Current challenges in the asset management space are real — and substantial.
How can you maintain geographically scattered and remote assets – regardless of your own location? How can you ensure regulatory compliance when faced with an aging workforce and a rapidly shrinking budget? And how can you achieve total visibility into your assets, whether online or off, so that you can adapt to changing market conditions?
At SAP, we’ve been working to address these types of concerns for many years. We understand that while there are challenges related to operating a stable, secure, offline mobile solution that provides the flexibility to customize the solution to specific customer needs, these obstacles are surmountable. And it’s our extensive experience – combined with our knowledge of enterprise asset management business processes – that has enabled us to deliver what we believe is the next-generation mobile asset management solution.
SAP’s History in Asset Management
Back in 2012, we invested heavily in the mobile asset management space, starting with the Syclo acquisition. Since then, we’ve continued to invest in both the Agentry platform as well as in the SAP Work Manager and SAP Inventory Manager mobile apps. We’ve released new versions of these applications every year (sometimes even two versions a year!), all with new functionalities including the ability to create, update, and display master data; provide support for linear asset management; and integrate with the SAP Multiresource Scheduling application, ESRI ArcGIS, and SAP 3D Visual Enterprise applications.
Now, five years after that initial acquisition, we’ve taken our knowledge and experience and used it to develop something truly game-changing: the SAP Asset Manager mobile app. This next-generation mobile asset management app and platform uses the same meta data-driven framework, which not only allows for the customization of the application at both an object level as well as at a native integration level, but empowers organizations to leverage the powerful capabilities and integration of SAP Cloud Platform.
The Impact of SAP Asset Manager on Business
This innovation has real implications for asset-intensive organizations. SAP Asset Manager offers total support for the highly skilled workers who maintain enterprise assets, allowing them to perform their jobs more effectively by equipping them with complex information and business logic – whether they are connected to the network or working offline.
Here are just a few of the many benefits businesses will gain from implementing this solution:
- Real-time visibility across the enterprise: By providing timely, relevant, accurate information on asset health, inventory, maintenance, and safety checklists, SAP Asset Manager empowers organizations to stay on top of every aspect of their business, enabling them to make better, faster decisions that drive measurable outcomes.
- Increased worker productivity: With SAP Asset Manager, remote workers can access, complete, and manage their assigned work orders and notifications using their mobile device – regardless of connectivity. They can also access the information they need to increase their knowledge base anywhere, anytime –augmenting their skill sets and decreasing attrition.
- Additional flexibility and agility: Because SAP Asset Manager offers businesses access to timely, accurate data both online or offline, organizations can better respond to increasing market demand and globalization and address regulatory, social, and environmental pressures.
What’s more, SAP Asset Manager drives digital transformation by leveraging the digital core, SAP S/4HANA, and combining it with the exceptional and intuitive user experience of a native iOS application. In fact, SAP developed this application at Apple’s Design Lab with the company’s advice to ensure this enterprise-grade application has the consumer-grade user experience iOS users have come to expect.
The Future of SAP Asset Manager
The first version of SAP Asset Manager will focus on core work management and time entry tasks. But going forward, we plan to add more functionality to bring SAP Asset Manager to feature parity with SAP Work Manager and take advantage of various integration scenarios with the SAP Leonardo system. We also envision integrating the app with SAP Asset Intelligence Network and the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution – leveraging SAP Cloud Platform and the SAP Leonardo IoT Foundation portfolio to offer field maintenance professionals real-time insights on the assets they’re servicing.
It is important to note, however, that SAP Asset Manager as a cloud-based mobile asset management app connected to SAP S/4HANA will be available as a first step only for devices running iOS. Support for Android and Windows will be added at a later date.
In the meantime, we continue to invest in our current solutions. SAP Work Manager and SAP Inventory Manager are available today, and both support the SAP ERP Central Component and SAP S/4HANA and can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud. These solutions can be used with iOS, Android, and Windows devices. If you need to implement a mobile asset management solution today and don’t plan to move to SAP S/4HANA in the near term, these solutions offer full mobile asset management capabilities.
We’re also looking for customers that would like to be early adopters of SAP Asset Manager. Customers that participate in the program will not only gain access to the product months before general availability, they’ll be among the first to experience its vast capabilities. What’s more, these participants will enjoy access to the dedicated efforts of the SAP Early Adopter Care team, which will guide the coordinated support and priority attention provided through this program.
Interested in participating? Find out more about the SAP Early Adopter Care program and enroll here (login required).
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Jill Elliott is product manager for SAP P&I Industry Cloud – Mobility
