Attending the customer with Customer Engagement

SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement enables SAP S/4HANA Utilities to define and fulfill energy (commodity) contracts as products, that can be sold in sales channels:

You can use the sales order as initial document for the order to cash process. The Sales Integration Interface converts sales orders into utilities sales contracts.

Utilities Sales Contract Management manages the life cycle of an energy (commodity) contract. It creates a utility contract that can be billed in accordance with the product sold. It leverages the Utilities Product Integration Layer (UPIL) to translate product attributes into billing master data. Its embedded configurable and extensible Process Framework orchestrates various contract management processes, such as "New Contract", "Change Product", or "End Contract", and can trigger required market communication and react on its results.

As a prerequisite you need to define utilities products. You can use S/4HANA Sales APIs for integration with external sales systems.

In addition to that, SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement offers service capabilities for the Utilities industry in the interaction center. Agents can use the interaction center as a central point of entry to search and manage utilities master data as well as to carry out traditional utilities industry processes such as meter reading, bill correction, move-in/out and more.

Utilities sales contract management can be used to display a list of utilities sales contracts for a business partner and to access details such as contract data and product information.

The utilities sales contract is available in SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement and contains information, that applies specifically to the utilities industry. The contract is created by choosing the entry Utilities Sales Contract in the drop-down list on the left side of the Identification page. Detailed information about use and benefits of the utilities sales contract can be found in the dedicated chapter: Utilities Sales Contract.

Due to contract integration between SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement and SAP for Utilities, an Utilities contract is also created automatically when a utilities sales contract is created. This does not automatically work the other way around. The Utilities contract is a link between the technical master data (includes installation) and business master data (contract account). The utilities sales contract includes more information than the Utilities contract, such as the product. To create an utilities sales contract when an Utilities contract is created, an integration scenario can be defined. Detailed information about the integration procedure can be found here: Integration and Migration of SAP S/4HANA Utilities Contracts.

The Utilities Product Integration Layer (UPIL) component (IS-U-BI-PI) offers an interface to automate the translation of commodity products, which are defined in an external, business-friendly tool, into billing master data of SAP S/4HANA Utilities.

The framework of the UPIL enables flexible mapping between rate operands of SAP S/4HANA Utilities and the attributes of the externally defined commodity products. This mapping enables a product manager to automate the creation of commodity products with charges, discounts, and other product attributes. When setting up a contract, the product attributes are prepared for IS-U billing.

The UPIL consists of the following major building blocks:

Product integration layer

This service enables you to intuitively integrate external product modeling tools into SAP S/4HANA Utilities. Utilities product managers can use this service to create utilities products, which are also referred to as commodity products, without a dependency on IT billing experts. This decreases the time to market for new commodity products by automating the manual steps that are required in SAP S/4HANA Utilities.

This service is based on the OData protocol and can be consumed in apps and other user interfaces.

Utilities product (commodity product) definition

The underlying object of a utilities product is a material, which is hereinafter referred to as a product of the Product Master component of SAP S/4HANA.

The UPIL maps and stores the attributes externally defined commodity products as product characteristics. To use the values that are stored in the product characteristics in IS-U billing, the product characteristics are mapped to IS-U billing artifacts such as a rate category, rate operands, and so on. This mapping is done using the product integration layer building block of the UPIL. For more information about products, see Manage Product Master on SAP Help Portal.

A utilities product is a product that is assigned to a product group and contains classes with characteristics for the following properties:

• Rate category
• Creation method
• Product type
• Validity period
• Product attributes

Sales contract management

You can use sales contract management as part of the sales process chain, which spans from quote to shipment and from billing to booking revenue.

Sales contracts represent long-term agreements with customers about goods or services. They define when specific goods are to be sold or specific services are to be provided, and under which conditions. Sales contracts are valid for a certain time period. When the validity ends, they can be renewed.

Sales scheduling agreements represent long-term agreements with customers about goods only. They outline the expected target quantity of goods that is to be delivered over a defined period of time.

SAP S/4HANA Utilities for customer engagement offers service capabilities for the Utilities industry in the interaction center, the following functions available:

Interaction Center Agent Role

This business role, used to manage residential customers in the Utilities industry is designed for the Sale and services of Utilities products using parked documents in the Interaction Center WebClient using telephone, e-mail, fax, or the internet.

Enhanced Identification

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to search and visualize technical and business master data such as:

• Visualize business and technical master data separately.
• Search for technical and business master data separately or combined.
• Visualize business and technical master data in a hierarchical tree.
• View interaction records in interaction record quick view.
• Manage related business partner.
• Launch transactions and front office processes from nodes in hierarchical trees.
• Access billing and invoicing documents and PDFs from identification screen.
• Show relevant service orders in business data environment.
• See disconnection document from identification screen.
• Use ID links on identification screen and in overviews to navigate through information.
• Visualize business and technical master data in detail views and additionally in separate overview pages.

Managing Business Partners and Contract Accounts

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage a business partner's data and provide a complete overview of a confirmed business partner as well as manage contract accounts such as:

• Search and identify a business partner.
• View and change a business partner's data.
• Create a new business partner.
• Visualize all business-related information of a business partner in a hierarchical tree.
• Visualize all connection objects of a business partner in a hierarchical tree.
• Visualize all business and technical master data of a connection object in a hierarchical tree.
• Navigate from tree to object detail views.
• Search for a contract account.
• View a list of contract accounts belonging to a business partner.
• View and change contract account data.
• Create a new contract account.
• Create a new business partner relationship.
• View, change, and delete business partner relationship.

Managing Technical Master Data

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage technical master data in the following ways:

• View, change and create a connection object.
• View, change and create a premise.
• View, change and create a point of delivery.
• Create technical master data with data import.
• Search for a connection object (standard search).
• Search for a premise (standard search or by HANA free text search).
• Search for a point of delivery (standard search).

Bill Information and Correction

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to view and correct bills in the following ways:

• View a list of bills.
• View the PDF version of a bill.
• Reverse an incorrect bill and create a new one.

Managing Budget Billing Plans

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage budget billing and payment plans for a business partner in the following ways:

• View a budget billing plan and change the amount.
• View, change and create a payment plan.
• View, create and change a payment scheme.

Financial Inquiries and Collections

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage collections and respond to financial queries.

Interaction Records

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage interaction records in the following ways:

• View the most recent interaction records.
• Create a new interaction record.
• View interaction record history.
• Search for interaction records.
• See an overview of interaction records.
• Create a new clarification case (BPEM).
• View history of clarification cases (BPEM).

Managing Meter Readings

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to manage meter readings in the following ways:

• • Enter, estimate, and validate meter readings.
• Release implausible meter readings.
• View meter reading history.
• Correct meter readings.
• Execute detailed meter reading validations.

Fast Move-In/Out

You use this function to enable the interaction center agent to do the following:

• Fast move-in: create an accelerated registration for energy supply for a customer in the form of a fast move-in.
• Fast move-out: create an accelerated termination of energy supply for a customer in the form of a fast move-out.
• Fast move-in/out for business partner: create or terminate (move-out with subsequent move-in) energy supply for a customer without requiring details during the preliminary step.
• Fast move-in/out for premise: create or terminate (move-out with subsequent move-in) energy supply for a premise without requiring details during the preliminary step.
• Fast move-in for an occupied premise: execute a move-in of a business partner into an occupied premise by forcing the move-out of the current business partner at the same time.
• View a Utilities parked document using the Transaction Launcher.