Use

The deregulation of energy markets has led to dramatic changes in utility companies’ customer-oriented business processes. The focus is no longer solely on the relationship between the utility company and its customer; the relationship with other companies involved in supplying energy to the customer is also of critical importance.

For example, an energy supplier’s relationship with the customer’s distributor is just as relevant as its relationship with the customer himself. This is particularly important in the resulting business processes.

The companies involved in supplying the customer are termed service providers in SAP Utilities (SAP IS-U). Processes resulting from the deregulation of the energy markets, and whose process flow is controlled by the relationship between the service providers supplying the customer, are termed deregulation processes .

For example, besides intercompany data exchange using data exchange processes ( see data exchange ), processing changes of supplier or grid usage bills exchanged between the supplier and distributor is a deregulation process.

A deregulation process takes account of process control parameters that are defined according to an agreement made between two service providers involved in supplying a customer. This agreement is termed a service provider agreement .

In a service provider agreement, you define the process control parameters that correspond to the agreement between the two service providers with reference to a deregulation process.

The corresponding SAP IS-U process is controlled by interpreting the service provider agreement. The corresponding service provider agreement is always determined based on the point of delivery or the services (non-billable or billable services) managed for the point of delivery.

You can differentiate a service provider agreement according to point of delivery groups . You can specify different process parameters for different point of delivery groups according to an agreement between two service providers. For example, you can define different process parameters for residential customers and for commercial and industrial customers for processing a change of supplier. You can group the points of delivery for each deregulation process.

Process Flow

Deregulation processes have been modeled for processes in SAP IS-U that are handled according to the agreements between the relevant service providers. Deregulation processes are cross-company processes. The modeling phase for the deregulation processes provides the process control parameters defined with the service provider agreement . This means the process flow depends on the service providers involved in supplying the point of delivery.

Some standard deregulation processes are provided by SAP:

Customizing for  SAP Utilities Tools System Modifications User-Defined Enhancements for IDE Define Deregulation Processes .

Deregulation processes have been modeled for the following processes in SAP IS-U: