Subject-specific Workshops
Choose from these highly relevant workshops, available only to conference attendees. All workshops are optional and separately bookable. Space is limited, so book early! |
Sunday, September 19, 2010 — Workshops 1-2
WORKSHOP 1
Cost: $195, only available to conference attendees
Time:
10:00 AM – 1:30 PM
SAP for Utilities – Overview and Highlights
Stefan Engelhardt, Head of Industry Business Unit Utilities SAP AG
Robert Straubinger, Senior Solution Owner, SAP Labs Canada
Juergen Kuhmann, Senior Solution Owner, SAP Labs, LLC.
Con Ntalianis, Solution Manager, SAP
Stefan Wolf, Solution Owner, SAP Labs, LLC.
SAP for Utilities solutions supports business processes in the utilities industry, addressing the needs of companies in the generation, transmission and distribution, retail, energy and water. The objective of this workshop is to provide an overview about the SAP for Utilities solution for the meter to cash process and to highlight some of the key features and an outlook into future enhancements plans like managing DSM Programs and Smart Grid Analytics. We will explain the solution and demonstrate the value.
You will see how the solution supports AMI enabled business processes like automatic disconnection at contract termination, avoid an unnecessary truck roll through meter ping, etc. You will also see state of the art sales and customer service processes as well as how manage large key accounts efficiently. The workshop will also demonstrate improved user interfaces for front office and back office agents.
Lessons:
• How does SAP support already today Smart Grid processes
• How SAP provides first class sales and customer service processes
• What are the future plans for the solution
WORKSHOP 2
FREE, only available to conference attendees
Time:
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Introduction to Value Management (FREE)
Sutej Kapur, Senior Principal, Value Engineering, SAP
In today’s financial climate, funding for major investments is under heightened scrutiny to ensure they are delivered on-time, on-budget and on-value. Capital investments require an iron-clad business case with risks clearly defined and mitigated before budgets are funded. On-going performance measurement and management must be in place to ensure that expected value is delivered.
Top performing companies have cracked the code and have developed successful methods that deliver measurable value, time and time again. It’s SAP’s mission to capture these successful customer practices and spread the wealth to companies that want more than just software from a partnership. SAP has observed the maturity of responses to these issues and captured the best practices into an integrated value life cycle.
SAP’s mission is to take value management best practices to help every customer become a best-run business. Drawing from strategic interactions with customers and partners, SAP aggregated the most comprehensive set of value assets and intellectual property.
Lessons:
• Understanding the challenges and opportunities for Value Management
• Demonstrate proficiency in benchmarking usage and analysis
• Gain experience with creating a business case using the Value Lifecycle Manager
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 — Workshops 3-9
Cost: $795, only available to conference attendees
Time: 8:30 AM – 2:30 PM
You Can Use It! Improving ERP Usability and Performance by Seamlessly Integrating Adobe and SAP
Abdi Goodarzi, Director, Deloitte Consulting
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is the most commonly implemented SAP module among utilities. Despite its popularity, organizations often don’t take full advantage of its capabilities due to the complexity of the user interface. By seamlessly integrating Adobe’s Rich User Interface technology with the module’s functionality, it is a whole lot easier to use EAM and to get the full benefits from it. See how a sleek “work management” cockpit enables users to effortlessly send notifications as well as handle every aspect of work-order processing. Come hear how users at Southern California Edison are leveraging the cockpit to help their productivity take off.
The presentation features:
• Implementation strategy and architectural overview
• Methods for gathering user-interface requirements
• Adobe features that are critical to go-live
• Single sign-on and security requirements
• Business case: work management in utilities (notification and work order processing)
• Best practices: the do’s and don’ts of a successful implementation
Whether you’re focused on EAM or another SAP ERP application, this workshop will demonstrate ways to use it even better. Come explore how Deloitte is building upon the strategic partnership between SAP and Adobe to create agile and effective business solutions for utilities clients.
SAP EAM Landscape for T&D Including In-depth Review of Compatible Units and Linear Asset Management
Eric Burkhartzmeyer, Senior EAM Consultant and Project Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLC
Rick Weber, Senior EAM Consultant and Project Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLC
In the upcoming Enhancement Package 5, SAP will add features for Linear Asset Management (LAM) and Operation Account Assignment (OAA) to extend the existing capabilities for utilities work management.
This workshop will explore the use of existing Compatible Unit (CU) functionality with the new LAM/OAA functions in a T&D environment.
Utilities are challenged with meeting multiple requirements and priorities:
• Operating/maintaining aging infrastructure
• Meeting regulatory requirements
• Maximizing capital investments
• Consolidating/standardizing across multiple companies
• Operating safely/securely
Effective use of CUs has become central to meeting the diverse needs of utilities. CUs have evolved beyond simple labor and material estimating tools to become knowledge repositories, enabling and driving process efficiency, consistency and accountability.
The LAM enhancement will extend linear data to existing master data and relevant business documents. Using dynamic segmentation this will provide total visibility of business events along these continuous assets.
Operation Account Assignment enables more detailed costing within the CU and Linear Asset work execution processes. This in turn provides better visibility of capital investment expenditure and improves regulatory compliance.
Smart Grid: A Complex, Multi-player Journey
Michael Valocchi, VP/Partner, Global Industry Leader, E&U, IBM
As the Smart Grid drives an evolution of the industry model, energy and utility companies will continue to transform from a business process perspective to take advantage of emerging technologies. The increase in data requires a focus on integration leading to improved business optimization and analytics, and the challenges associated with this can be significant. There are a number of implementations under way on a global basis and many lessons that can be learned from those companies that have begun the journey. Understanding these, as well as the future technical and business road map, will allow companies to reduce risks in their own implementations.
The objective of this workshop is to provide participants a practical view of Smart Grid implementations including business model, process, technology, security and customer issues. The workshop is intended to be interactive and include specific clients’ case studies, and be grounded in real world examples. The agenda will include discussions and case studies surrounding the following topics:
• Smart Grid Maturity Model and Business Model implications
• Key Smart Grid business and technology components
• Security and business challenges
• Managing stakeholder communications
• Customer implications
• Implementation challenges
Using SAP to Ease Transition to IFRS
Darryl Jam, Senior Manager, Performance & Technology, KPMG
The Canadian utilities market has recently experienced the full magnitude of implementing process and system changes to comply with International Financial Reporting Standards. Regulated entities in this industry have historically carried out certain accounting practices that do not align with IFRS, and harmonization projects by both the International Accounting Standards Board, and individual regulators are still underway. In the meantime, many utilities are left with a possible requirement to maintain two separate ledgers to both comply with IFRS for external financial statement audits and to provide reporting for regulatory purposes. This workshop provides a high level overview of the types of topics most likely to present challenges. It will then explore some of the SAP functionality that can help to meet the requirements and streamline reporting activities.
Lessons:
• SAP new general ledger helps to maintain different ledgers for different
accounting rules
• SAP asset accounting can help with maintaining different individual asset balances
for different accounting rules
• SAP project systems can help to split capital projects into multiple assets with
different valuations
Focus on Power Generation: How Can EAM Get You an Extra Million Bucks on the Bottom Line?
Paul Kurchina, Director, KurMeta Group & ASUG Enterprise Architecture Community Chair
Len Harms, Head of Utilities Division, Vesta Partners
Howard Matthews, Supervisor, Process Management, SaskPower
Gretchen Schwenzer, Manager, OSIsoft
Robert Andrews, Vice President, Smartsignal
This workshop will cover tactics and strategies to drive more value from your SAP EAM and partner investments on your Generation Asset Performance Management journey. We will cover examples across Thermal, Nuclear and Renewables from a plant and a fleet perspective.
Topics to be discussed include:
• Customer use cases , innovations and value delivered — North American
and International
• Moving beyond notification and orders to Asset Performance Management
• Moving from a single asset view to a fleet-wide view of assets and the associated
benefits
• PAS 55 - value perspectives and potential implications for utilities
• Emerging technologies and applying them today
Lessons:
• Moving from data to information to actionable intelligence
• What are the leaders doing and what value are they getting
• Care and nurturing of your EAM end users
Smart Meter and Smart Grid Processes Enabled in the SAP Solution for Utilities
Stefan Engelhardt, Head of Industry Business Unit Utilities SAP AG
Con Ntalianis, Solution Manager, SAP
Stefan Wolf, Solution Owner, SAP Labs, LLC.
Implementing and utilizing Smart Metering and Smart Grid are top priorities for almost every utility in North America and many other countries. While this topic is not new and many projects are already well underway and millions of dollars are being spent, there are still questions open about how the business processes will utilize these technical advancements.
SAP works closely with customers and partners to ensure that the existing processes can easily benefit from these technologies and that new processes are enabled.
The objective for this workshop is to provide an overview about the business processes enabled to use Smart Metering or Smart Grid technologies and how this enablement is accomplished. Key processes will be demonstrated, as well as configuration options and how they can be utilized.
Processes covered will include:
• Installation of Smart Meters
• Remote Disconnection / Reconnection
• Text messages to device
• Handling of non-energy events from Smart Meter
• Ping a Smart Meter
• Define complex rates like TOU or PTR
Communications Infrastructure for Smart Energy Initiatives
David Haak, Executive Director, Smart Grid Services, Accenture
Communications infrastructure (wireless and wired) is increasingly becoming a key component of enabling smart energy programs. These technologies will enable meters, grids and homes/buildings to be more communicable and controllable. A broad spectrum of wireless and wired technologies, solutions and providers are needed to address the varying environments that these programs will be deployed in. During this workshop, you will hear about the communications infrastructure ecosystem and its importance to smart energy programs.
A description of standards, technologies and illustrative use cases will be provided, along with lessons learned from real-life deployments. In addition to the technology ecosystem, you will learn more about the management and operations systems that will help maintain and run this infrastructure.
