Performing Cross Catalog Mapping

The Product Cloud Selection Service Product, BSU_CLOUD_SEL_SERV, has a cross catalog mapping with one charge plan for usage. The charge plan includes three Charges, CPU Usage Charge, RAM Usage Charge, and Bandwidth Usage Charge.

CCM is the mechanism used to integrate the pricing algorithm defined in the rating catalog to the subscription product. It's possible to define tables, mapping, range tables, or parameters that can later be redefined in the Subscription Order.

CCM is also the mechanism to integrate the pricing algorithm defined in the rating catalog to the commercial product. The pricing engine consists of a graphical user interface that is used to configure pricing trees for usage, plus recurring and one-time events. It's possible define tables (mapping or range tables ) or parameters that can be later redefined.

Charging is the term that 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 is the term that describes the process of actually calculating what the usage of a certain service costs, such as how much has to be paid.

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. These will be covered later in this presentation. The price is calculated based on the consumption-based parameters (Pay per Use):

• CPU (Times how long the user accessed the virtual box) 0,035 c / h
• RAM Usage (How much RAM the user requested) 0,03 c/ MB
• The monthly fee for the cloud select service is defined in the contract in Subscription Order Management (SOM) on a monthly base 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 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, such as account assignments, user technical identifiers, counters, and parameters.

This figure shows the price configuration of our product Cloud Selection Service.

The root product has a monthly base fee of 1,000 EUR and additional surcharges depending on the configuration of the SLA. The SAP Convergent Charging charge plan is mapped via Cross-Catalog Mapping, and depending on the SLA configuration, different usage charges apply for CPU, RAM, and bandwidth services. The selected SLA is passed to SAP Convergent Charging via parameters. The usage prices are stored in SAP Convergent Charging in mapping and range tables.

The 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. The product data from other systems is imported and maintained together with the subscription product. By enriching the imported data and defining mapping rules with these components and its sub-components, a mapping is done. This mapping is between SAP S/4HANA Service business views, the subscription product, and the specific product view of the external product representation. Information needed in billing, provisioning, or other systems is gathered using the mapping rules defined in CCM.

Mapping versions allow maintenance of time-dependent changes on the mapping of a product with an easy status management.

During charge plan assignment, the external parameters from that charge plan are taken over into the cross-catalog mapping and persisted. You can configure these parameters individually, for example, by redefining charge plan parameters or table parameters. By doing so, you can create individually configured products on the basis of charge plans. You can also further assign them as basic building blocks for complex product definitions. Adapting the charge plan parameters allows you to model individual products as per your specific requirements.

You can change the charge plan in an existing assignment by selecting a new charge plan. In this case, the assignment still remains for the mapping version, but with a new charge plan. The assignment ID also remains unchanged. Settings of the previous charge plans, such as parameter redefinitions are retained as far as parameter IDs are still identical, while new parameters are added, and parameters that are not contained in the new charge plan are removed.

Table parameters are also retained as far as the table parameter ID and the table class ID of the new charge plan are identical.

The copied charge plan assignment has the same configuration as the source, except for the redefined tables, if any are used. Those are individual object-specific tables that are limited to a certain product, version, and charge plan assignment. In this case, these tables are created as new in SAP Convergent Charging and then linked to the new charge plan assignment.

You can verify the accuracy of the charge plan by selecting the relevant charge plan and choosing Check. In case of warnings and errors, the check result is displayed in the message section.

You can view the products, versions, and assignments where a charge plan is used.

You can delete a charge plan assignment.

For technical resources from SAP Convergent Charging, you can specify the type of the identification by the technical identifier for the offered services. For example, an e-mail address, an IP address, just to name a few. This unique identifier is used to identify the usage, which is coming from a technical system, which has no customer or contract information. Further, you can use technical resources to determine at which item level the user identification for the customer using this service is defined in the subscription contract. 

To determine the technical identifier, use the value help to view all the types of identifier that are assigned to the resource assignment schema, maintained for this subscription product

Set attributes for the parameters, default values or BRF+. Parameters are defined in the external object during its implementation in SAP Convergent Charging. There are three data types for parameters, each represented by their individual details sections:

• String Parameters
• Numeric Parameters
• Date Parameters

You can activate parameters:

• Default Value (only available for optional parameters): The default value for the charge plan is used.
• Redefined Value: A constant value must be provided.
• BRFplus Function: The value is determined by the result of an executed BRFplus function.