Call Management 
Call Management
Purpose
This component comprises a whole range of processes from call logging to planning and processing, to completion and billing of the costs incurred.
When a service is requested, you respond by using one of the following:
The service notification cannot carry costs or revenues, meaning that you can only record and process a requested service in a service notification if neither personnel costs nor material costs have to be documented. In this case you do not need to create a separate order. You can describe the condition of a technical object in the service notification.
If a technician has to be sent to a customer’s, and material, utilities and personnel have to be planned in order to rectify a problem, you need to use a service order to perform service processing. A sales order can be created on the basis of a maintenance plan, a service notification, or a sales order.
If spare parts and other materials have to be sent to the customer’s, but no scheduling has to be performed, you use a sales order for service processing.
You can find more information on sales orders in the documentation SD - Sales and Distribution Processing.
Integration
You can only use this component in conjunction with the following components:
Data is entered during processing, which can be evaluated according to different criteria. The Logistics Information System, which is part of the general information system, is available for performing analyses.
Features
Call management can be divided into the following stages:
During call logging, you request the necessary service tasks using a service notification, and can track the progress of the tasks to be performed.
The service order and the sales order are the most important instruments during call processing. A service order enables you to plan the execution of the individual activities in greater detail, to estimate the costs, and to monitor the work progress. You use the sales order to send the spare parts to the customer.
A service notification can also be used at this stage if the nature of the service involved is purely consultational, for example, as in the case of a hotline service that is covered by contract specifications.
You can monitor the progress of your service notifications and orders to ensure that deadlines determined in the response profile are met.
At this stage, the actual costs that have arisen as a result of materials used, and activities performed, are recorded in detail in the service order. You describe the activities that were performed and the technical findings in the service notification. You can also record any configuration changes made to the service object and also measurement documents for the object in the completion confirmation. You can close a service order once it has been completely confirmed. Its data is then available in the order history for future planning and analyses.
You can create both a billing request and a billing document for a service order. The actual expenses as well as the items that were not billed (for example, because they were covered by the warranty) are listed in both documents.
The diagram below illustrates the main stages involved in call management:
Main Stages of Call Management
