Company snapshot
HQ Honolulu, Hawaii
Founded 1891
Industries Energy, utilities
Services include Electricity generation and services, renewable energy
Hawaiian Electric strives to provide our customers and communities with affordable, reliable, clean energy, and help build sustainable, resilient communities. To support its business objectives, Hawaiian Electric’s system of records became increasingly complex over the years. At the same time, the cost of managing SAP change grew with the complexity of its SAP environment. Managing SAP change in multiple landscapes is a challenge, and it impacts how quickly you receive business value from your SAP applications. To meet the challenge, Hawaiian Electric wanted to reduce the cost of SAP change by efficiently managing its N and N + 1 development environment. For it to succeed, a transparent and straightforward SAP change management process was critical.
Automation reduces the cost of change
Hawaiian Electric deployed Rev-Trac – a mature automated SAP change management platform – to deliver more frequent high-quality SAP change more often. Automating its SAP change management processes with Rev-Trac allowed the company to eliminate significant manual effort, simplifying the delivery of SAP applications and enhancements. The solution was installed in two weeks, operational within a month, and fully adopted by all teams within three months. Victor Poppinga, a developer for Hawaiian Electric, said when Rev-Trac was implemented, the company’s new QA team was not in place yet. “We had an exceptional integrator who took us through the whole process, step by step,” Mr. Poppinga said. “From the understanding, we gained during the implementation, the development team was able to train the QA team to take over maintaining and processing Rev-Trac.” Hawaiian Electric relies on Rev-Trac’s enforcement capabilities and automated safety checks like Overwrite and Overtake Prevention System (OOPS) to efficiently manage parallel development and improve control of releases.
“Rev-Trac was not hard to implement, is easy to maintain, and the support they provide is amazing.”
Victor Poppinga, Developer, Hawaiian Electric
Before Rev-Trac was implemented, it took Hawaiian Electric one to two hours to identify and fix an overtake/overwrite error. Rev-Trac advanced functionality includes alerting users of potentially dangerous overtake and overwrite errors. Since deploying the automation technology, Hawaiian Electric received up to three of these alerts monthly, saving time and resources as (potential) issues are diagnosed before becoming a problem. Using Rev-Trac has enabled the company to successfully address the challenges of managing change across its SAP landscape. Eliminating risky manual effort has increased both the volume of SAP change and the rate at which it is delivered to production – which significantly increase the satisfaction of the SAP business users. Mr. Poppinga said the best part was the process is fully automated without having to request Basis to use STMS to move transports.
Deploying the solution has also reduced the SAP change-related production incidents and, as a result, the cost of delivering change. These efficiencies have allowed the utility to realize business value from their SAP applications more quickly.
Rev-Trac provides a transparent and trackable audit trail that outlines the full history of every SAP change for proof of compliance and operational integrity. The comprehensive details provided significantly reduce the work hours to meet audit obligations.
“It is the perfect solution for audit controls with sign-offs to each environment,” Mr. Poppinga said.
Integration of SAP ALM tools is key to success
Businesses traditionally use a wide variety of tools and processes like ITSM and impact analysis solutions across an SAP application’s lifecycle. Increasingly, organizations are integrating ALM tools into a single platform to eliminate data handling errors and unplanned downtime. Hawaiian Electric uses ServiceNow and Micro Focus QC or Micro Focus Octane ALM to manage application development and facilitate agile initiatives and continuous delivery of SAP change. This allows the SAP IT team to perform routine deployments to production multiple times a week. Rev-Trac enables a unified automated workflow through the bi-directional integration of popular application SAP ALM tools to accelerate SAP change with reduced cost and effort. Mr. Poppinga said the business had integrated Rev-Trac and ServiceNow to maintain a start-to-finish automated process to manage tickets. “We use Rev-Trac to manage the movement of all code to different environments, which keeps an audit trail for our IA department,” he said. Hawaiian Electric is considering investing in other automated SAP solutions, including testing, system copy, and impact analysis/assessment tools.
According to Mr. Poppinga, the company was extremely likely to integrate Rev-Trac with other solutions in its IT toolset.
A new age for Hawaiian Electric
Like numerous utilities, Hawaiian Electric is planning to migrate to S/4HANA within the next 24-60 months. Although its migration approach has not yet been determined, it will implement SAP’s next-generation ERP system on-premise.
Leveraging Rev-Trac’s automation and enforcement capabilities such as the Release Management Workbench and advanced safety checks allows Hawaiian Electric to accelerate SAP change and maintain system stability.
Conflict is avoided, and with more controlled parallel development, the utility can better and more cost-effectively manage SAP change across its N and N +1 environment.
