National Grid Keeps the Lights on With SAP

National Grid owns and operates the electricity and gas transmission network in the UK, which includes overhead lines, underground cables and pipes, substations, and compressor stations. To help its more than 1,500 National Grid field engineers ensure that electricity and gas transmission is well maintained and uncompromised, the company implemented various best-in-class solutions from the SAP mobile solutions portfolio, including SAP Mobile Platform 3.0, the SAP Mobile Secure solution for mobile device and application management, and the SAP Work Manager mobile app.

National Grid's new mobile iOS solution, which integrates into its enterprise-asset-management (EAM) system, provides and captures details of scheduled and non-scheduled work orders, and also runs a mobile timesheet solution. The company has defined a list of more than 25 mobile apps in its development pipeline.

"National Grid is responsible for keeping the lights on for millions of customers in the UK," said Tina Sands, head of IS UK, National Grid. "Our previous mobile solution, which was critical for field engineers to maintain electricity and gas transmission assets without disruption, was implemented in 2003 and needed to be replaced. This was a complex task, but our partners and we identified the SAP portfolio as the best mobile solution and service, and we were able to make the transformation with minimum disruption. Our new mobile solution powered by SAP delivers an incredibly powerful but simple user experience for our field engineers, so they can focus on their day jobs. We have done this by combining core business functionality with enhanced capabilities, like taking photographs at the point of work and on-demand access to asset and work history, which dramatically improve decision-making and cost savings."

"Mobile is all about the user experience and its ubiquity — it's like the air we breathe; it's everywhere," said Rick Costanzo, executive vice president and general manager, Global Mobility Solutions, SAP. "We have been on a long, steady climb in mobile for more than fifteen years, making the latest release of SAP Mobile Platform very special as it embodies the best innovations and lessons learned along the way in our journey. For a leading brand like National Grid to run such a critical part of its business on our platform demonstrates the unmatched scalability, stability and flexibility it brings to customers. We also already have nearly 150 leading partners running or moving to version 3.0, allowing more and more customers to simplify and unify through the SAP mobile experience."

Simplified, Unified and Open SAP Mobile Platform

With the latest release of one of the leading mobile-application-development platforms, SAP completes the full unification of its historically proven mobile-app-development platform frameworks, making it easier than ever for customers to build and deploy apps. It provides an open-standards-based architecture that embraces a "bring-your-own-tools" (BYOT) strategy through integration with third-party development tools. It uses Open Data (OData) Protocol APIs and the open-source Apache Cordova software, which makes it far more attractive for developers and significantly lowers TCO for the customer.

"While there are many new vendors in the enterprise-mobility space contributing to customer choice, they also introduce unwanted complexity," said Dirk Boessmann, senior vice president, Mobile Development, SAP. "SAP has long been a leader in the mobile industry, and we now see the need to simplify for the customer. SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 makes it easy to build and secure mobile apps for an amazing user experience, while providing unparalleled deployment flexibility. Mobile is not a choice but an imperative, and I am proud to say that we are ushering in the next generation of mobile."

Innovative, Powerful Apps to Run on SAP Mobile Platform

To maximize end-user productivity through beautifully simple yet powerful consumer-friendly mobile apps, SAP customers are envisioned as soon being able to access existing and custom-built SAP® Fiori® apps through SAP Mobile Platform 3.0 via the SDK or the SAP Fiori Client mobile app. Additionally, updated versions of SAP Work Manager, SAP Inventory Manager, and SAP CRM Service Manager mobile apps are planned to be available soon on the SAP Mobile Platform 3.0.

Through the power of the new SAP Mobile Platform, SAP Work Manager 6.1 is intended to have added functionality, including geographic information system (GIS) and 3-D visualization, enterprise resource planning (ERP) customer service, and crew-management integration. In SAP Inventory Manager 4.0, support is planned to be added for Android, iOS and Windows 8 to match the native device and offline support seen in SAP Work Manager and SAP CRM Service Manager. By leveraging the new open UI SDK for SAP Mobile Platform, complex business processes are aimed at producing simplified user experiences, such as allowing users to interact with Esri mobile GIS within SAP Work Manager.