Customer Success Summit 2024

02 February 2024

We kicked off 2024 with a Customer Success Summit! Together with our customers, the Evora-team met once again: More than 30 representatives from the manufacturing industry, chemical industry, utilities and public institutions from the DACH region came together in Frankfurt to exchange ideas and learn about the latest solutions and products for operations, maintenance and customer service. Guest speakers provided valuable input, including a keynote speech by Dr. Andreas Dankl on “Eco-efficiency in maintenance” and a session with Hendrik Wulfken on SAP Service and Asset Manager with an insight into all new and planned features.

Evora News

Evora portfolio updates

The event started off with an introduction to Evora’s portfolio evolution and an overview of the EvoSuite product family by Jan Böshans, Head of Innovation. Evora’s new solution for managing external service providers, “Contractor Cockpit”, was announced, as was the “Better Together” strategy for the combined use of SAP and ServiceNow technologies.

Experts-Keynote

Eco-efficiency in maintenance

In a joint keynote, Dr. Andreas Dankl, Managing Director of MCP Germany and dankl+partner consulting, and Uwe Ofner, Managing Director of Evora Austria, discussed the topic of eco-efficiency in maintenance. By looking at the various aspects, Dr. Dankl appealed for a conscious use of (natural) resources in companies and explained the advantages that this brings. The practical implementation with concrete steps in the SAP environment on this topic was presented by Uwe Ofner.

Interview with Dr. Dankl in german

SAP Mobile Update

SAP Service und Asset Manager

Hendrik Wulfken, Product Manager Mobile Service and Asset Management at SAP, presented the new features of the current release 2310 and gave an outlook on the upcoming versions. The four personas in SSAM provide functions tailored to the different areas of responsibility: internal maintenance, inventory processing, field technicians and security technicians. He also gave a preview of the upcoming Windows version 2.1, which is based on the SSAM 2305 release. Questions from the audience were answered in an open Q&A session.

Innovations

For Operation and Maintenance

Innovations for operations and maintenance were presented in the next session. Evora’s “Contractor Cockpit” solution based on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) was shown to an external audience for the first time. It aims to better integrate external employees into the digital maintenance process.

Speaker Laurin Kraus, Senior Consultant and Cluster Lead, reported on the initial situation found in many customer projects, that internal technicians usually already benefit from the digitalization of maintenance, while the integration of external service providers and external technicians often fails due to a lack of SAP integration and a lack of end devices or licenses.

Contractor Cockpit

Integration of external technicians

A key challenge is the efficient onboarding of large groups of people in the shortest possible time, while keeping the requirements of the Temporary Employment Act in mind. Apart from this, documenting the work performed is also a must. The SAP BTP-based solution developed by Evora works with a cloud database that supports data replication and a web application as a work interface. This solution also makes it possible to work in offline scenarios.

AI-Solutions

Practical application

When it came to artificial intelligence (AI), the focus was on innovation and cross-industry benefits. Although the SAP Joule AI platform was presented, the roadmap indicates a later launch. Because of this delay, Evora has developed an alternative approach. An SAP database and the OpenAI API are used to build a chatbot. Extracted data (as CDS views) is processed using SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) to train the chat model. The integration of SAP Field Service Management (FSM) enables us to offer our customers innovative AI solutions right now.

Augmented Reality

Use cases in the live demo

Live-Demo

During a break, the guests were able to participate in a live demonstration of augmented reality (AR), where a mobile device is sufficient to experience that. The opportunity to also test Magic Leap data glasses attracted many interested people to the stand of Uiyoung Kim, the dual student at Evora responsible for the demo. He was supported by Markus Meixner, Managing Director of the partner company ViewAR, and Adan Cosic, Product Strategy and Integrations Manager, also from ViewAR.

ViewAR-Technology

Previously, the location was scanned using ViewAR technology and Lidar sensors to demonstrate AR technologies in practice, with features such as indoor navigation, working with checklists and providing detailed work instructions in real time.

Mobil & AR

In addition, an integration with the SAP Asset Manager was realized, which allows a smooth interaction with the ViewAR applications. This integration significantly expands the possibilities for maintenance and troubleshooting and offers our customers an intuitive, visually supported experience when interacting with their assets. It can be used with data glasses as well as on a smartphone.

Innovations in service

Service as game changer

Starting with the service processes, Michael Berkowsky, Head of SAP FSM at Evora, provided an insight into SAP’s service management solutions, which offer a complete platform for all-encompassing service – from initial customer contact to successful order processing. SAP Field Service Management features such as predictive service, intelligent data utilization and efficient resource management were not only explained in theory, but also demonstrated in a live demo. In addition, he presented how the Service Cloud V2 enables seamless service with a 360° customer view and access to the equipment history.

Case Study

Sensor Based Maintenance

Florian Bauer, Senior Consultant at Evora, made it clear right at the start of his report, why Frankfurt is the perfect place for his presentation: every Airbus that takes off from Frankfurt airport contains a product from PFW in Speyer! In his session, the former project manager at PFW explained how Sensor Based Maintenance was implemented at PFW and what benefits the solution provides.

Tri2Support Fundraising campaign

After his closing words on the event, Florian Ganz, Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Evora Group, approached the participants with a favour: the experienced triathlete plans on combining his sporting activity with a support for a charitable cause. He will be taking part in the triathlon in Mysore and collecting donations for the Indian Wheelchair Tennis Tour to be handed over after the race in February 2024. The ambitious goal is to support the construction of India’s first wheelchair tennis center of excellence 60 km north of Bangalore.

You can support Florian Ganz with a comment on LinkedIn, click here!

EvoSuite

Customer Advisory Board

The program continued on the second day with an exclusive group of EvoSuite customers. After a networking breakfast, the latest developments were discussed as part of the new Customer Advisory Board format, followed by a workshop to share experiences among users and identify joint opportunities for improvement.