Executing a Large Integration Scenario 3 – Customer Service, Maintenance and Service with Advanced Execution

In the overall process described, the procurement process of the material should end with the goods receipt. It takes place regardless of whether procurement was carried out using in-house production, external procurement, or project processing.

Service with Advanced Execution, Plant Maintenance (PM), and Customer Service (CS) are listed as an additional integration aspect. The idea is that services should continue to be offered for the sold, configured product. You can also access the configuration of the product (configuration from the sales order) directly in these service quotations and service tasks.

To do this, the product delivered to the customer must be managed in the supplier's system (that is, our system here) as a service-relevant or maintenance-relevant object. This is done by customer equipment. You can use the settings in the material master to achieve serialization and thus the linked generation of equipment. In the material master in the sales and distribution data, a serial number profile has been assigned for this, which basically makes serial number usage mandatory for all relevant processes. It is also set here that a piece of equipment is always created. At the same point in the material master, you specify that the serial number and equipment are kept synchronous.

However, the customer can also plan and execute maintenance tasks for the acquired product. The procedure for it is similar – but in the customer's system.

There are four categories of technical objects:

• Functional locations are elements of a technical structure and represent the system areas in which objects can be installed. Technical structure can be subdivided according to functional, process-oriented, or spatial criteria.

• Equipment refers to individual objects that are to be treated as autonomous units.

• Serial numbers are assigned to materials to differentiate them from other items. They enable materials to be treated as individual items. Inventory management can be carried out for serial numbers.

• Assemblies are used to finely structure functional locations and equipment. These are treated as BOM items and not as individual items.

Functional locations, equipment, and serial numbers can be used as reference objects in documents such as service requests and service orders. You can use the different categories of technical objects individually or in combination.

Equipment

You always create an equipment master record for a technical object under the following conditions:

• You need to manage individual data for the object.

• When breakdown, planned, or preventive maintenance tasks are required for an object, you need to record the maintenance tasks.

• You need to collect and evaluate technical data for the object over long periods of time.

• You need to monitor the cost of maintenance tasks for the object.

• You need to record the usage time of the object at functional locations.

If you create such an equipment with reference to a configurable item of a sales order, it also has a reference to the corresponding configuration. You can use this configuration in the service. The configuration data from the sales order and also the reference to the sales order can be displayed on the same tab page in the equipment. In the equipment, you can still find the serial number information.

A piece of equipment can be installed and dismantled at functional locations. You can also monitor the installation times for a piece of equipment from both the functional location view and the equipment view.

In the case of a piece of equipment that is linked to a material, when you dismantle the damaged piece of equipment, the system can automatically place it in storage. Likewise, when a piece of equipment is installed, the system automatically releases it from store inventory.

The design of SAP S/4HANA Service removes functional redundancies and data replication:

• Best of both worlds: Identify functional redundancies, and select the most suitable object/engine/process.
• Unify CRM and SAP S/4HANA objects: Unified objects share the same database representation, thus require no middleware.

SAP S/4HANA Service is based on SAP S/4HANA for customer management.

This figure illustrates a typical Corrective Service scenario:

• Optional: A Service Quote documents the details of services/prices. Alternatively, the required demand of a service is documented using a Service Request.

• The processing of cost and revenue starts when you add execution order items to a service order. When you save your entries, the system creates an account assignment object for each execution order item.

• Optional: A Service Order Item can be linked to a Service Contract Item and a WBS Elements.

• When the Execution Order Item is released, a Billable Maintenance Order is automatically generated. The Maintenance Order header is linked to the Execution Order Item. The Maintenance Order can comprise planning details such as work centers, task list information, and spare parts, and includes detailed cost information.

  Planned cost and planned revenue can be displayed in the Execution Order Item under Planned Cost and Revenue. Planned cost can also be displayed in the maintenance order.

• Maintenance Confirmation documents the actual efforts and spare parts used, which serve as a basis for the upcoming billing process.

  Actual cost happens when the service is confirmed in the maintenance order and the confirmation is completed.

• In this resource-related scenario, the Dynamic Item Processor generates based on actual data a Debit Memo Request, which can be adjusted, if necessary.

• Based on the Debit Memo Request, the Invoice is created.

  Actual revenue is created when the billing document is created for the execution order item. It derives from the price of the service performed and that is charged to the customer in billing.

You can use a service order to record information about a service that has been agreed between the service provider and service recipient. A service order provides the necessary information regarding the service process and the cost that is incurred. An execution order item in the service order creates a corresponding billable maintenance order that facilitates the planning and execution of the service.

Each execution order item creates a maintenance order. The maintenance order is used for the execution planning and execution of the service. For each execution order item, you need to select a billing relevance. If you select summarized billing or itemized billing as the billing relevance, you need to enter a DIP profile.

In Service with Advanced Execution, you can create a service order as follows:

• As a standalone service order

• As a follow-up transaction, from a service order quotation

• As a call object in a service plan

• As a billable maintenance order as part of billable maintenance

Billing represents the final processing stage for a service transaction in Service with Advanced Execution. Depending on the scenario the order can be billed as ad-hoc, fixed price, or resource-related.

Types of Billing

The following types of Billing are available:

• Resource-Related Billing

• Fixed Price Billing

• Ad-hoc Billing

• Not Relevant for Billing

In the following, you'll find out further details about each type of billing.

• Resource-Related Billing

  Customers are billed for the resources used (for example, labor, material, travel) to carry out services. Data is summarized from defined sources, such as actual cost line items using the dynamic item processor (DIP) profile. The dynamic item processor is a tool that the system uses to summarize data into dynamic items in resource-related billing, sales Price Calculation, or data determination. Resource-related billing can be either itemized billing or summarized billing.

  They're identified with the billing relevance field attribute at the item level and can be differentiated as follows:

  • Itemized billing: A service is billed as a list of subitems. Itemized billing also supports event-based revenue recognition.

  • Summarized billing: A service is billed as a single main item. Summarized billing doesn't currently support event-based revenue recognition.

• Fixed Price Billing

  In fixed price billing, the service is billed at a predetermined price irrespective of the actual cost incurred during the service. It's based on the price master data of the service product.

  The price master data (along with discounts) is maintained in the Sales and Distribution area of SAP S/4HANA.

• Ad-hoc Billing

  This type of billing is used to define billing values and dates freely for fixed price execution order items. Billing document requests (BDRs) are generated for fixed price items with long duration that need to be billed on specific dates and not just when the execution order item is completed.

• Not Relevant for Billing

  This type of billing is used when the customer isn't being billed for the service. Goodwill, under warranty, or free-of-charge service may be some of the business decisions for the use of this billing type.

This example shows the maintenance order (with configured operations and configured components), maintenance-centric service order, and service contract in SAP S/4HANA Service with Advanced Execution.