IS-U/CCS An Overview IS-U/CCS is a business process-oriented customer information system that han- dles all categories of supply and services provided by utility and service compa- nies. You can use IS-U/CCS to manage and bill residential, nonresidential, and service customers and to manage prospective customers. IS-U/CCS is exceptionally flexible. It supports a varied range of divisions and business partners and provides a large number of functions. Furthermore, IS-U/ CCS processes all business transactions and activities with a central business part- ner jointly, and it offers account management, which integrates all of a business partners payment transactions. In addition, you can take advantage of powerful customizing functions and the flexibility of the R/3 System to customize IS-U/CCS to meet your individual re- quirements. This means that you can deploy IS-U/CCS in utility companies of sizes and shapes each with its own individual corporate and market strategy. Fig. 2-1: Functional Scope of IS-U/CCS Utility companies can use IS-U/CCS to bill all the traditional divisions: K Electricity K Gas K District heating K Water and waste water 2-2 2 IS-U/CCS An Overview IS-U/CCS also handles billing for waste disposal (as of Release 1.2) and cable television connections. Because IS-U/CCS is integrated with the Service Management (PM-SMA) and Sales and Distribution (SD) application components of the R/3 System, you can also bill service orders and service contracts for services of all types, plus the sale of goods, such as meters, heat pumps, and consumption devices. IS-U/CCS jointly invoices (if desired and appropriate in terms of time) all the services that a utility company provides to customers. It combines them into a single bill and processes them for accounts receivable via Contract Accounts Re- ceivable and Payable. Moreover, using an interface you can include the billing results from external bill- ing systems in invoicing. This allows you to collectively create bills and process accounts receivable with the billing results of IS-U/CCS (Release 2). Of particular significance in IS-U/CCS is the collective billing of services from more than one company. This includes convergent billing and intercompany bill- ing. With convergent billing, a utility company can manage the services of a third par- ty and include them in its own bill. Examples include: K Waste disposal in behalf of the city sanitation department, K Cable charges for telecommunications companies K Drainage charges on behalf of the municipality. With intercompany billing, several independent companies (each with their own separate balance sheets) can combine their services into a single bill. The services are based on contracts with different company codes. Integrating services from more than one company provides advantages to both consumers and utility companies. Integration is also the foundation for future forms of billing in a deregulated utility industry where the services of any one division consist of service components from more than one company. Functions and Special Features This section briefly reviews the most important functions and features of IS-U/CCS. Basic Functions and Tools With the basic functions of IS-U/CCS, you can manage the addresses and region- al structures and generate scheduled dates for meter readings, budget billings, and regular billings. The print workbench gives you the capability for flexible layout of bills and other customer letters using SAPscript, the word processing system of the standard R/3 System. You can either edit the data in SAPscript and pass it to the printer, or you can make the data available for mass printing at the raw data interface (RDI). As part of the migration process, you can transfer data from your current system to IS-U/CCS. 2-3 IS-U/CCS An Overview 2 Other functions allow you to: K Configure screens with tab strips K Enter nonstandardized additional information as notes K Store time-dependent data as information in a history K Maintain number ranges to assign unique sort features K Set up flexible access protection K Log changes Master Data The master data in IS-U/CCS includes: K Business partners K Contracts and contract accounts K Connection objects (such as buildings or land) and the premises, utility instal- lations, and device locations they contain Device Management For managing utility company devices, meters, and equipment, IS-U/CCS offers the following functions: K The capability to divide devices into device categories K Meter and device procurement, warehousing, and stock movements using integration with the Materials Management (MM) component K Maintain installation structures with their existing relationships between meters, devices, registers, and rate data K Maintain rate reference values and other information about the purchase of power K Installation, removal, and replacement of meters and devices K Device inspection and certification based on a sampling procedure or individ- ual certification In addition, device management allows you to create meter-reading orders and enter consumption and demand. In this area, IS-U/CCS offers the following functions: K Create meter reading orders and documents in printed or machine-readable form K Enter meter reading results manually or automatically K Conveniently connect external entry systems K Validate meter reading results K Correct or post-process meter reading results K Monitor meter readings K Valuate at flat rates consumption and demand on the basis of various replace- ment values (such as the number of cable television connections or the energy intake of streetlights) 2-4 2 IS-U/CCS An Overview Contract Billing Billing is the core of IS-U/CCS. It covers the billing of supply categories and ser- vices. In addition, you can incorporate the services that you processed and billed with the Service Management and Sales and Distribution components and the meter reading results from external billing systems in IS-U/CCS invoicing (Release 1.2 and Release 2). Fig. 2-2: Billing and Invoicing A contract is billed as follows: 1. The necessary data is collected. 2. The data is prorated. The system accounts for price and tax changes during the billing period. 3. The system converts the readings into billable quantities (such as register fac- tors or thermal gas billing). 4. The quantities are valued using rates in which the utility company has stored its billing rules. 5. The meter reading results are validated and form the basis for invoicing. IS-U/CCS supports the following forms of billing: K Periodic billing K Floating backbilling K Period-end billing K Interim billing K Final billing K Budget billing and average monthly billing or equalized billing (North America) 2-5 IS-U/CCS An Overview 2 The most important functions of contract billing are as follows: K IS-U/CCS supports as billing cycles both annual consumption billing and monthly billing cycles for less than a year. K The system bills nonresidential and residential customers in the same data structures with the same functions. The two types of customer are differenti- ated only by the data. K You can reverse all forms of bills. You can initiate credit memos and backbillings. K In addition to automated billing, you can use manual billing (Release 2). K IS-U/CCS supports many division-specific types of billing. Some examples are: HThermal gas billing procedures HBilling of public lighting using electricity or gas HWaste disposal (Release 1.2) HCompany and plant consumption of the utility HBilling for employees (Release 2) Invoicing Invoicing K Generates accounting documents for receivables and credit memos from bill- ing documents K Offsets accounting documents against down payments made, particularly paid budget billings K Formats data for bill printout K Creates new budget billing plans K Supports the calculation of taxes With bill printout you can flexibly design and display your bills according to your needs. You can print bills using the IS-U/CCS print workbench or make them available to external print systems for mass printing. In addition, you can insert individual notification texts or flyers with printed documents. Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable Because of their large numbers of customers and generally monthly billing or budget billing request, utility companies create large volumes of requests for pay- ment. So that you do not have to maintain this mass data under General Ledger Accounting, IS-U/CCS offers an integrated subledger called contract accounts re- ceivable and payable. Contract accounts receivable is especially designed to meet the needs of mass processing. At specific intervals, the system transfers the accu- mulated individual postings to the general ledger of the Financial Accounting (FI) component or to the general ledger of a third-party system. You can also transfer sales or service invoices from the Sales and Distribution component to contract ac- counts receivable and payable (Release 1.2). 2-6 2 IS-U/CCS An Overview The objective of contract accounts receivable and payable is to automate all trans- actions as far possible. You only need to manually intervene when a transaction requires a decision. The most important characteristics of contract accounts receivable and payable are the following: K You can individually customize account and open-item displays. K In response to certain business transactions, the system automatically creates printed documents (such as checks, account statements, and returns corre- spondence) and correspondence with user-defined text. K Using a neutral interface, the system can transfer and automatically perform postings that result from automated incoming payments (from front-end sys- tems, financial institutions, or agencies), from collection procedures, credit refunds, or returns processing. K The system can process and include in invoicing down payments for energy consumption (budget billings) and for services to be performed in the future. K You can impose payments in advance or security deposits on customers with a negative payment history or a bad credit rating. K Flexible dunning is based on dunning levels that you can define for each re- ceivables item. Every utility company can define the individual steps of the dunning proceedings itself. The system maintains all information relevant to dunning in a history that is the basis for a credit rating. K You can calculate interest on debit and credit items at the line-item level. You can determine rates of interest individually depending on the business part- ner or transaction concerned (so far as legal requirements, for example, exist). K You can defer receivables items or transfer them to installment plans. K You can send documents relating to different accounts or business partners jointly to a collective bill recipient, for example, a housing construction com- pany). K You can identify receivables as good, doubtful, and irrecoverable and then process them accordingly. K You can manage and process unallocatable incoming payments. K Receivables items are included in financial accounting. SAP Business Workflow The SAP Business Workflow component of the standard R/3 System allows you to coordinate business-process flows across applications. Underlying the workflows is a model of the various business processes that you define. A workflow consists of individual steps performed by a single person, possibly time-delayed, or by a number of different people. The system can execute certain steps automatically, such as initiating a confirmation letter after a rate change or logging changes (such as change in the contract, bank data, or budget billings) that result from a customer contact. The SAP Business Workflow component pro- vides technologies and tools for automatic control and processing of workflows. It allows you to adapt IS-U/CCS and the standard R/3 System to meet the needs of your utility company. 2-7 IS-U/CCS An Overview 2 It makes sense to map a business process as a workflow if it: K Keeps occurring in the same or in a similar form K Consists of a number of possibly cross-application processing steps that have to be executed as a structured whole K Consists of a number of processing steps involving more than one person or departments or that are time delayed IS-U/CCS contains predefined reference workflows for some of the more impor- tant business processes. These include processes for disconnecting and reconnect- ing a utility installation and installing a service connection. These workflows are discussed in the chapter titled Business Processes. The organizational plan of the utility company determines which staff members are involved in a workflow. You can define this organizational plan using the Organizational Management component of the standard R/3 System. The system assigns tasks automatically to the appropriate staff members. The system process- es the assignment of work via the integrated inbox, which supports staff members as they work. The workflow also ensures that required actions, such as the notifi- cation, are not overlooked. A log allows you to trace exactly the steps executed for each process. In addition, you can trace the status of any workflow. If deadlines are missed, the system can automatically notify a supervisor. A flexi- ble information system allows you to analyze the runtimes of individual steps and processes. With this data you can identify weak points in the application flow and optimize the relevant processes. Fig. 2-3: Workflow in the Typical Case of a Rate Change 2-8 2 IS-U/CCS An Overview Customer Service Every year, larger utility companies deal with several hundred thousand direct customer contacts. In light of this large number, efficient processing of contacts is an important performance characteristic of IS-U/CCS. In particular, entering business transactions places considerable demands on the user interface, service flow, and response time of the system. The front office is the most important part of customer service. This is where customers can obtain information on all the important data and start all the pro- cesses that are important to their work centers. Depending on the content of the business processes, it uses R/3 workflow management to support the flow of those processes. You can configure the front office to your requirements in Customizing. These configurations allow you to set up a work environment specifically suited to a particular staff member and to define which data and transactions that the staff member is allowed to access. In its customer information IS-U/CCS offers various ready-made views with which staff can provide customers with information on, for example, their data and accounts. Workflow management contains predefined transactions with which staff can handle such jobs as: K Creating a new premise K Processing a move-in K Changing a contract K Entering a fault report. Fig.2-4: Customer Service in the Front Office 2-9 IS-U/CCS An Overview 2 The initial step in any customer contact in the front office is the identification of the customer, which is supported by a powerful search function, the Data Finder. You define in Customizing which data the system uses as search criteria. You can automate this step by integrating a computer telephone integration (CTI) system and display an initial information screen that contains information on the cus- tomer. Once the customer has been identified, your staff can call up information screens and then branch from there to additional, detailed views. If changes are required, you can make them on the spot. For example, you can change bank details or process a move-in. If you cannot complete the transaction because required data is unavailable or if detailed processing is required, you can: K Initiate a workflow Depending on the definition of the workflow, you continue the transaction in the back office when the necessary events have occurred K Create a follow-up for the appropriate person In this case, you can enter customer information in a note and attach it to the follow-up. IS-U/CCS automatically logs the customer contact. You can enter notes (like mar- keting-relevant remarks) on a customer contact. You can quickly obtain an over- view of prior contacts and sort them according to various criteria, such as prior dunning events or field service operations. The log record for the customer con- tact references the relevant object or documents. This means that you can display the dunning letter sent for a dunning event, for example, directly from the log. Work Management The efficient performance of services is increasingly important for utility compa- nies in times of growing competition and increased customer orientation. Utility companies consequently plan and cost such services as work orders. Examples include: K Setting up service connections K Maintaining technical equipment, performing periodic device replacement K Processing repairs and reports of damage K Creating collection and disconnection orders K Performing energy consulting In IS-U/CCS, Work Management processes those work orders. Work Management uses functions from the standard Plant Maintenance and Service Management com- ponent and integrates them with industry-specific functions from IS-U/CCS to form cross-component business processes. In many cases you can bill customers for work orders. Where this is the case, the system executes the Inquiry Quotation Order transaction before the work or- der and the Billing Invoicing transaction after the work order. The system han- dles these transactions based on the integration of the Plant Maintenance and Ser- vice Management and the Sales and Distribution components. 2-10 2 IS-U/CCS An Overview You can combine the billing results for services from Sales and Distribution with the results for energy billing from IS-U/CCS in IS-U/CCS invoicing and show them on one bill (Release 2). Information System The Information System enables you to analyze the data resources underlying IS- U/CCS. Like other components of R/3, IS-U/CCS offers a variety of forms of analysis: K Statistics The statistics are based on a statistical dataset, which the system updates con- tinuously or monthly from dialog and batch functions. IS-U/CCS distinguishes between three different statistics applications: HStock statistics Stock statistics reflect the current stock of all the essential objects in the dataset at a specific point in time. HTransaction statistics Transaction statistics cover the most important processes executed during a specific period of time. These might include move-in or move-out or disconnection. HSales statistics Sales statistics provide comprehensive information on quantities sold in the various divisions and the resulting revenues. The Logistics Information System (LO-LIS) component of the standard system en- ables you to evaluate the statistical dataset. The Logistics Information System offers many different options for evaluating, analyzing and presenting data. K IS-U/CCS Navigator With the IS-U/CCS Navigator you can get a quick overview of how the data interrelates within IS-U/CCS. Starting from any given data object, such as a customer, you can use graphics to navigate through the entire data environ- ment of the object.