Enhance Productivity and Reduce OPEX with Role-Based Mobile Maintenance in SAP Service and Asset Manager (SSAM)

According to a?recent McKinsey research paper, maintenance costs can be up to 60% of operating expenses (OPEX) for distributed fixed asset companies, depending on industry, such as telco or rail networks, and asset type.?

OPEX are the?operating costs businesses incur through normal operations, and include payroll, research and development, rent, as well as maintenance-driven costs such as equipment and inventory costs.?

At a time where inflation is having a heavy impact on OPEX, for example in the UK, where the latest?Producer Price Inflation figures show a 22.6% rise in the year to July 2022, businesses are fully focused on optimizing OPEX.

Improving the efficiency of maintenance of companies’ assets has a major impact on both overall OPEX as well as required extremely high availability of distributed fixed assets, such as power grids, or green energy structures such as wind turbines.?

For companies that rely on maximizing after-sales margins, while maintaining safe and effective assets, improving service technicians’ productivity out in the field is even more important.?

There continues to be an acute shortage of industrial maintenance engineers and technicians, which was exacerbated by COVID-19, with some experts stating that there is?current shortage of 1 million maintenance workers in Europe alone, rising to 3 million by 2036.?

Therefore, companies need to double-down on improving the technician experience and process efficiency to improve talent productivity and retention for this critical expertise across industries, which are providing our energy, transportation, and communications networks to support economic growth.?

SAP has worked closely with our customer communities in these industries, and together we have driven the transformation of the new role-based capabilities in?SAP Service and Asset Manager (SSAM),?our mobile app enables full flexibility across multiple roles from the same device, connected directly into SAP ERP Asset Management and Asset Accounting.??

Using our intuitive SSAM user experience, developed with Apple, technicians can now switch roles to Inventory and Service capabilities while in the field, depending on the required tasks, thus allowing completion of multiple tasks onsite.?

Inventory can rapidly be requested, or reserved and checked out of forward storage locations, even in offline mode, with accurate inventory management and costs aligned with SAP ERP Asset Management. This enables accurate inventory replenishment and planning, avoiding downtime with predictable and visible spares management.??

Switching to the SSAM Service persona assists the technician to use configurable Smart Forms to rapidly update and complete Service Orders, or record information to request further assistance or allocate tasks to other colleagues. An?Environmental Health Safety (EH&S) role is also planned for customers in 2023, further enhancing productivity for existing expert technicians.?

Combined with the geographic (GIS) user interface in the SSAM Maintenance role, technicians can now increase their productivity out on the road,?even in offline scenarios, to enhance asset availability and maintain customer confidence in the distributed asset network.?

Overall, SSAM’s comprehensive yet accessible role-based approach helps customers’ technician teams easily execute more role-based tasks across their asset class or region, reducing time spent in the office, thereby improving engagement and productivity while optimizing overall OPEX and asset uptime.?