Designing Rate Plans with the SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit

The SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit knows three business roles that you can assign to your user:

• System Administrator
• Pricing Specialist
• Technical Support

With the system administrator role you can:

• View and change server parameters with ease.
• Analyze the item files containing Billable Items and Consumption Items ready to be sent to Convergent Invoicing.
• Check the status and availability of the CC server instances as well as suspend and resume instances.
• View the usage metrics of the server.
• Display user operations.

The following figure shows the app tiles for these tasks.

The Technical Support role has access to the SAP Fiori apps of both the Pricing Specialist and the System Administrator role, but has read-only access to all data.

This lesson focuses on the pricing specialist role, which allows you to model your price logic like you did in the Core Tool. The advantage of the cockpit is that you don’t need to install a local client software.

The underlying logic applies for the most part, just the same way it does in the Core Tool. The apps available to the pricing specialist are:

In the Pricing Data Structures group:

• Manage Chargeable Item Classes
• Manage Charged Item Classes
• Manage Mapping Table Classes
• Manage Range Table Classes

In the Pricing Definition group:

• Manage Rate Plans
• Manage Mapping Tables
• Manage Range Tables

In the Pricing Administration group:

Process a chargeable Item.

With the Manage Rate Plans app, you can create new Rate Plans in the cockpit. Rate Plan is a new term for what is essentially a Charge Plan in the Core Tool. When you start the app, the system displays all Rate Plans available. The system also states what system is managing the Rate Plan. As not all the functionality in the Core Tool for managing charge plans is available in the Cockpit, a Rate Plan can be created in the Cockpit and edited in the Core Tool afterwards. Once a Rate Plan has been edited in the Core Tool, however, it cannot be modified anymore in the Cockpit.

The header asks you to select the name, the associated catalog, a currency, as well as a description text. Note that you cannot set up a multicurrency Rate Plan in this release.

You can also provide several parameters to your rate plan with the data types string, number, and date. With release 2020 FPS1, the data types for providing mapping table IDs are also available. Any parameter you create will be made available in all the charges you add to your rate plan automatically. You do not have to set up a mapping yourself like you must do in the Core Tool. Just like in the Core Tool, you can add additional information to your rate plan.

For each rate plan, you can add recurring charges and usage charges as you please. With release 2020 FPS2 you can also add one-time charges to your rate plans.

Note that for any Charge you add to your Rate Plan, a new Charge with exactly one Rate will be set up and added to your Rate Plan. If you want your Charge to contain more than one Rate, you need to use the Core Tool.

The recurrence options are limited to the following options:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly
• Biannually
• Annually

You cannot refer to a reference date of your choice. If you need to do that, you must use the Core Tool in this release. However, from release 2021 FPS0 onwards, new recurring cycles are made available to you in the Cockpit.

When you are using Usage Charges you also need to set up a User Technical Identifier, which will be filled with the user ID during Contract Creation, and which will be linked to one or more Usage Charges.

Once you have set up a new Recurring or Usage Charge you can navigate into it. The system will show you the price plan tree you already know from the Core Tool. The tree logic can be extended as you please. The following functions are available in the given release:

Operators

Arithmetic Computation

Comparators

• Mapping Table
• Number Comparator
• String Comparator

Functions

• Error
• Flat Fee
• No Fee

Up to and including release 2021 FPS0, new components have been made available.

To add a new component, select the component under which you want to add your new component. Choose Add. Once you have finished your price plan implementation choose Apply. The system returns to show the rate plan.

The Cockpit also allows you to modify the Output Item Mapping in the Core Tool. This mapping assigns any values calculated in your price plan to fields of the Billable Item that the charge creates. If you want to make adaptions to this mapping, you can do so by selecting View next to the Output Charged Item you have selected for your Charge. In the opening context dialog, choose Edit Charged Item Definition.

This opens a new window displaying all the fields of the Charged Item Class that you have selected. You can now make the necessary adjustments just like you have done previously in the Core Tool.

Once you have completed your rate plan, choose Save to store it as a rate plan ready for release. If you have inconsistencies in your rate plan, this is shown on the bottom left of your screen. Trying to save an inconsistent rate plan will open notifications and display any errors the validation check has found. In the example shown, the system points us to the missing Output Charged Item in our charge. Once resolved, saving is possible.

The system keeps saving drafts of a rate plan whenever you modify it, so that nothing is lost. These drafts are visible to all users working in the Cockpit. If someone is editing a rate plan, the object is kept locked to prevent concurrent access to it.

Once a new rate plan is consistent and saved, it is in the open state. In this state it cannot be used in contracts, or even assigned to a subscription product in SAP Subscription Order Management. If your rate plan is ready to be used, you must open it and choose Release on the top right of the screen. After another question ("Are you sure…?"), and a confirmation, the rate plan will change its state to Released. From there on it can be assigned to a subscription product and used as part of a contract.

In this video, Melissa shows her colleague Jonathan how to create a new rate plan in the SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit.