like the ABAP Deconstructor and GenAI chatbots streamline technical documentation, reduce the time required to create missing documents, accelerate research, and deliver rapid, accurate responses to complex queries.
- Test Automation and Data Mining: GenAI-powered tools create test cases, map ECC to S/4HANA transactions, and mine test data, reducing manual effort and defects while increasing test coverage and speed.
Proven Industry Use Cases
Utilities are accelerating their digital transformation by adopting advanced automation and GenAI-driven solutions. By transitioning from legacy systems to SAP Build Process Automation and deploying intelligent bots, organizations can streamline operations and reduce manual workloads. SAP Build Process Automation utilizes pre-built content packages and connectors to simplify business processes. It achieves this through visual drag-and-drop tools, enabling both technical and non-technical roles to digitize their workflows without coding.
Wipro’s SAP expertise has been delivering outstanding results. Some examples include:
- Large-scale Transformation: Completed a large-scale cloud ERP system transformation, using RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition for a diversified energy network business in Australia. The program, delivered ahead of schedule, replaced legacy systems with an integrated modern cloud platform, marking a significant milestone in the company’s achievement of secure, scalable, and future-ready digital infrastructure.
- Process Automation: Transitioned a major UK water utility from legacy automation to SAP Build Process Automation, deploying 37 ISU-based SBPA bots for operational efficiency.
- GenAI for Procurement: Created a natural language query-enabled platform for energy procurement, cutting costs by 10–15% and enhancing demand fulfillment for a North American utility.
- Digital Assistants: Provided Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)-based assistants for SAP Ariba training and automated knowledge article creation at National Grid, improving enterprise efficiency and reducing support tickets.
- Research and Knowledge Management: Developed GenAI-powered search assistants for a utility research institute, providing quick and precise access to over 110,000 research documents.
- Supplier Management and Training: Using SAP Ariba enhancements, GenAI integration, and leveraging the SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance solution, the following processes are being streamlined for a leading utilities company: supplier registration, qualification, and management, along with automating manual invoicing and introducing new dashboards for performance monitoring. In parallel, a GenAI-powered assistant is being integrated within SAP Ariba to enhance training participation and reduce support tickets. This AI-driven assistant uses RAG to provide real-time, natural language support.
- Utility Operations with GenAI: A GenAI-based digital assistant is being employed by a Northeastern legacy utility to tackle challenges related to complex functional and technical specifications, as well as limited training resources. This innovation, which improves engagement and service through SAP CX, has led to a 30% rise in training participation and doubled productivity.
- Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Readiness with Community Distributed Generation (CDG): A leading US arm of a global renewables energy leader, in partnership with Wipro, is pioneering the integration of DER through SAP solutions.
Wipro and SAP by Numbers
Wipro’s SAP Expertise: What Utilities Worldwide are Gaining |
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Challenge |
Wipro’s SAP S/4HANA Solution and Approach |
Business Benefits |
Aging, fragmented systems |
End-to-end S/4HANA migration and assurance |
Improved operational efficiency and a future-ready platform |
Complex asset maintenance |
SAP EAM and STO360 |
Optimized asset lifespan, safer and faster shutdowns |
Manual, error-prone processes |
AI bots, automation, test accelerators |
40% reduction in testing effort, 25% faster time-to-market |
Rising customer expectations |
Digital experience and analytics |
Superior customer engagement, data-driven insights |
Regulatory compliance and cost control |
Integrated risk, data, and security assurance |
Lower compliance risk, cost-effective operations |
Risk of operational disruptions |
Wipro S/4AssureAI |
AI-driven quality assurance to mitigate risks and reduce disruptions by 40% |
Knowledge management |
GenAI-powered assistants and chatbots |
30% faster information retrieval, 98.5% response accuracy |
SAP S/4HANA solutions empower utilities to meet today’s challenges head-on. They help modernize operations, reduce costs, and unlock new business value. Our deep SAP expertise, Global Strategic Services Partner (GSSP) status, innovative enablers, joint programs with SAP, continuous investment in GenAI, bots, and accelerators, and proven industry experience make us the partner of choice for utilities ready to lead in the era of digital energy.
The Era of Digital Reinvention Begins for Utilities
As the US utilities sector enters a defining era of digital reinvention, the next decade offers a rare opportunity to reshape the industry’s foundation. With the retirement of SAP ECC and the rise of intelligent automation, advanced analytics, and resilient digital platforms, utilities are poised to unlock new levels of agility and insight.
In this transformation, trusted partners like Wipro—renowned for deep SAP expertise and energy domain leadership—will be instrumental in guiding utilities toward a smarter, more sustainable future. The challenge is great, but the potential to build a more innovative, responsive, and resilient energy ecosystem has never been more within reach.
Claire Gotham is Utilities Consulting Lead, North America at Wipro. Ashwini Dayal is General Manager and Global Head, SAP Partnership at Wipro. Brian Barr is Partner, Utilities Consulting at Wipro.