SAP Field Service Management implementation at ERIKS

ERIKS was founded 80 years ago in Alkmaar and is a specialized industrial service provider with approximately 7500 employees in 18 countries. ERIKS aims to make the industry future-proof through technological knowledge and skills.

The challenge

With an extensive range of maintenance products and accessories, ERIKS contributes daily to the maintenance and uptime of their customers’ installations. The app enables the coordination of multiple teams of service engineers spread across the country. To deploy these engineers more efficiently and optimize (preventive) maintenance, there was a need for a mobile solution and a planning package that seamlessly integrates with the existing SAP CS system.

SAP Field Service Management

To further optimize the field service process, ERIKS chose SAP FSM as the solution. Through the FSM scheduling board, planners have better visibility into daily scheduling and further possibilities to prepare optimally. Mechanics have a digital workplace in their hands with their mobile app, which fully digitizes the handling from the start of work to invoicing.

In SAP ECC, service orders are created from sales orders, which automatically flow into SAP FSM through the standard integration between these two products. In the graphical scheduling board, planners can optimize these schedules and duplicate them to other employees for assistance or in the case of follow-up work.

After releasing the task, it is assigned to the mechanic who can easily start navigation from their worklist. Upon arrival at the location, a digital Last Minute Risk Assessment is added in the form of a checklist, allowing the final checks to be performed before the mechanic begins work. Planners have real-time insight into the status of tasks on the scheduling board, allowing adjustments to be made throughout the day as needed.

Mechanics have access to all information relevant to handling service orders in their mobile application, which is synced from SAP ECC. They have customer details at hand and can easily view the history of previous tasks.

Mileage, expenses, time, and tools are recorded in the mobile app. Since tasks often involve multiple people, a group checkout is implemented, where the person completing the last registration handles the checkout with the customer. Colleagues’ recorded registrations are retrieved and automatically displayed on the customer’s invoice for signing.

Upon completion of the task, after any necessary checks, the bookings are automatically integrated into the order in SAP ECC. Because digital bookings flow correctly from the field to the SAP ECC backend, the customer’s invoice can be easily generated from there.

Implementation

In collaboration with IT and ERIKS’ key users, a pilot solution for SAP FSM was deployed for the Alkmaar location over a period of 10 weeks, using an Agile project approach. The standard SAP FSM solution was installed, and integration with the existing SAP CS setup was established. Then, the functionality of both the planning solution and the mobile app was fine-tuned and configured in 3 sprints of 3 weeks each, followed by implementation and Go-Live for 2 planners and 9 service mechanics.

Given that the entire project took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, all activities were conducted remotely. Due to the excellent collaboration and communication between ERIKS and Ideo, this resulted in a successful outcome and highly satisfied end-users. Thanks to the thorough knowledge transfer to the Support organization, which was involved throughout the project, the solution was successfully handed over for maintenance, and there were hardly any issues after Go-Live. ERIKS is so satisfied that they have already begun preparations for rolling out SAP FSM to their other locations.

Results/Benefits