Analyzing Product, Service, and Bundle Modeling

The product modeling process step outlines the functions of modeling bundles (including products, projects, recurring and one-time services, and usage charges), defining prices for recurring fees, products, and one-time services. It also shows mapping usage charges with cross-catalog mapping, defining and processing allowances, and applying combination rules with Variant Configuration.

A subscription product provides specific attributes and settings required for capturing subscription orders and contracts, resulting in provider contracts in FI-CA and SAP Convergent Charging. They include terms of duration, billing cycles, discounts, and charges, among other core attributes using the subscription product.

The subscription product is modeled with the SAP S/4HANA product master and specifies certain subscription-specific attributes within the product master like terms of duration, billing cycles, resource assignment schema.

In addition, the product master is defined by its subscription product-specific data like cross-catalog mapping or discounts and charges.

Due to this extension, you require three apps while modeling subscription products. These applications are available from the SAP Fiori Launchpad.

Product Master Data

Product name and main categorization – condition which sub-parts are presented and generic behavior​.

Product Model

Define the attributes (for example, live channel A, live channel B, number of minutes and so on), the values they can take (string, list, number between …) inside a product or bundle.

Subscription Specific Data

Provides specific attributes, and settings required for capturing subscription orders and contracts resulting in provider contracts in FI-CA and SAP Convergent Charging.

Cross-Catalog Mapping

The cross-catalog mapping (CCM) allows you to map product catalogs across systems, in order to assign subscription products to product-like entities from the end-to-end system landscape (SAP Convergent Charging).

SAP Convergent Charging Tables

Table parameters refer to SAP Convergent Charging tables that are used to determine usage prices during the rating process.

Variant Configuration

Variant configuration is used to configure products in subscription orders or solution quotations. SAP S/4HANA Services uses Advanced Variant Configuration (AVC).

With Product Models, it is possible to configure a product so that it allows the user/customer to choose from several options when ordering the product:

• The product contains a number of characteristics (attributes).
• The user/customer chooses a value for each characteristic.
• Some characteristic values can also be selected automatically by predefined rules.
• Product components are selected automatically by rules, based on the chosen characteristic values.

All products, but subscription products with usage, can have dependent components allocated to them:

• Less commercial relevance, more driven by technical or process requirements.
• Can have complex conditions (including Business Rule Framework (BRF), allowing process and/or configuration dependencies) and generation rules are possible.
• Often straightforward generation, but optional or alternative components also possible.
• Dependent components usually do not become part of the Subscription contract.
• Usually appear on the lowest hierarchy level of a complex package.

Technical Resources are the (typically unique) identifiers of a contract that are used in SAP Convergent Charging to identify the contract for rating and charging.

In the product, an "assignment schema" is assigned. The assignment schema contains one or more Technical Resource types (for example, one phone number and one SIM card ID).

Next, you learn more about cross-catalog mapping, which is the mechanism to integrate the pricing algorithm defined in the rating catalog to the commercial product.

Cross-Catalog Mapping is the mechanism to integrate the pricing algorithm defined in the rating catalog to the subscription product.

The pricing engine consists of a graphical user interface to configure pricing trees for usage, recurring and one-time events.

It is possible to define tables (mapping or range tables) or parameters that can be later redefined:

Charging

Charging is the term which describes the process of determining the account of the customer/person, who is paying for the service consumption. The charging logic is stored in the so called "charging plan", a decision tree based structure.

Rating

Rating is the term which describes the process of actually calculating what the usage of a certain service costs, for instance, how much has to be paid.

Pricing

Pricing is the term describing the process of creating the logic that calculates the prices to be charged for the various services to the customers. The logic is created in so called "Price plans" (will be covered later in this presentation). The price is calculated depended on the following consumption based parameters (Pay per Use):

• CPU (Time how long the user accessed the virtual box) 0,035 c / h.
• RAM Usage (How much RAM he requested) 0,03 c/ MB.
• The monthly fee for the cloud select service is defined in the contract in SOM on a monthly basis but triggered in SAP Convergent Charging.

Price plans and charging plans are stored in so-called "Charges". Many charges can be combined into a charge plan.

The charge plan is a master data which models the way to charge the access and the use of a service by a given customer. The charge plan is the key master data of the new model introduced in SAP Convergent Charging.

A charge plan includes redefined and customized charges, redefined counters or parameters. It also includes the declarations of the elements that are expected in the provider contract for each activated charge plan (account assignments, user technical identifiers, counters, and parameters).

A product bundle is a combination of different products that are sold together as a whole. Its components can be physical goods and subscription products.

A product bundle always has a bundle product that ties together the bundle components, where a component is an individual product that constitutes part of a product bundle.