Adding Registered Products to an Installed Base

The service objects: registered products, and installed bases are important entities to manage the service processes. In case of an issue, the agent can assign the registered product and/or installed base to a ticket. 

In the following, we describe the activation and maintenance of the service objects: registered product and installed base. 

In order to be able to create registered products, you need three elements:   

• Customer,  
• Product and a  
• Serial Number.   

In the image below, you can see the three elements in SAP Service Cloud.  

In SAP Service Cloud, a registered product is an instance of a product that is associated with a specific customer. A customer registering a product that they purchased then enables the service desk agent to identify the unique customer product and determine service entitlements if a problem occurs. If a warranty exists for the product, the system links to the relevant warranty and automatically determines the relevant warranty dates. This significantly streamlines the customer service process. The same applies should the customer have multiple registered products at a single site and/or across multiple sites. For example, a single exercise bike owner and then a hotel business with, say, one hotel in each of two cities, with several exercise bikes in their gyms. 

Products can be: physical, for example, exercise bikes; services, like an electrician; or entitlements, like a software license. Products can also be combined for a customer. For example, an exercise bike combined with a service contract for it. 

A single customer's combined products are referred to as an installed base in SAP Service Cloud. An installed base is a hierarchical arrangement of the sites where the products are located and the registered products themselves. For example, a rental car agency with twenty cars that is operating in two cities, with two rental locations in each, or a company with cloud-based software licenses, one dedicated Web address with ten logins. 

An installed base refers to a repository that contains detailed information about all the products and services a customer has installed or purchased from a company. This database can include specific information, such as product quantities, the date of purchase, maintenance schedules, warranty periods, contract conditions, and more. 

This system allows businesses to keep track of all their agreements with each customer, ensuring efficient and personalized service. Companies use the data to understand customer preferences, track equipment lifecycles, improve products or services, manage warranties or contract services, plan maintenance, and optimize customer communications or support services. For example, a hotel business's exercise bikes could then be an installed base hierarchy comprising of two sites (cities), each with a hotel, but the one, larger hotel, then sub-divided as it has two gyms not one. 

An installed base allows, particularly the larger, customer to have its assets better tracked and managed. Again, significantly streamlining the customer service process. A customer's installed assets can: be tracked; each have an employee responsible, and a primary technician assigned. 

In SAP Service Cloud, an installation point is used to define the exact location where a product or a service associated with a customer's installed base is physically installed or provided.  

This could be a specific room in a building, a particular department within a company or a certain location within a factory. Installation points provide important context, especially for businesses that have complex or multi-location customer installations.  

This detailed information is crucial for tasks like scheduling services and maintenance, managing warranties, providing specific solutions, or any other concerns related to the product or service at a very specific location. It helps service teams to have a clear understanding of exactly where the product is being used, which significantly improves their productivity and efficiency. 

Watch the following video where you will see how to enable and create a registered product in SAP Service Cloud. 

Video Summary Steps 

Here is a summary of the video steps to create a registered product. 

1. Enable Registered Products in scoping by enabling the following questions: 
   • You can manually maintain Involved Parties for Registered Product, Installed Base and Installation Points 
   • You can maintain additional configurations for Functional Location/Registered Product and
   • You can maintain Installed Bases and Installation Points.
   
2. Create Registered Product by assigning it a serial number.