SAP acquired Coresystems in 2018 to add its Field Service Management solution to its sales bag. Before the acquisition, SAP was a Reseller of ClickSoftware FSM.
Work Scheduling was a significant component of the FSM solution, but it also contained an FSM Mobile solution to execute work orders.
This resulted in SAP having two options for Work/Service order execution:
Although SSAM focused more on the Owned Assets use case while FSM Mobile focused on the Customer Service use case, inherently, the two technologies overlapped in some areas.
To help make this an easy choice for SAP customers, SAP combined the two mobile solutions under one SKU from licensing perspective. Hence, although the solutions are technically different, the SAP customers now need to purchase only one SKU license to access them both.
However, more information is needed to determine which solution is right for specific customer requirements. To help SAP Customers make that decision, we consolidated the most critical specifics in the table below.
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| SAP Service and Asset Manager | SAP FSM Mobile | ||||
| Technical | Architecture | SSAM is based on SAP BTP mobile service (MDK) technology framework. Data is not replicated outside the SAP backend system in the middleware. |
| FSM is designed as a SaaS solution (AWS-based– not SAP BTP). Data is replicated in the FSM cloud. |
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| Integration & Synchronisation Framework | Integration with the SAP backend is through a mobile integration framework that has matured over time. The data sync is in real-time. Theintegration framework provides a configurable delta sync framework. |
| FSM Mobile client syncs data with FSM Cloud; in turn, FSM Cloud syncs data with the SAP Backend. FSM integrates with the SAO backend using an integration layer 1) Based on iDocs(ECC) 2) Based on SAP CPI (newer integration for S/4HANA). |
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| User Interface Customisation and Extensions | SAP Asset Manager is built on a metadata-based platform – Mobile Development Kit (MDK). MDK toolkit comes with several built-in UI controls.Overall, the framework provides more flexibility to enhance the user interface if the standard one is insufficient. |
| Being a SaaS product, UI is mostly configuration driven, and there are limited options to enhance the UI for customer-specific extensions. |
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| Authentication & Authorisation | SSAM mobile app can be configured to use SAML-based federated authentication. The mobile user can be mapped to the backend user using principal propagation. This allows leveraging the SAP backend roles and authorisation. |
| FSM mobile app can be configured to use SAML-based federated authentication. The integration layer (SAP CPI) uses a technical user in SAP Backend to integrate the SAP backend and FSM. Therefore, backend updates from FSM are performed using Technical User. |
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| Device Support | Full-featured SSAM for iOS and Android is available. MVP SSAM for Windows is available from Q4 2022. Full-featured SSAM for Windows is scheduled to be available from Q4 2023. |
| FSM Mobile is available on iOS, Android, and Windows. |
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| Future Technology Roadmap | An active roadmap with a plan to cover gap areas with SAP FSM Mobile. |
| An active roadmap exists for SAP FSM Mobile. However,there seems to be more focus on SSAM as the solution for mobile execution. |
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| Functional | Subcontractor Management functionality | Contracting company employees need to be treated like internal employees in the SAP backend –to plan, schedule and assign jobs toindividual resources. |
| SAP FSM provides complete access to all scheduling functionality for the 3rd party provider to scheduleandexecute their jobs. |
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| Dynamic Form Engine | SSAM supports FSM Smart forms (additional license required), AIN and QM checklists. |
| FSM contains an inbuilt Smart form framework that comes with a designer. |
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| Packaged Integration Support | SSAM supports SAP ECC and S/4HANA backends. |
| SAP FSM supports a variety of backends like SAP CRM, SAP B1, ECC, S/4HANA, C4C Service Cloud etc. |
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| Integrated GIS & Maps | SSAM comes with pre-built ESRI maps integration for both navigation and Enterprise GIS view. |
| SAP FSM mobile comes with maps integration for navigation purposes only. |
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| Meter Management Support | SSAM supports SAP ISU meter management processes. |
| SAP FSM does not support SAP ISU meter management processes as standard. |
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| Measurement Points and Rounds | SSAM supports Rounds Management and Measurement points capture. |
| SAP FSM does not support Rounds Management and Measurement points capture. |
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