New Zealand is home to some of the most stunning wilderness areas in the world, and its Department of Conservation is charged with maintaining and protecting this sometimes harsh environment. Freya Purnell found out how an implementation of SAP Work Manager is making this job easier for the Department and its infield rangers and inspection staff.
Background
The New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) is responsible for the protection of all the natural heritage of New Zealand. This covers over 72,000 recreation, historic and fence assets, which are used by hundreds of thousands of domestic and international visitors each year.
Mike Edginton, manager partnerships, historic and visitor management at Department of Conservation, says, “We’ve got a pretty large responsibility to ensure that New Zealand’s biodiversity is protected, but also to ensure that the public have access to those places. Our mission is really around making New Zealand the greatest living space on earth and that is pretty inspiring for those of us who work here.
“IT is an essential part of the department’s infrastructure and it forms the foundations of what we have to do. In my area of work, managing assets is all about managing the data that is associated with them. We have got approximately 15,000 inspections to do each year, and we have around 100,000 work orders that we manage each year.”
DOC was already using SAP Plant Maintenance as the basis for its asset management system, alongside SAP Financial Asset Management.
DOC in fact already had a mobility solution to collect conservation data, using SAP Mobile Asset Management (MAM). However this solution was clunky and slow, caused frustration amongst the rangers who needed to use it in the field, and was nearing the end of product maintenance, so it was time to upgrade.
DOC needed a more efficient and quicker means of collecting and managing field data, and to improve the user acceptance of the mobile solution. Having access to accurate data is important for DOC to inform its decision-making and to report to Parliament on its operations.
According to Soltius, other drivers for the project included a need to lower administration overheads through efficiencies in synchronising and loading devices, increasing the flexibility of the mobile platform, and the opportunity to extend the functionality to suit other asset classes and work areas within the Department.
DOC chose to implement SAP Work Manager 5.3, with the support of SAP Services, Soltius and Vesta Partners. The project was significant as the very first implementation of SAP Work Manager in New Zealand.
Implementation
According to Craig Bennett, mobility manager, and Rikardt Louw, SAP technical architect, Soltius, while the standard SAP Work Manager solution largely supported DOC’s standard maintenance work processes, there were some unique factors that influenced the implementation.
DOC’s assets cover a broad range of items, including buildings (huts, toilets and shelters), structures (such as bridges, viewing platforms and wharfs), tracks, roads, amenity areas, sign and fences. The diversity of assets also expanded the types of measures and measuring techniques used.
Many natural heritage areas are not covered by mobile network coverage, so when in the field, it may be several days before DOC’s rangers are able to synchronise data.
“As a result, DOC’s mobile solution had to be capable of taking a large amount of data into the field and have a robust solution to synchronise back to SAP when connected,” say Bennett and Louw.
To cope with the sometimes harsh infield conditions, DOC uses ruggedized units with integrated GPS that can be used one-handed and for extended periods without recharging. To interface with a large number of legacy devices, the solution had to use the Windows Mobile 6 operating system.
With DOC responsible for the maintenance of assets from both a service delivery and safety standpoint, the solution had to integrate its asset inspection process, as well as be able to download and transmit data from Bluetooth-enabled ‘counters’ embedded in tracks to monitor visitor numbers.
Bennett and Louw say some of the challenges encountered and solved on the project included:
- The limitation of the Windows Mobile operating system and memory restrictions, particularly given the data volumes involved in having large numbers of equipment masters, work orders and functional locations available on devices,
- The mobile application handling of memory issues,
- UI design conflicting with user expectations,
- The performance tuning of core SAP ABAP add-in,
- A change control process covering multiple international developers, and
- A lack of an active SAP support community, which has since been resolved.
Staff adoption key to success
A crucial element of this implementation was the adoption of the new solution by the 350 rangers and 25 inspection staff who are using it day-to-day to manage the 100,000 work orders and 15,000 to 20,000 asset inspections that are issued and conducted each year.
The Work Manager solution has vastly simplified in-field reporting, with data transfers taking minutes instead of hours. It also enables the flow of real-time data, informing better data-driven strategic decision-making, and provides complete accuracy in reporting.
“It’s really changing the lives of these rangers. It’s removing the frustrations of data management that we had before. Data transfers were taking too long and so they didn’t actually like using it in the field,” says Edginton. “Their job is to manage assets to ensure that the visitors are safe out there and they have a good time. They can focus on them and keeping themselves safe because these are dangerous places to work.”
DOC services ranger Emma Dunning agrees that the intuitive solution has transformed the way she and her colleagues work.
“It allows me to work seamlessly in and out of wireless coverage and still have the confidence that all the work I have completed will be captured and sent back to the office backend systems,” she says.
“SAP Work Manager has helped us be more effective by reducing the downtime and delays of transmitting data and give us a platform to make sure that other people know what is required out on this island.”
Organisational benefits
In addition to field employees being much more positive about the new solution, it is also contributing to a much more comprehensive and timely picture of data across the Department.
“Data is at the heart of what we do. Managing the 72,000 assets in our portfolio is all about managing the tremendous amount of data that is associated with them,” Edginton says.
“SAP Work Manager has enabled us to capture the volume of data flowing through out organisation accurately and enables us to efficiently communicate it throughout our organisation. Not only are we able to more efficiently deploy our resources, the solution also helps make my job easier.
“I am now able to gain a 360-degree view of our operations to help me provide strategic advice and ensure we have accurate information when we need to report to Parliament.”
From a risk perspective, maintenance now also has a clear audit trail, showing the necessary due diligence if required following any incident.
The next phase of the journey for DOC will be to extend the capabilities of SAP Work Manager across the entire organisation. As a part of the New Zealand Government’s move towards more cloud-based solutions, DOC is also considering the benefits of SAP cloud solutions with a view to reduce overhead costs and further move towards a mobile future for the organisation.
This article was first published in Inside SAP Autumn 2014.
Image: New Zealand Department of Conservation
