Historically, there have been two primary SAP mobile applications for managing service and work orders: one is SAP Work Manager, and the other is SAP Service and Asset Manager.

If your business uses SAP and you want to digitize and mobilize your work management, these two SAP mobile apps have been the main choices.

However, things changed dramatically when SAP announced the end of mainstream maintenance for SAP Work Manager, which will occur in late 2024.

By late 2024, SAP will no longer provide security updates, patches, or upgrades for SAP Work Manager.

Given this crucial development, it’s no longer a question of whether your company should choose between SAP Work Manager (SWM) or SAP Service Asset Manager (SSAM). It’s a matter of what to do now.

Whether you’re currently using SAP Work Manager and are considering an upgrade to SSAM, or you’re making your first move into SAP mobile, it’s important to understand your options and make an informed decision for your organization.

Normally, since SAP is ending mainstream maintenance for SAP Work Manager, you might think that you have only one option: SAP Service and Asset Manager. However, you have a few options depending on your situation.

Additionally, the looming end of life for SAP Work Manager has created an excellent opportunity to enhance user experiences for mobile work orders, service orders, and asset tracking. And you can extend this same improvement to other enterprise workflows.

In this quick overview, we’ll take a look at the key options for SAP mobile work management, whether you’re already using Work Manager and are considering a move to Service and Asset Manager, or you’re not yet using an SAP mobile solution, but you want to start digitizing and mobilizing your SAP workflows in the near future.

The Best Options for Future SAP Mobile Work Management

1. Buy Time by Moving to SAP Agentry Cloud Edition.

If your company already uses SAP Work Manager, you can potentially buy some time and delay a migration to a new SAP mobile solution, at least for another year or potentially a few years.

Although mainstream support is ending for SAP Work Manager, if you move your current Work Manager application to SAP’s Agentry Cloud Edition (ACE), then SAP will extend maintenance for your deployment through the end of 2025 and potentially 2027.

This might be a good short-term option if you don’t have the time or resources to consider other alternatives or to migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager, but you still want to get updates, patches and maintenance from SAP.

However, this option comes with a major potential risk. You are only guaranteed an extension of your maintenance period through 2025. 

While you might be able to extend your maintenance period further, SAP will inevitably stop supporting SAP Work Manager. A complete end of life for the application could come sooner rather than later, so your enterprise must have a plan to choose another solution by the end of 2025.

2. Start with or Migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager.

For enterprises that currently use SAP Work Manager and want to bypass the ACE deployment step, you can migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager. 

For those that don’t currently use a mobile solution for SAP work management and want to deploy a native SAP mobile application, SAP Service and Asset Manager is the current offering for field maintenance resources. 

In either approach, start by doing an analysis of current requirements, so you can:
a) Determine what you want to keep or change as you move to Asset Manager
b) Develop a good estimate of the time and cost required to support your move

No matter which path you pick, don’t limit yourself to a lateral move to Service and Asset Manager.

When you make the move to SSAM, there is also an opportunity to:  

• Get rid of all the paper associated with your work orders and other SAP processes  
• Create a simple and easy-to-use consumer-style user mobile interface for SSAM 
• Deploy digital work order forms that are 100% configurable by non-technical business users

Ultimately, for the same price as migrating to Asset Manager, you can eliminate paper-based workflows for work orders, inspections, rounds and readings, EHS, permitting, reliability, and virtually anything you’re still doing manually and on paper.

Let’s take a look at how you can do that by using an SAP-certified platform to eliminate paper, create streamlined mobile interfaces for your future SAP workflows, and deploy digital work orders and other forms throughout your enterprise.

Supplement SAP Service and Asset Manager with an SAP-Certified Solution.

Many organizations will choose to invest in or migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager for their future mobile work management, but there is a huge opportunity to maximize the value and benefit of that investment.

One way you can do that is by using Mirata Software’s SAP-certified Digital Work Execution platform to digitize your forms and workflows, simplify your mobile user experiences, simplify your migration to Service and Asset Manager, and reduce your related costs.

Mirata is an SAP partner platform that allows you to easily create digital SAP forms, apps, dashboards, and workflows, and you can make them accessible on any mobile device. It’s a powerful zero-code toolset that helps you recreate your existing SAP workflows and processes, digitize and mobilize your work management, and standardize the user experience across SSAM and all your other mobile workflows. Mirata can be used to quickly build forms and apps with a common look and feel, all while connecting them to your SAP backend in real time.

At Havensight Consulting, we use Mirata to develop and integrate SAP mobile solutions for our clients, and we’ve been using its software for the past few years. We use it along with our Mobile Inventory Templates (MIT) to build SAP digital workflows and user experiences, and the results have been fantastic for our clients.

With Mirata, you can:

• Easily design and deploy digital forms and SAP workflows on mobile devices
• Create, design, update, and maintain digital SAP forms with no code required
• Automate your work orders and your service and asset management workflows
• Securely transmit, share and sync data with SAP and other systems in real time
• Create simpler, more efficient processes with fewer screen, steps, taps and clicks
• Avoid costly and time-consuming SAP migrations, upgrades or form re-design
• Extend digital forms and mobile workflows to other areas of your business

These benefits are ideal for users of any SAP software solution or module, but they’re especially timely for SAP Work Manager users.

Instead of having to buy time by moving to SAP Agentry Cloud Edition, the combination of SAP Service and Asset Manager and Mirata allows you to maintain your current mobile Work Order workflows and functionality, and enhance and improve them. In fact, you can use Mirata to create and maintain your digital forms and mobile workflows at a fraction of the cost of the point solutions that have been used to mobilize work orders in the field.

As an additional time and cost savings, you don’t have to redesign your forms or mobile apps when SAP issues an update or you need to upgrade or migrate to a new software version. The Mirata platform and your mobile apps will continue to function independently, and all you need to do is validate that your SAP data connections are still correct.

This makes Mirata a nice complement to SAP’s mobile field service offerings, especially if you’d like to break free from the update and support cycle, simplify your form and mobile app design, but still work with an SAP backend and native SAP Interface.

Since it’s an SAP-certified solution available on the SAP app store, Mirata works with any SAP system, module or platform. Our consultants have used it to develop digital forms and 100% paperless mobile workflows for manufacturing processes, quality assurance, environmental health and safety and much more.

So, Which Is Right for You?

Extend the life of SAP Work Manager.

If you use SAP Work Manager but you’re worried that migrating to SAP Service and Asset Manager will be time-consuming, costly, and disruptive to your current operations, then you can migrate your mobile app to SAP Agentry Cloud Edition for now, and this will extend the life of SAP Work Manager.

This will be your only option if you want to buy time but still want to get updates, patches and maintenance for SAP Work Manager. Otherwise, you will have to keep running SAP Work Manager as a legacy and non-supported solution. Keep in mind that moving to Agentry Could Edition will only give you guaranteed mainstream maintenance and support through 2025 and potentially 2027.

During that time, as SAP finalizes its product support roadmap and announces the end-of-life date for SAP Work Manager, you can work on a plan and start lining up the resources and budget to support your future migration. 

Migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager.

If you want to make the move to an SAP-native mobile solution with functionality and characteristics on par with SAP Work Manager, or you’re making your first move into digital and mobile SAP work management, then you can choose to adopt or migrate to SAP Service and Asset Manager.

This is a great way to continue getting the benefits of SAP mobile work management or to start digitizing your maintenance processes using an SAP mobile solution if you aren’t already doing so.

Deploy SAP Service and Asset Manager with Mirata.

For about the same cost, with exponential value beyond the maintenance use case, you can deploy SAP Service and Asset Manager along with Mirata. While you can use SAP Service and Asset Manager as your complete mobile work management solution, we recommend a close look at the Mirata Digital Work Execution platform to help optimize your mobile workflows and user experiences beyond the maintenance department.

Mirata’s zero-code tools give you a fast and easy way to build and design digital forms and mobile user interfaces, and they allow you to standardize the user interface across your mobile applications, including SAP Service and Asset Manager.

Get Expert Help with Your SAP Mobile Future.

Hopefully this article has helped you narrow down your options. But there is a lot to consider in choosing the right mobile platform and the right solution for your SAP work management, maintenance, service and asset management. 

Thankfully, if you want to determine the best option for your organization, you don’t have to do it alone. At Havensight Consulting, our team built the original SAP mobile platform, and we have decades of combined experience in evaluating, developing, and implementing mobile solutions for SAP users.

Our experts can help you review your needs, identify the best choice for your future SAP work management, and help you design, build, and deploy digital forms, workflows, and solutions to help you get work done with maximum efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

To get started, book an online call with us now, or feel free to email or call us at 630-339-3030.