Services · SAP EAM
The work order is the system of record.
Most asset programs fail long before the analytics do. They fail at the point where a crew writes down what they actually did and nothing downstream can find it. We design SAP EAM around how execution really happens.
Where it breaks
Configured correctly, and still hard to work in
An EAM build can pass every test script and still leave the business without an answer it can use. These are the three failures we see most often, and none of them are bugs.
Failure data in a free-text field
Failure data is captured in a free-text field, so the reliability team rebuilds it in a spreadsheet every quarter.
The order that means four things
One order type carries inspection, corrective, capital and storm work, so cost and compliance cannot be separated afterwards.
The hierarchy built for the ledger
Functional locations mirror the cost structure rather than the physical network, so nothing reconciles to the map.
WHEN WE GET THE CALL
Five moments, not one
The data will not support the decision
Someone senior has asked which assets to replace, or what the backlog actually is, and three groups have produced three answers. The disagreement is not political. It is definitional.
A program is about to design on a weak foundation
An SAP S/4HANA move, a mobile rollout or a new scheduling solution is in flight, and the master data underneath it has not been examined. The cheapest moment to intervene, and the one most often skipped.
The custom code has become the constraint
Years of enhancements now make every upgrade an archaeology project. The question is which of them encode something the business genuinely needs, and which are habits nobody has had cause to revisit.
Nobody owns the operating model
The system does what it was built to do. The organization around it has reorganized twice since. Roles, handoffs and accountabilities no longer match the transaction flow.
The integrator needs an owner’s agent
A system integrator is delivering and the utility wants someone technical on its own side of the table. We do this as owner’s agent advisory, never as a competing implementation bid.
What we do
Four practices, one order
Asset strategy and performance
RCM and FMEA applied at the level the data can actually support — maintenance plans that resolve to a class, a characteristic and a failure code, not to a policy document.
Predictive maintenance and analytics
Condition data joined to the order history that explains it. We build the join first; the model is the easy part.
Mobile execution
Field capture designed backwards from the record you need afterwards, so the crew enters less and the register learns more.
Integration
EAM tied to GIS, the schedule and the IoT feed through standard APIs on SAP BAIP — clean core, upgrade-safe, no modified ABAP.
COMPLIANCE AND INSPECTION
Work the regulator asked for
A growing share of utility work orders exist because a regulator requires them, not because an asset asked for attention. Inspection cycles, vegetation programs, wildfire mitigation commitments, joint-use audits and integrity management all land in the same place: a very large volume of scheduled work that has to be completed on time and evidenced afterward.
Is the population defined by the network?
Or by whatever list was loaded once and has been maintained by hand ever since.
Does the order structure know the difference?
A compliance inspection and a routine maintenance order are not the same obligation. If the system cannot tell them apart, someone will reconstruct the distinction in a spreadsheet.
Does remediation inherit the clock?
When an inspection raises a finding, the follow-up order should carry the obligation and the deadline with it, not start fresh with neither.
How an engagement runs
Evidence before design
Read the data you already have
Two weeks in your own orders, notifications and functional locations. No workshops yet.
Name what is actually broken
A short written finding, with the records that prove it. Some of it will be uncomfortable.
Design to the execution path
Order types, hierarchy and codes built from how crews work, not from a reference model.
Build clean-core
Extension on SAP BAIP where standard will not reach. Nothing that blocks an upgrade.
Prove it on your scenario
In the Grove, with your data shape, before anyone commits to a program.
HOW AN ENGAGEMENT RUNS
Small first, on purpose
Assessment
Two to four weeks. We read the data, interview the people who touch the orders, and come back with what we found, including the parts that are working. The deliverable is written, with findings ranked by what they cost you rather than by how hard they are to fix.
Design
The target state for whatever the assessment prioritized: order structures, master data standards, catalogs, hierarchy, operating model, extension approach. Written to be handed to whoever implements it, including a system integrator that is not us.
Delivery support
Where a program is already moving, we sit on the utility’s side of the table: reviewing designs, testing assumptions, keeping decisions traceable.
Optimization
For utilities already live, the narrower work of making an existing configuration perform. Catalog adoption, backlog structure, scheduling discipline, reporting that reconciles.
Built from this work
Three products came out of EAM engagements
Sigma
Every KPI resolves back to the work order that produced it.
Gamma
SAP and Primavera P6, bidirectionally synchronized.
Theta
SAP Technical Objects and ArcGIS Utility Network Features that stay aligned.
All three started inside an EAM engagement, not in a product plan.
QUESTIONS WE GET ASKED
Before you call
Is this SAP EAM consulting or SAP PM consulting?
The same work. SAP’s asset management capability is most often experienced through Plant Maintenance and the interfaces around it, and EAM is the broader label the market uses for the discipline. Worth knowing that SAP also uses EAM as an abbreviation in an unrelated security context, so it is always worth confirming which one is meant.
Do you implement, or only advise?
We advise, design and support delivery. Where implementation capacity is needed we work alongside the integrator rather than replacing them. We are complementary to SAP and to the partners implementing it.
We are already mid-program. Is it too late?
No, and it is a common starting point. The work changes shape — less design, more review and course correction — but a program in flight is usually where the expensive assumptions are still unexamined.
Do we need to be on SAP S/4HANA?
No. A significant share of this work happens before a move, and doing it first is what makes the move cheaper.
What does the first engagement produce?
A written assessment: what your data says, what is genuinely broken, what it is costing and what to do in what order. Designed to be usable whether or not you continue with us.
Who is this for?
Gas, electric and water utilities running SAP, and asset-intensive organizations with the same shape of problem. Most useful where the asset base is regulated, the work is field-executed, and a wrong replacement decision is measured in years. Less useful if you need an integrator to deliver a scope you have already designed.
Next step
Start with the hardest part
A short conversation about where your SAP, GIS and schedule data stop agreeing — and what it would take to bring them into line.