The two-day Mastering SAP OnAir held 18-19 November 2021 featured over 60 hours of engaging presentations focused on digital transformation and innovation. The conference was graced by more than 70 speakers — from SAP customers and partners to industry leaders, experts, and enthusiasts.
Recently acquired by SAPinsider, Mastering SAP strives to deliver an enhanced platform with new content and services to help SAP customers and partners get the most out of their investments in SAP technology. Aside from bringing Inspire Sessions and Masterclasses through unique channels and discovery-learning formats, this month’s Mastering SAP OnAir highlights perspectives, keynotes, and case studies based on hot topics in two special SAP communities: Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Supply Chain & Procurement (SCP). The online conference also offers a networking lounge where attendees were able to connect with their peers for the duration of the event.
Mastering SAP’s official media partner, InsideSAP, had the opportunity to participate in several interactive discussions and thought-provoking masterclasses on EAM and SCP industries.
Perspective Sessions During Mastering SAP OnAir
Adam Sivell, Solution Advisor at SAP Centre of Excellence (COE), hosted the Perspective Session “Collaborative Maintenance: Share Your Work Orders with Service Partners and Other Network Participants.” He said that they have established a COE for Asset Intensive Industries to have the best collaboration within the SAP community. He added that the COE, which is based in ANZ, is positioned to leverage a lot of local knowledge in the asset-intensive space. According to Sivell, they can advocate globally to solve problems and improve SAP products by working closely with the SAP user base in Australia, along with other countries like Japan, Singapore, Germany, and the US.
Furthermore, he also talked us through SAP’s Collaborative Work Order that allows Work Orders from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to be shared with service partners or other members through the SAP Business Network. He explained:
“The SAP Business Network integrates nonsensitive information between SAP Fieldglass and the SAP Asset Intelligence Network so the maintenance planner can ensure that commercials are in place and that contractors are onboarded and that these won’t lead to downtime or risks.”
Meanwhile, in the presentation called “Going Live with Standard SAP Asset Manager Mobile App” by Vicki Hlinovsky, Business Process Lead of EAM at Sunwater, she discussed how SAP Asset Manager was utilised by the company as part of its SAP S/4HANA implementation project. Expounding on the challenges the company has experienced during deployment, she said:
“Being an early adopter of Asset Manager and the first in Australia, we also found it difficult that we had no one to compare notes with. All of the other users were overseas.”
Giving a live demo of SAP’s mobile solution, Hlinovsky then shed a light on how the Queensland Government-owned corporation helped its field employees manage work orders, send notifications, fulfill work instructions, track time, and record readings on measuring points using SAP Asset Manager.
Day 1 Highlights
InsideSAP also joined the discussion “Greenfield SAP S4/HANA Project Delivers a Combination of Lean & Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) Warehousing” which featured LifeHealthcare’s SAP EWM implementation. LifeHealthcare’s Jackie Johnston and Ben Vernon gave their insights into how the solution enabled a hub and spoke architecture from its national distribution centre, with Lean warehousing in six satellite warehouses across ANZ. Aside from implementing SAP EWM, the company integrated its Kardex solution, which provided greater visibility of inventories in bin locations and built customised Fiori style applications for scanner gun efficiency.
“As we get further in and we get more comfortable with SAP, then we’ll start using the Advanced Planning (and Optimisation) functions for investigating how we can use those to assist with app safety stock levels to ensure customer and business satisfaction,” Vernon disclosed.
Moreover, Jon Wilson, SAP Digital Supply Chain, SAP Australia & New Zealand, conducted a talk dubbed “Field Services Strategies to Help You Improve Asset Availability and Deliver Better Customer Experiences” to discuss how SAP is bridging the gap between strategy, planning, and execution, as well as how excellence in Field Service Management is achieved. He said that using digitised field services is about saving time, making people more productive, improving asset uptime and SAP customers’ satisfaction, and uncovering those new opportunities to grow.
“At SAP, we have a process where the SAP Development Team actually engage with the customer, the project team, to understand your requirements and deliver a purpose-built AI optimisation algorithm as part of your field service deployment,” he shared.
Bringing Together SAP Customers, Partners, and Experts
During Day 2 of Mastering SAP OnAir, InsideSAP was able to participate in the Masterclass Session on the SCP channel titled “Driving Logistics Productivity and Enhancing Visibility” with Lisa Entrekin, Director of Logistics Technology and Network Optimisation at Albemarle Corporation; Ojas Patel, SAP S4 Logistics & Trade Compliance Manager at Albemarle Corporation; and Adam Peanna, Digital Supply Chain, Centre Of Excellence at SAP. The session highlighted Albemarle Corporation’s use of SAP’s Global Trade Service (GTS) and EWM solutions, as well as Transportation Management (TM) and Event Management (EM) solutions.
Noting that they had a “very basic” greenfield implementation, Entrekin said that company wanted to enhance the TM module. She explained:
“It initially went live back in January of 2018, but we really saw some opportunities to where we could provide some better service and recognise some efficiencies.”
Touching on the importance of putting wireless infrastructure in the warehouse and ensuring coverage, Entrekin noted:
“We actually had to do an upgrade on our wireless in our lithium facility so that’s something to keep in mind because that did surprise us. We hadn’t planned on that.”
Day 2 Highlights
Meanwhile, the presentation titled “Implementation of a User-Centric Field Application for Pole Inspections” expounded on TasNetworks’ collaboration with Bourne Digital where they developed a user-centric application connected through the SAP Cloud Platform, replacing the use of SAP Work Manager for pole inspections. David Kruijver, Program Manager of SAP Uplift at TasNetworks, talked about how better and increased data collection from the field has resulted in a significant improvement in user trust in the systems used.
“In terms of aspects with a focus on usability, what we’ve been able to achieve in the guiding principles we used were that the screens presented to users actually matched the logical work process they go through,” Kruijver said.
Lastly, one of the digital transformation stories from SAP customers that also piqued InsideSAP’s interest is the development of Zuellig Pharma’s SAP-powered blockchain platform, eZTracker. Through the healthcare services provider’s smartphone app, consumers’ mobile devices become an instant verification tool, which can trace a medication’s barcode to its manufacturer and place of origin.
In a Perspective Session titled “How an SAP Blockchain-enabled Solution is Driving Visibility along the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain in Asia” during Mastering SAP OnAir, Daniel Laverick, VP and Head of Digital & Data Solutions at Zuellig Pharma, explored the opportunities of using data to achieve smarter decision-making in the supply chain. He believes that data reporting has become increasingly crucial in terms of delivering quality assurance to patients, healthcare practitioners, and health authorities, as well as in addressing the lack of transparency that can impact trust over time.
“We started this journey working alongside our partners at SAP and this was originally kind of a core innovation. We’ve now moved it up so that no matter which cloud vendor you run in, you can be part of this journey,” Laverick revealed.
And as 2021 draws to a close, we at InsideSAP are looking forward to more Mastering SAP programs — that offer thought leadership and innovation across various industries — in a hybrid setup or an in-person conference soon.
