SAP S/4HANA Utilities

Dynamic markets demand modern IT Solutions

The energy sector has been constantly fighting with new challenges originating from regulatory requirements, expanding customer expectations for full-service offerings, and the complex demands caused by the energy transition (known as Energiewende in Germany). Over the years, one effect of the Energiewende is the increasing number of prosumers, a situation when customers act both as consumers and as producers of energy. In addition, today's customers require significantly more compared to what traditional business models of mere measuring-oriented utility companies are ready to provide. Customers ask for fully integrated offerings that span across areas such as e-mobility, smart home, cloud-based energy storage, or digital power plant. New players enter the market encouraged by deregulation and digital innovation further increasing the pressure for established companies to respond to a determined and very agile competition.

In this environment, market participants demand modern IT solutions to become or stay relevant. SAP positions SAP S/4HANA Utilities as exactly that, the industry solution for a sustainable future, for both IT and business.

Being a founding member of the Utilities Enablement Community for SAP is the latest accomplishment of Natuvion demonstrating real domain expertise. For years Natuvion has excelled in addressing the challenges in the energy sector and has fostered its utilities core competency with an extended partner network and a long track record of projects with its many success stories.

Based on Natuvion's outstanding contribution, SAP has awarded us the status of a Special Expertise Partner. Highly regarded in the industry, Natuvion continued to build specific add-ons that natively integrate with SAP S/4HANA Utilities, and our customers benefit from these solution extensions for their transformation projects.

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Definition

With SAP ending mainstream maintenance by 2027 for its SAP Business Suite and sunsetting its SAP ECC-based industry solution, SAP IS-U, SAP S/4HANA Utilities is the new SAP ERP flagship, including the successor to SAP IS-U.

The move from SAP IS-U to SAP S4/HANA not only provides peace of mind in terms of licenses and solution support but offers a completely new architecture. Customers can choose from a portfolio of products consisting of cloud and on-premise solutions, while designing the best suitable solution to meet their different requirements. The central component in this portfolio is the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) that allows the integration of solutions such as SAP Cloud for Energy, SAP Market Communication Cloud, or SAP Subscription Billing.

Overall, the introduction of SAP S/4HANA Utilities simplifies the management of business processes and supports a stronger focus on customer-centricity. From project management to measuring technology and meter readings to planning and analysis, as well as invoicing of services, SAP S/4HANA Utilities has you covered.

Benefits at a Glance

	High degree of flexibility with modular product concept extending the core ERP
	Improved performance of business processes
	Efficient processing of large amount of data
	Accelerated use of innovative technologies
	Integrated customer management
	Optimized time-to-market

Digitization, standardization, and cost reduction for sales and customer service processes in the utility industry

Real-time operations

SAP S/4HANA Utilities runs on the SAP HANA database, a powerful foundation to process and analyze large amounts of data in the shortest time possible. This enables real-time reporting and allows for the integration of promising technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics. Now you are ready to meet today's customer expectations, increase your organization's productivity, and make better decisions.

User-friendly interface

With SAP Fiori as the user experience framework, you have a user-friendly interface unified across all applications. While adhering to the standard, users can design, build, and personalize the UI, taking into account their individual tasks. Users can easily view and access all tasks for processing efficiently at the right time, not to mention the SAP Fiori capability to work platform agnostic on mobile devices. 

SAP Market Communication for Utilities

To address the specific requirements of the German market, SAP released SAP Market Communication for Utilities, also referred to as SAP MaCo Cloud. With this cloud-based solution, the regulatory requirements from the market can be mapped and managed centrally. This way, data can be exchanged between market participants, and regulatory changes can be automated and adjusted in the given time frame.

Cloud Integration

The SAP enterprise architecture model uses SAP BTP to connect the on-premise digital core system SAP S/4HANA Utilities with cloud solutions and capacities of the cloud. Using the SaaS platform, customers easily integrate individual functionality into their processes and benefit from innovation. With SAP BTP services, the step to implementation is straightforward and leads to faster adoption.

The platform can be considered as an innovation engine. With it, you accelerate your design of the processes of tomorrow. SAP enables digital utilities to design and integrate business models for the market and scale in the cloud.