Public Sector + Utilities
Modernizing public sector municipalities + utility agencies
The intelligent, machine-learning, AI-based world is accelerating at a strikingly fast rate, while the core mission of the public sector – to protect the community, provide services, and help the economy prosper – remains firmly in place. The challenge of keeping up while still meeting your primary responsibilities is no simple task. For public organizations, success is measured not only by the financial return on investment but more so by the political and social return. Failure is expensive: unsafe or unhealthy communities, degraded citizen services or lack of services, economic or political irrelevance, and loss of power or reputation.
The public sector must undergo its own changes to keep up with rising constituent expectations for service, convenience, and data protection. People are experiencing innovative, personalized, and accelerated digital business models and expect the same experience with government. To continue to fulfill its mission, government must embrace technical, cultural, and organizational change to be more responsive, adaptable, and transparent. The path forward is challenging. Trust in government is at near-historic lows, while constituent needs continue to grow. A global trend toward nationalism is reversing the benefits of global policy frameworks.
Cybersecurity is at the top of the list of risks to manage. Simultaneously, as citizen expectations climb, political differences have created an atmosphere of extreme skepticism, making cooperation between agencies – and the data sharing that could result – increasingly more difficult. We have identified three strategic priorities that will keep governments moving forward:
- Simplify and modernize citizen experience management
- Leverage data across one single database and source of the truth to drive transparency, visibility and compliance
- Reimagine business models and processes using an intelligent, AI-based integrated platform
By 2030, we expect the public sector will be more proactive, automated, data driven, and citizen focused.
Governments will adopt a data-driven culture to increase evidence-based policy and program decisions. Success requires building an internal culture that values sharing data and a communication strategy that shows both internal and external stakeholders the policy benefits that come from using data efficiently and effectively. One by-product of evidence-based policy making will be an increase in constituent trust.
Governments at the federal, state, and local level will adopt new intelligent services models that automate service and support. They will become service orchestrators and information brokers rather than direct service providers. To get there, governments must leverage common data across agencies and departments seamlessly, embrace emerging technologies, and work directly with their constituents to rebuild trust. They can fuse human experience data with operational data to listen, understand, and take action; create a better citizen experience; and meet the expectations being set by the private sector.
The most successful public agencies will be those that reimagine their end-to-end business processes using technologies based on open standards. These agencies will shift routine tasks from humans to business systems using intelligent automation and, as a result, attract and retain talented employees. They will commit to their own transformation. The mission of the public sector is resolute. When governments put their citizens at the center, they can honor this mission and inspire transformational thinking.
Our approach to meeting the diverse and growing needs and imperatives of Public Sector State, County and City agencies include the following eight key functional areas that support all municipality departmental functions using one integrated cloud platform;
- Financial Accounting, Budgeting and Cost Controlling
- Procurement, Logistics & Inventory Management
- Asset Management, Maintenance, Repair and Operations
- Project Accounting & Document Management
- Utility Metering Management
- Field Service Management
- Code and Legal Compliance & Enforcement
- Human Capital Management
Modernizing public sector municipalities + utility agencies
Public Sector Capabilities
Optimizing Financial Management in Public Sector
At Savantis we optimize finance, cost, funds, grants, and treasury management operating models to help Public Sector and Utility industry agencies transform financial operations. Many government and utility agencies are burdened with outdated financial management solutions and isolated systems that do not meet requirements. This can lead to inefficient and disconnected processes as well as a lack of transparency across departments. Government organizations require financial management capabilities that help simplify their work with built-in AI-powered insights and automation to achieve operational excellence and resilience.
SAP’s modular, integrated, and insight-led financial enterprise software capabilities start with our universal journal, which brings financial transactions and analysis together in one pool of relevant business data. This single source of truth makes the data available to relevant application components – including general ledger, cost accounting, asset accounting, treasury, grants management, projects, and materials management – avoiding batch jobs and reconciliations. Our financial capabilities are built on SAP Business Technology
Platform, which brings together data and analytics, artificial intelligence, application development, automation, and integration in a unified environment. With constant Federal, State and Local political pressures, and funding constraints abound enabling key financial capabilities should be top-of-mind for agencies seeking new ways of working in the new economy:
- Financial planning and analysis.
- Public sector budgeting
- Grant management
- Cost accounting and project accounting
- Unified finance and HR
- Tax and revenue management
- Collections and disbursements
- AR, billing, and revenue management
- Treasury management
- Enterprise risk and compliance
- Portfolio and project management
- Procurement
Public Sector Capabilities
Procurement Digital Transformation
Government procurement accounts for a substantial proportion of the global economy. As stewards of taxpayer funds, public sector organizations strive to operate within stringent regulations and requirements, while maintaining the transparency needed to stand up to public scrutiny and ensure public trust. This pressure to perform is driving public sector organizations to find ways to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and equity for citizens. Procurement is at the center of this revolution, and armed with real-time data insights, the procurement function can better anticipate problems, understand their root causes, look for viable solutions, and act quickly. There has been a push to be more accessible and responsive to citizens’ needs, and more disciplined and efficient with managing spend. It has become clear that digitalization is essential to enable these objectives.
Public Sector Capabilities
Revolutionizing Logistics and Inventory Management
Supply chain networks must be able to seamlessly execute varying strategies and respond directly to Public Works demand signals supporting the maintenance, repair and operations needs of government assets and citizen service needs. This requires increased automation, intelligence, and interconnected processes and data management across government departments and functions. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will optimize smart procurement, logistics execution and warehousing timing, distribution and storage functions to maximize price and profitability.
Logistics, inventory management and distribution tracking and compliance will remain front and center from asset availability, traceability, security, and safety to investment in expanding capabilities to serve constituents via technologies and infrastructure to fuel tomorrow’s needs.
Public Sector Capabilities
Linking back-office functions together with Enterprise Asset Management
Municipality and utility assets – commonly funded through large grants require continual preventive maintenance to assure long term performance and viability. By 2030, we expect that public sector and utility assets will be equipped with sensors similar to today’s transportation systems. Utilities will use smarter asset management with fully digital allocation of spare parts, work, and logistics services. Smart asset operation and maintenance will ensure cost-efficient, compliant, and safe operations and use. Intelligent software will connect key utilities capabilities and bring together information from operational and business systems. Together, the granular data from the sensors, the maintenance history of the assets, and the consumption data provided by smart meters will provide real-time insight into the health of the complex systems. These insights will allow smarter maintenance and investment decisions, lower maintenance costs, and a risk-based maintenance strategy.
Public Sector Capabilities
Intelligent capital improvement process planning
Capital improvement planning of significant capital expenditures includes government real estate expansion projects, asset acquisition and construction, and project management and approval processes. Financial models need to be scenario-based to generate predictive Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Net Present Value (NPV) models that calculate key financial analyses such as cash impact and payback period.
Using SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) with Enterprise Planning integrate an actual project management system like SAP Project Systems to SAC for a more automated and reliable end-to-end CapEx planning solution which allows you to compare actual project performance with your detailed budget.
SAP also delivers the Integrated Financial Planning for SAP S/4HANA business content which includes models, stories, and data actions for capital expense planning in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Savantis SAP PUBLIC SECTOR & UTILITIES Customer Profiles
The Navajo Nation is an Indian reservation of the Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah and spans nearly 27,500 sq. mi. The reservation is serviced by the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) that offers water, wastewater, electric, solar, gas and telecommunications utilities.
Savantis delivered a multi-year SAP Public Sector + IS Utility Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) greenfield implementation ahead of schedule and under budget across the wastewater division. The program also included comprehensive back-office modernization of SAP functionality including purchasing and sourcing, logistics execution, inventory management, project systems and finance. The SAP S/4HANA 2023 Enterprise Asset Management template is slated for roll-out and deployment across the remaining utility divisions of water, electric, gas, solar and telecommunications.
Is your company an intelligent enterprise?
Savantis is a full-service SAP global systems integrator focused on one common goal—success! If you have had your fill with the larger tier one integrators but still need a holistic global services provider, Savantis is your answer. We have the depth and breadth of SAP experience to deliver and support global enterprise solutions. Our delivery leadership has the tier one experience at an affordable price point unmatched in the SAP ecosystem. Come experience the difference.