SAP Utilities 

 

The SAP Utilities (IS-U) component is a sales and information system that supports all business processes and utility services of a utility company. You can use IS-U for managing and billing residential, commercial and industrial, and prospective customers. This component also allows you to manage and bill customers who receive services, purchase goods, or pay fees and taxes.

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this documentation, we are always grateful for feedback.

Integration

IS-U is integrated with the Service Management (PM-SMA), Customer Service (CS) and Sales and Distribution (SD) application components, enabling you to bill service orders, service contracts, and the sale of goods.

The Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable (FI-CA) component manages the large number of postings from billing and budget billing requests.

IS-U uses the SAP Business Workflow (BC-BMIT-WFM) application component to automate business processes. Common workflows include initial creation of a service connection and the disconnection of devices.

Features

SAP Utilities

·        IS-U/CCS

¡        With Basic Functions you manage addresses and regional structures, as well as generating dates and schedules for meter readings, billings, and budget billings.

¡        With Master Data you manage data that remains fixed for long periods of time. In IS-U, this data includes the business partners, contracts and contract accounts, connection objects (buildings and real estate) and the premises, installations, and device locations contained therein.

¡        With Device Management you manage the installations, meter reading, and the certification of all devices for a utility company.

¡        The IS-U Billing component is used for billing the following standard divisions: Electricity, gas, water/waste water, district heating, and multimedia services (for example, cable TV).

¡        The IS-U Invoicing component enables you to group services and invoice them on one bill. You can also use the component to calculate and charge fees and taxes.

¡        In Kundenservice you can use the Customer Interaction Center (CIC) or Front Office to display all data and start frequently used business processes. In Internet-Self-Services your customers can send you new data or changes to their existing data via the Internet. For example, they can grant you collection authorization or register a move-in.

·        Energy Data Management (EDM) is a solution that meets the requirements of interval reading, schedule management, and the billing of interval energy consumption. EDM covers the following areas:

¡        Central database for energy data (Energy Data Repository)

¡        Settlement and schedule management using the settlement workbench

¡        Billing of profiles using real-time-pricing billing (RTP billing)

·        Work Management combines various SAP components and enhances them to include industry-specific functions for planning, calculating, executing, and billing work orders.

·        SAP Waste and Recycling (IS-U-WA) is a comprehensive logistics, billing, service, and customer service system that covers all the business processes required by a waste disposal company.

·        Intercompany Data Exchange (IDE) is a solution that covers the requirements that have arisen from the deregulation of energy markets. IDE covers the following areas:

¡        Management of deregulation data

¡        Process execution

¡        Management of data exchange processes

 

In August 2002, SAP launched the Efficiency Project IS-U/CCS. The idea was conceived of following a number of projects, in which customers expressed the desire to improve the efficiency of certain IS-U/CCS mass dialog processes (such as Find Business Partner, Identify Business Partner, Move-In, Move-Out, Move-In/Out, Change Bank Details, Bill Correction). The documents referred to below all contain information that you require in order quickly and efficiently implement the optimization measures developed in this project. We strongly recommend that you implement these measures in your company as they will significantly improve processing times.

You can find the documentation in the SAP Service Marketplace under http://service.sap.com/utilities ® Product Information ® IS-U/CCS ® General ® Cookbooks&Guidelines:

·        Documentation Increased Efficiency IS-U/CCS – Available Optimization Options

This document describes the optimization options that are available as of SAP IS-U/CCS Release 4.64. For example, we determined that we were not taking full advantage of the optimization possibilities in processes such as move-in, move-out, and move-in/out, which are used very regularly. This cookbook provides relevant information and stresses the importance of placing particular value on efficient processes during all implementation projects.

·        Documentation Increased Efficiency IS-U/CCS – New Developments

This document describes the new developments that SAP provided as an add-on support package (AOSP) for SAP IS-U/CCS Release 4.64 in July 2003 and for SAP IS-U/CCS Release 4.71 in September 2003 (new developments included Accelerated Move-In/Out, and express transactions Change Bank Data, and Change Budget Billing Amount). As of IS-U/CCS Release 4.72, these new developments are part of SAP Utilities.

Cross-Industry Solutions

In addition, you can make use of the following cross-industry solutions:

·        SAP Business Information Warehouse for the utilities industry

You can find this documentation via the SAP HelpPortal (http://help.sap.com).

·        SAP Customer Relationship Management for the utilities industry.

You can find this documentation in the SAP Solution Manager.

·        SAP Enterprise Portals for the utilities industry.

You can find this information via the the iView Studio (www.iviewstudio.com).